No end to surprises

Dammit, this is the third time I've started this frigging blog entry and if this time doesn't work I'm giving up! Annnyway, life is good. Finished my first week at my internship today. I'm working at a health clinic which I think I'm really going to enjoy. So far I work with all women and though I can't understand anything they're saying pretty much all of the time it's still highly amusing. This week was a vaccination week so I spent many hours saying kaye, am (come; eat) to little kids before dripping Vitamin A down their throats and shoving chewable tablets in their mouths. After that I usually listen to them scream about their shot for a few minutes. I know I don't sound thrilled but actually I enjoy it.
The adventure of going to my internship was quite interesting. Monday we went in groups, each with two faculty members to our different work sites. We didn't get to my clinic until after the doctors had already left so they just instructed me to come to the research center in the morning and someone (I thought our director) was going to come with me to the clinic. So, I came Tuesday and as it turned out a kid named Ousene who works in the research center library was taking me. His aunt works at the clinic (and is super nice).
So, Ousene and I went in a cab to Ouakam, the town about 20 or 30 minutes from Dakar where my clinic is. Sidenote for members of the listening audience such as my parents, no lectures or worries regarding the following passage.
So, Ousene and I descended the taxi and started to walk in the direction that I knew was not the hospital. I was like, "uhhh...." and then he explained that he was taking me to meet a friend before I started. So, we chatted with some folk in this French schoolyard and then went into this vacant building and up some stairs past a bunch of sleeping people. Then he introduced me to a guy and handed me a joint. So, this made me laugh because I have not seen pot since being in Senegal and here all the sudden when I'm not even looking someone just hands it to me. Sooo, I was thinking... this probably isn't such a good thing to be doing before my first day at my internship at the HOSPITAL but what the heck. Sooo, we smoked a little and then said bye to the neighborhood and then I started.
After work Ousene came to pick me up and took me back to the deserted building, which I then found out was a future library for the school (it's really common to found people crashing in construction sites in Senegal). So, we smoked some more and hung out with his friend and Ousene explained to me about all the marabouts and I laughed hysterically because he's hilarious. Then we started to head out but he asked me if I wanted to go to his music shop first and since I'd heard him say about 20 times that day, "I'm very busy, I have my OWN shop music", I felt that I should probably go.
The whole time I was there I wished Ben was with me. I felt like I was on the set of High Fidelity. The music shop was great and so is Ouakam.