DAKAR!!!! and other random shit...

OMG, my first blog post!!
SO...ive been in senegal for a little over a week now, its taken for freaking ever to get this blog thing up and running though. Power cuts (coupures) are very common here. We lose power at least a couple hours everyday. Which is frustrating, but im getting used to it.
I moved in with my family on Friday, which was soo exciting. I was hella nervous, but so far so good. I have my own room which is cool, but i share a bathroom with the rest of the family. We live in an apartment built around a courtyard, which is cool, its kinda outside, kinda indoor. Which means its nice and breezy but LOUD as heck...
Dakar itself is awesome. Im right on the beach, which is lovely and gorgeous. To get around, you take these rickety ass vans that are painted fifty million different colors, theyre called car rapides. Theres a bunch of little boys hanging off the back and you kinda snap at them to get the bus to stop, then you squeeze on and end up sitting on some random persons lap...the first time i took one, the guy sitting next to me was staring at me and then went on a long ass monologue i broken french about how beautiful I was. I was like ummm...yeah...haha. So then i go to get off (to get off you bang on the roof with a coin or if you can see the guy in the back shout to him that youre leaving). So the guy grabs me by the arm and in the middle of this crowded ass bus starts declaring his undying love for me and tells me i cant get off until I promise to marry him. I was like ahahaha, no, i am not the gateway to a green card, sweetie. but all the best to you. and jumped off the bus. Thats pretty much a daily occurence here, everywhere you go, guys ask to marry you, even the little girls who are around my house ask me when im getting married or if I have a husband waiting for me back in the states. Im like, lol, NO!
My family people are really chill. I have two brothers, one is 18, the other is 23. And the mom, who is a widow. My family is actually catholic, which is crazy because pretty much everyone here (like 96% of the population) is muslim. i had breakfast with my mom this morning. Breakfast here is some bread and nutella or chocola (knockoff nutella, basically), and coffee too. Except senegalese coffee isnt actually coffee. My brothers and my mom put like 3 spoonfulls of powdered milk in a bowl, about 5 or 6 sugar cubes and half a spoonful of instant coffee and then fill it up with hot water. For our first breakfast, i put a instant coffee and and a little bit of powdered milk and they all just stared at me like WTF?!? Whats your problem? and laughed at me.
Every other meal is usually rice and meat or fish, eaten from a communal bowl with your hands. You have to kinda squeeze the rice into a ball with your right hand (its considered hella rude to use your left hand), which i am SOOO bad at. I basically drop half the rice all over me/the floor and then end up feeling like an incompetant toubab (american/white person/non-senegalese).
The first time i showered here was definitely also an experience. A lot of times when the power goes out, the water stops too, which sucks, if your covered in shampoo and all soapy and then standing there in the dark like umm....well what now? Theres also occasionally fun little friends (HUGE AS FUCK cockroaches) who like to come shower with me. EEP!! Im secretly stockpiling raid and planning a massive attack on them.
I havent been able to upload pictures yet, but hopefully thatll be coming soon...and then yall can be jealous.