No Taxation Without Representation

ONE MONTH until my much anticipated vacation in the States! A mere four weeks until I can surround myself with the people I miss most, embrace a burrito from Chipotle, and begrudgingly freeze my a** off. I can't wait.

Aside from counting down the days until I'm back ci Amerik, I've been spending each day doing... a whole lot of the stuff I did the day before. My life lately has been a bit too routine and redundant for my liking, but I guess there's always bound to be periods of time like that. Didn't someone once say that war is "long periods of boredom punctuated by brief moments of terror" or something along those lines? That's sometimes how I feel about Senegal. Long periods of boredom...and then I get on any sort of public transportation in this country and feel only terror until I reach my destination.

Lately I've been hitting the books for the GRE which I'll be taking in a couple of weeks. I'd say if there's one thing I've learned from my studying it's how many math formulas I knew once upon a time that I have completely forgotten. I also find myself getting really aggravated when people use GRE vocabulary words incorrectly in their sentences...and then realize that I do the exact same thing. Quite the ego boost.

But enough about boring things. The focus of this post is something infinitely more amusing....TAXES! This week my Junior Achievement class focused on the role of government, namely how a tax structure fits into the local and national government. I was surprised at how much the students understood about the idea of public services and why we have them. But then, I had to laugh when I tried to "collect the taxes" (fake money I made for the class) from various students. Several of the kids lined up in the front of the room representing various government workers like teachers, police officers and the mayor. The class was shocked and appalled when I attempted to collect the normal tax amount from Mr. Mayor. "Mayor's don't pay taxes!" they yelled at me. It took 15 minutes and a cameo from their actual 5th grade teacher to finally convince them that the mayor does indeed need to pay. I think I may have crushed a few dreams about a life without taxes. In any case, the class went really well and I am proud to say there were no rebellions from the class yesterday. I'm sure tomorrow will be just as even keel.

In other news, a week from tomorrow is Tabaski, the biggest Muslim holiday of the year, and I can tell my family is already gearing up. We'll be slaughtering a sheep again like we did last year, and I'm sure I'll be asked to help my mom butcher the entire thing (lucky me). When I tried to tell my mom that I would be wearing the same outfit that I wore last year from Tabaski she just shook her head in shame. I immediately started to panic and wonder how I could get clothes made on such short notice, but my friend Katherine saved the day and offered me one of her nice outfits to borrow.

Until Tabaski I'll keep on entertaining myself with GRE books, coloring parties, and teaching kids about bizness.

Jamm ak jamm