Hello 2010!!!! Happy New Year people! It's incredible how time slips by so stealthily....it seems just yesterday that Mom, Dad and Simone were here celebrating the holidays with me.

It is a rite of passage of sorts to host one's parents for the first time and I feel, if I can say so myself, that I passed this milestone with all the grace a 24-year-old in an artsy apartment with mismatched dishes, the world's tiniest tea kettle, a roommate, two overly-affectionate cats, a medieval coffee brewer, and a hammock, can afford. :-)

It was amusing to see the various dimensions of my Senegal experiences converge. We spent a lot of time with old family friends, the Dieye family (tata Jackie, tonton Momar, Henriette and Ben) and the Kanes (Claire, Soum and Djinda). I had just worked with Claire, who is a very well known fashion designer, on a really cool project, including a fashion show on a boat in the middle of the Senegal river, promoting the development of the old capital, Saint Louis, and the northern region of Senegal. Consequently, I am already somewhat integrated in Claire's world of sophisticated artists and entrepreneurs, a world that seemed to once be the sole territory of my parents.

Besides partying with the country's elite, my parents hit it off well with my neighborhood crew (Oumy, Papis, Malang and Mustafa still ask about you!) and my former host family (Moussou, Yacine and Mamma send their best). One unforgettable moment was having Dad and Mamma (host mom) banter over a dinner of couscous - Mamman singing my praises with such creative platitudes as "Elle est adorable! Comme un bonbon, mwaah!" (with a smack of fingers to the lips) and Dad asking her how much I paid her to say that.

We did a lot of traveling in air-conditioned SUVs, mini vans and beat-up taxis with the grim tales of David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice as entertainment. In Saint Louis we saw the most incredible old houses renovated artistically to be used as residences, guest lodges, and galleries. It was like going on a fantasy HGTV tour. We spent one night in a part of the Sahel desert called Lampoul, where the sand dunes almost looked like snowy hills in the clear moonlight. We slept in Bedouin tents and rode on camels in the morning...not as glamorous an activity as it might sound.


It was also a pleasure having Duma back here again. Her visit was so reflective of who she is as a person - short, but so very sweet. We celebrated her return in a way only really good friends do: we had a Sex and the City mini-marathon, we went on tailoring runs, and I bought and killed a sheep for a 'second Tabaski' celebration with friends (okay, I didn't kill it - my neighbor did).

Okay, so now I have almost covered all of the important highlights from these past few months of blog-negligence. Of course I am, for your sakes, skipping over the hours of pouring over application essays and filling in online forms for grad school. It is worth mentioning, however, that I have been accepted to one school so far (yay!) and am waiting to hear from the others. Will keep you posted on that front.

Now that it seems my free time is infinite without any application work to do, I have, of course, filled it all up again with a new initiative: organizing and fundraising in response to the earthquake in Haiti. But, I will leave that for the next post....