Author: Susie

How many of you have ever taught a class?  That was my job last week, being “Madame la professeure” to a team in southern Senegal.  Is this how your teaching normally looks? It was easier for me to travel there than for all of them to come here to the capital for a week, so […]

And behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy! Wait, wait, that’s the wrong story.  That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, not Easter!   But if we really think about it . . . we celebrate good tidings of great joy at Christmas because that’s where we see a huge turning point in the story […]

Happy New Year from Senegal!  I hope you had a merry Christmas and happy New Year, even though it may have looked very different for many of you this year.  For me, it was my first Christmas in Senegal, and I had a lovely day celebrating with friends and colleagues. So what have these last […]

I made it to Senegal!  I was able to get a covid-19 test (needed for travel) and I even got my negative results almost 24 hours before I left for the airport.  🙂  I then had an uneventful trip and am adjusting to a new time zone (6 hour time change) and a new temperature […]

I have a ticket!  After months of “maybe I’ll be returning to Senegal in November,” I was finally able to buy a one-way ticket for later this month.  We all know that even a plane ticket doesn’t mean things will actually happen, but now at least I have a date and more of a plan.  […]

Many of you have probably heard of culture shock, but how many of you have heard of culture stress?  At this point, 6 months since the start of the toilet paper shortage in the US due to coronavirus, I think you may be able to easily see and understand the difference. First of all, 6 […]

I have plans!  I’ve been waiting to write on here, thinking and hoping that I’d have some kind of “set” plans for the future soon, but had almost given up waiting to know something. But now I have firm dates to plan around, and it’s lovely.  Or at least one firm date and a lot […]

111 nights.  I’ve now slept in the same bed for the last 111 consecutive nights, and I imagine most of you have, too.  At one point in my life it would have been normal to sleep in the same bed for 111 consecutive nights (or many more!), but looking back, I haven’t slept in the same […]

Since I’ve now been back in the US for almost two months, I wanted to share a few of the things I’ve been up to lately. Discourse AnalysisFor quite a while now I’ve been supposed to be working on my Discourse Analysis write-up on the Jula language.  It’s to give me practice as well as […]

In 2 short days Mary’s world was flipped upside down.  Everything that she had known, the “rules to the game of life,” as it were, were all thrown out the window.  Those rules wouldn’t work anymore – not here, not now.  She’d have to learn to navigate these new waters, figure out how this new […]