American cravings, week 15 update

It's been a long time since I last posted. But  after Thanksgiving, Tamkharit, a research trip to the village,  two Marche Sandaga and one HLM trip, a cold, and countless Yogo Glaces, I'm still alive and attempting to stay mentally IN Senegal for the last 13 days I am here. However, this does not stop me from creating the following list of food that I will require upon arrival to the U.S. This post is aimed at you, Mom!

• orange juice
• fresh milk - not the French kind that doesn't need to be refrigerated and tasted vaguely of plastic
• sharp cheddar cheese - I've been living the past four months with "La vache qui rit" synthetic cheese spread. Enough said.
• pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, really anything pumpkin - I need to consume the fall that I missed
• apple cider
• candy canes - the Listerine mints here just don't cut it
• peppermint ice cream - the one flavor of ice cream that is seemingly impossible to find in Dakar
• ham - I'd rather never eat Senegalese "ham" again
• Cheerios - I'm not usually a cereal person, but approximitely 105 straight breakfasts of Nescafe and pain (au chocolat, au fromage, au confiture), I need to switch it up
• bagels
• chocolate chip cookies - especially if they are warm and melty
• chips and salsa/guacamole - one of the few types of food that is pretty impossible to find in Dakar. If someone opened a Mexican restaurant aimed at ex-pats in Dakar, they'd do a killing   

I've also started hallucinating a little about the first chai latte I will have upon arriving in the U.S. In my head, it sounds great, but in real life, at 6 am after a nine hour flight, I will most likely simply stumble off the plane in a daze clutching my bags suspiciously and wondering why no one has asked me to buy phone credit yet.