What's Cookin' Good Lookin'

Today, I finally decided to cook a meal for my family. I had been saying from the beginning that I would but nevver had the time or motivation. Well yesterday my family told me i was going to cook ceebu jen for lunch, ie they asked me to but in senegal that means just giving a command. I didn't really want to do this because a)i would have to start at 10 whe i had class in order for it to be ready by 2 b)it is really easy to make and c)if i cook it is going to be american food. In order to avoid this comand/question if said I would cook dinner. This is also good because now that Ramadan is over our dinners are usually pretty sparce with lots of grain. Also we usually eat really late so I am super unmotivated to eat the dinners. Therefore, by cooking dinner I can ensure I get something a little more substantial. If you can't tell I am a little over the food here, it is good tasting but I really miss making my own meals and eating when I want. I didn't realize how much that was apart of my life till i came here and have to wait on others to eat. Hopefully, i can change this a bit once I am in Popenguine. For now though i just need to eat snacks, that i have hidden away in my room, and cook fun american meals.
Which brings me to the cooking of this meal. I decided to make spaghetti, which yes i know is italian but it is easy and led to a very prductive discussion about how most americans are originally immigrants. It was a interesting discussion which ended with my jokster of a brother saying "so americans don't actually know how to cook anything"...yup that was my point. Gotta love younger siblings, they are the same everywhere.
So spaghetti, not to hard right? This is kinda true, and keep in mind i have yet to make the sauce, but so far it has been rough. There is not ground meat here to make meatballs. I could just put chunks of meat in the sauce but I already told them i was making meatball and don't want them thinking i can't do it. So Fatou and I bought sheep which we then cut up and had to pound, with a mortar and a pestal. Yes it was tiring and the meat still isn't really ground but it'll do. Then tonight i need to form the balls, I am going to mix in a few eggs and some breadcrumbs. These buy the way i am buying some baguettes and cutting the ends off to make. Then I will use tomato paste for the sauce with some sugar, hot peppers, garlic and basil. Basil by the way they keep claiming is parsley but I am pretty positive it is basil. So that in a nutshell is how i am going to do spaghetti and meatballs.
I think i will cook quite a bit here as long as my new family doesn't mind and i can afford it. It is kind of a fun activity for everyone and on slow days makes me feel a little more productive. And I am sure I will be having a lot of those during my first few month in Popenguine.
On another note, my group is learning wolof now. Or wolunteer yi ak man, Nungiy jange wolof. It is actually relatively simple gramatically there is just a lot of ways to say the samething, so hearing it is the hard part. Plus they speak it really fast, but it is a nice change of pace from the french. It is kinda like a funny kids puzzle. Also the verbs they have are really interesting because you can really tell what is important in this society. They don't have a word for frustrated but loads of verbs for eating. They also combine 10 things into one verb which makes everything really quick. It'll be an intersting rest of the year since my only real job is to work on my language. Lets hope by the new year that Ive got a good handle on wolof and french.
Leegi, Mangiy ndikki ak togg naay reer.
right now i am going home and cooking dinner