Today I leave for New Orleans and then straight from there, to Dakar, Senegal for the fall semester.

I will have some internet access but it will be sporadic, enough perhaps to play 3day phase games. Forum posting and modding will be reduced but I will do my best at first to keep up as much as I can.

I'm studying abroad in Senegal until December, so, yeah. Just wanted you all to know.

oh come on PE it's 430AM stop stalking me :P

I just randomly opened webDip at 4:17, I dunno what you're talking about. :P

I hope your experience in Senegal is everything you're hoping it will be. Stay safe and enjoy your time there!

West Africa...huh.

Be careful, man...

And have many anecdotes to share that are far more interesting than my bus trips! (You probably don't need to traven to another continent and across an ocean for that, but still...) ;)

Fare thee well!

Wait--do you speak French, Thucy?

It says their official language is French--no surprise there--but there doesn't seem to be a lot of English representation...

Depends where he's going. The middle-upper crust of Dakar knew English. The French is crazy mutated though, at least from a Canadian school point of view. First we learn that Thucy wants to be a citizen of Ghana, now he's going to Senegal. Where's this Afrikan interest stemming from?

Also, what are you studying? I've always wanted to travel abroad but the only place that made sense career wise for a CS major was Germany or Japan and at the time, my uni had very few choices for either.

Hey Thucy dides, say hi to Akon for me. and you still owe me a game since my 'rumble in the jungle' grudge match game never got started

Thucy - Absorb, absorb, absorb... Be a sponge and take it all in! Enjoy, be safe, and bring back tales to enthrall us next year!

Geo? Where are you from that you can make this claim about the difference between their French and, well, mine!? hihi Just curious, not arguing your point.

Yes I speak French, my classes are in French and I don't expect to use my English much. I'm also going to be learning Wolof, the language most people speak (lingua franca).

I'm studying international development, international relations, african studies. That's why I'm going and that's the source of the africa interest lol.

I'll let you know generally how its going, for now I'm playing from my phone on 3g in new orleans

Wait.... If Geo and Thucy speak some French, we should put a high level game together where players agree to conduct diplomacy only in French. It could be public press only!

My favorite game of all time was still the "Lost in Translation" game, where we put all our messages through a translator first. It was a riot.

@Cachimbo, I took the required French all through elementary school and continued with it in grade school. I'm far from fluent, and nowadays I get by on my reading and listening more than I do vocabulary, but when I went to France I noticed how terribly different our Canadian French is. When I visited a friend's family in Dakar, I could mostly rely on my English with a bit of French vocabulary thrown in. And then I contracted to Blue Ridge Bread to work with Panera bakers, who are all managed by one group of brothers from Senegal and we could barely understand each other in French. Granted, I've never met a native French speaker that didn't prefer Canadian-taught over American-taught, but the disparity between French Afrikan dialects even among neighbouring nations is pretty huge.

But when I say "rely on my English" it was only because most of his family spoke it and we hardly left their estate. Lots of crime in Dakar. Be carefuly Thucy!

Fair enough!
Mind you, when I travel in the Caribbean and hear all these different English dialects, I'm also thrown aback a little. And I hear that the English dialects in Africa are also quite different.
Thucy: there's this beggar that works a beat not too far from where I live. He's from Dakar, grew up there, and learned French and Wolof. He's told me of his travels to England and France, and finally here, to Québec. He's a philosopher of language, and quite interesting to listen to even though he's sadly lost a lot of his capacities after a stroke. All that to say, it's just a funny coincidence that he told me of this stuff only yesterday and find someone from our community on WebDip leaving for the opposite trip.
I hope it will be all that you wish it to be.
Best of luck on your travels.

And I'm still open to a French game if you guys are!

I think it happens to any language really, its cool stuff, the study and science behind spoken/written words.

Definitely keep us updated Thucy. Start a blog, take pictures, stuff like that can land you jobs more easily than a resume can and you'll have tons of followers already!

@French game, find enough to fill it, using translators or not, and I'll play! Would be a fun challenge.

Thucy -- Best of luck in all, pal. Stay safe! I had a buddy kicked out of Senegal while in the Peace Corps...he was illegally riding a motorcycle with a license and crashed! lol

Anyway...I'm sure you despise me, but it won't be the same without you throwing your voice in the chorus of hatred towards me! lol Look forward to to your insults again in the future, bud!

Best of luck, Thucy!

Can I assume you won't be modding much for a while?

I will do everything I can to help with modding but yes I think you can expect my contribution to be reduced.

Don't hate you krellin don't worry.

And in my experience with African French it's no worse than coming to understand Nigerian English as an American. My French education was as an American so I was taught the Parisian accent.

Make sure you teach as many people as you can Diplomacy!