Whoaa! We're half way there. Whoaa! 'Livin on a prayer!

First of all, a few people have been asking about my address here. It’s sort of a toss up as to whether or not stuff will make it here, but it has worked for some people so give it a try if you want to! Here’s my address:

Safi Traoré
c/o Modibo Coulibaly
SIT/World Learning
BPE 2953
BAMAKO, MALI
WEST AFRICA

It’s seems crazy, but finals are a week from tomorrow! I can’t believe classes are almost over, and today is officially the halfway point. There are exactly 53 days left! (Not that I’m counting…) After finals, I’ll spend a week and a half traveling around the country with my class, and then I begin working on my independent study project (ISP). I’m going to be studying the marital satisfaction of women in polygamous marriages, so I’ve been doing a lot of work preparing for that in the past few weeks, too. Hopefully, it will work out!

The past week hasn’t been too exciting now that I’m back in Bamako. Classes has been getting a little more time consuming lately because we have several projects due next week. My classmates and I have to do river observations on the Niger, which has been pretty cool. Basically, we go to the side of the river and just check out what’s going on. I visited a Bozo fishing village on the river’s edge as well as well as a huge area where they extract sand to make houses and other buildings. I’ve been doing some research on Bamako’s horseback riding club and their Olympic teams for two other projects, as well.

Other than that, though, life has been pretty unexciting, just hanging out and trying not to sweat. It’s still between 35° and 40° Celsius almost every day (that’s like 95° to 100° Fahrenheit). Supposedly it’s going to “cool down” a little bit mid-November, but we’ll see about that. For now, I’ll just have to sweat it out!