What does lollipop mean in English, Stefan?

Greetings, all. I met the other volunteers that I will be working with a few days ago and they are all wonderful. Hanging out with them makes me feel lingually challenged, however, because they all speak at least three languages, and I speak only one and a half. Sometimes the conversation will just switch into French of German unexpectedly, then sometimes someone will laugh, and I feel obligated to laugh as well, even though I don’t really understand what they’re saying. Thankfully there are 2 other monolingual Americans and we can look at each other for mutual pity. Also, I meant to upload the picture to the left last time, but it is picture of the streets of Dakar. I will upload St. Louis pictures on my next post.

My first day of teaching was just completed and I was pleasantly surprised by how much vocabulary the children already knew. They could say simple things in the present tense and new common nouns. I thought that the first day I would be watching someone teach so I could learn from them, but when I got there, they just showed me the class and I got to jump right in. The children were very enthusiastic, and very easy to please. If ever I started to see that they were getting bored, I would just talk about popular musicians and they would come to life. MTV and other music video channels are very popular with the youth in St. Louis. It was also nice because it allowed the students to make a connection with me. They know nothing about me or where I come from, but who doesn’t love Li'l Wayne? No one.

My host family watches quite a bit of tv, and they enjoy watching the American rap videos. I was watching it with them and explaining what the rappers were saying. They seemed very disenchanted when they found out that a song they really like was just about how much the singer liked his car or his girlfriend’s butt. Also, my friend, Moctar, who is the only English speaker in my house, got to learn some new American slang, such as “fly” used as an adjective and “pimp” used as verb.

I am surprised how much tv is watched after dinner, but there is really little else to do. For dinner, we all eat from one large plate on the floor. We all have spoons, but the children eat with their hands. Usually the meal consists of fish and rice with some sort of sauce and vegetable. When I first saw this as the eating set-up, I was a little shocked, and I tried not to give a “I’m a stupid American, this is strange to me” face, but now I am used to it, and it actually saves a lot of time because there is only a few dishes and it saves space because there is no table in the room. Something to think about, Mom. Here is a picture of my host family in our living/dining room.

Loves,
Steve