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I think I’ve posted pictures on here of my hair being done in African braids before. For the wedding festivities a few weeks ago I decided to have my hair done again, but this time to do it the simple way, without tight braids. The stylist pulled it back into a tight ponytail, braided it […]

As I said in my last post, I’ve been to a lot of wedding festivities lately. At one of them, it was one of my good friends who was in charge of cooking for everyone. The festivities were on three different days, and on Sunday they cooked rice for everyone, which is a common food […]

A week ago Sunday I went to some wedding festivities. I’ve actually been to multiple weddings since then (it’s been a crazy few weeks), but this one was unique in that the bride was a North American. She met her husband (who is from My Country) at college in NYC, and came out to My […]

After the last post about our PGA trip to Senegal and Gambia, I wanted to post again to share a bit more and some more pictures. It’s taken a while, but here you go . . . After we talked to the appropriate government officials, the first order of business in each village was to […]

Isn’t this tree amazing? Last week I got back from a PGA trip among a Jola people group in southern Senegal and Gambia. On this PGA trip was the first time I saw what is called a silk cotton tree in English (though Google just told me it’s also the great kapok tree I remember […]

Lately I’ve had fun learning culture. Here are a few glimpses into my life last week: At the National Week of Culture, there were lots of dancers from different ethnic groups doing their traditional dances. Here are musicians accompanying dancers. These instruments are called balaphones. This is from the “fair” that was part of the […]

I think it’s hot here. In the last few weeks I have seen my thermometer at less than 90 degrees in my room once or twice in the morning, I believe. I’ve put it in the window in the shade and it’s easily gotten over 100. I’ve put it in my window in the sun, […]

Recently I was talking to a friend here who is a German teacher. It was exam time, so she was talking about having to spend a lot of time grading. “The problem is the class size,” she said, since she only has 3 classes. “If they were just a little smaller it would help.” Her […]

(This post was written yesterday, Tuesday, but didn’t get posted until today, Wednesday.) Sometimes life here just wears me out and I don’t know what to do. Consider these three situations from the last 5 days. What would you do? What would Jesus do? What should I do? (And hopefully the “names” I’m giving people […]

Thanks to those of you who ventured replies to my last post. Here are the “right” answers. 🙂 The lady from church was very upset and mad at someone else, and the friend was telling her to calm down. Think of our expression, “boiling mad.” If you were boiling mad and someone poured cold water […]