1 day!

I really like roller coasters. I can't say I LOVE them, because I always need to be convinced to go on the really scary ones and I'm not always brave enough to release my hands from the handlebar. I also really like water slides.

But no, I'm not going to compare my emotions to a roller coaster ride. Or a water slide. My emotions are not speeding up or plunging down or loop-de-looping, or corkscrewing or performing any other roller-coaster-like manuever. And I don't even feel like I'm on a roller coaster, either, because when riding a roller coaster I generally feel a steady emotion of "wheeee!" (with the exception of the Hulk rollercoaster in Universal Studios, which gave me a steady feeling of "ouch" because it kept painfully knocking my head around).

Here is how this post relates to The Gambia: You know that feeling when you're waiting in line for the roller coaster? One of the really popular ones, that has a super-long line. And not one of those ones where you zoom off from the ground; one of those ones that require several flights of steps to reach the start, so that your initial nervous anticipation is compounded by the fear of tripping backwards down several flights of stairs or falling over the railing. And all those clusters of people are chickening out and squeezing past you so the line is all squashed and gross. So you really can't wait to reach the top, to get this all this nervousness and squashiness over with, and you also really can't wait, because it's a roller coaster, and you really like roller coasters and you know it's going to be amazingly awesome and fun. But then when the people right in front of you are getting loaded in, you wish there were an additional flight of stairs AT THE EXACT SAME TIME that you wish you were those people because you just can't wait any longer to ride the amazingly awesome and fun roller coaster (well, you assume it will be amazingly awesome and not like the Hulk).

And that's how I feel right now. Like I'm waiting in line for a roller coaster.