Mbalax

Even after three classes, these dancers' moves are no less blurry than this photo suggests. At least I can tell that this dance - mbalax - is incredible. 
If I was had any sense of rhythm my mbalax would look almost as cool, but as it is right now, I'm not quite sure what it looks like I'm doing. With all the jumping, arm swinging and repetition, at least it's a great workout.
The past three days we've spent our afternoons with roughly an hour of this dance, and an hour of djembe drumming. This means during our lunch break I rest up, hydrate, and pray to the rhythm gods in order to prepare for class. It's that intense - at least for me. No wonder I've been sleeping so well. Both classes are a complete workout, mentally and physically. My hands are too weak for the constant pounding we're expected to do on the djembe drums. And this was simply a week of orientation to drumming and dancing. In a few weeks we start the real workshops. You can choose either one of three different instruments, or the mbalax dance to focus on. I've chosen the dance.  Fortunately I can only make improvements - there's no room for me to be any worse.
It's still incredibly warm, I'm still covered in mosquito bites, but at least I think my French and Wolof are improving. That, or people are just being nice and smiling and nodding because they don't understand what I'm saying. Either way, I'm having a lot of fun, and still not realizing that this is actually accepted as "school."