sites and stuff

Time continues to pass quickly here, as I now find myself in the middle of week five in Senegal. A lot has happened in the last week and a half here. Last Friday we all found out our sites for the next two years. At the training center there is a basketball court with a map of Senegal painted on it, so our trainers had al of us close our eyes and they positioned us on the map approximately where our sites are, so when we all opened our eyes we would not only see where we would be living and working during the next two years but also who our closest neighbors would be. My site is in the north of Senegal on the river, its a village of about 2000 people located about 5k from the river. Tomorrow my language class is heading to a town in the north to spend ten days of training with a current volunteer in her village, so I will be able to get a better idea of what life up north is like. Up to now I have yet to have a conversation with anyone about the north without the other person mentioning how hot it is there. Apparently evenings there currently drop to a nice and chilly 95 degrees F (33 C), but at least I will have the river running by my village for me to swim in (and get schistosomiasis from).
Other than site placements the other exciting thing to happen was my trip to the beach last weekend. It was the first weekend that my training group was allowed to the Thies area,s o we made the most of it by renting a couple houses on the beach Saturday night and spending 24 hours hanging out, swimming and relaxing. It was a much needed break from the hectic training schedual.