Merry Christmas to all

So yeah... Merry Christmas to all! I certainly missed seeing all of you this year! I spent Christmas Eve and day at our Country Director's house in Nouakchott, and I'm now up in Nouahdibou with some friends. The bus up here though took forever because I think there were some illegals on the bus who had to bribe all of the officials all the way up here. That just takes forever! But Nouakchott was fantastic... it was like a real city. I guess the best description I can give it is that it is like a little island of westernized Mauritanian life. People still walk around in their boubous, Mulafas, and other such traditional dress, but it's not out of the ordinary to see Mauritanians (even women) wearing jeans and a t-shirt. We went to some restaurants... and they had WiFi too! So awesome! And the hotels were like real hotels... you didn't have to sleep on the floor and there was a TV, a shower and a toilet! Not like the squatting toilets... but real toilets (with TP too!!!!). The water heater didn't necessarily work and everything... but hey you can't have it all! And now I'm up in Nouahdibou for New Years... and get this using wireless internet with a connection speed that is measured in Megabytes per second!!!! That may not sound very exciting to you... but that is simply AMAZING!!! I guess that's all for now... gonna go to sleep soon. Hopefully I'll be able to take advantage of this great internet to post some pictures:)