cat food, tamale, and turkey

Let’s see. I haven’t written since again in a while. I’ll catch us up. I tend to lose info when I’m writing online, and the internet cuts out, and I give up and don’t post forever and ever. So I’m really behind, and skipped a couple weeks…and even forgot to write about a day trip I took to Boti falls with my friend and her aunt. It was nice. We hiked and swam near the waterfalls. And I’ll expand more on that later, but just realized I didn’t write about it. But o well. There’s so much here…you’ll be bored anyway, but here’s a re-cap:

My second homestay experience was very different from the first. I stayed with a family in the completely opposite part of town, and they were even from a different ethnic group, so very different. A much smaller group decided to participate this time around, less than 10 of us. Some were going back to their first homestay, and some had missed the first homestay experience because they were ill. I wanted a new experience, because I knew I could go see my first family anytime, and I have, and I’ll talk about that later. But when we got to the AFS office, I actually went home with one of the young men who work there, and stayed with his family. They have three boys in the family, Eugene, Edmund, and Emmanuel. They all were nice to me in their different ways, and I generally enjoyed spending time with them. Edmund works at AFS, is 22, and had fun taking me to the beach and showing me around and off to his friends. Eugene was older and lived elsewhere, but came to visit and we had a nice chat. Emmanuel is only 18, but has gone to the US with his church, Lighthouse Chapel International, because he is the primary singer it seems in their church music group, and they did a tour. When I went with him to the youth service, I actually had a good time, and am going to try to go back (it was much better than 4 hours of twi. Whew.) The family spent a lot of their time sitting out at the little shop they had in front where they sold drinks (typical) but most of them would just sit and watch the street children run around….or take their baths in the street. It was an experience. The next day my host mother fed me banku, which I just could not get down, because of the consistency. It’s a doughy thing from cassava or yam, and I just can’t handle that texture. So I ended up being kinda rude, but I tried. And the next day I think I redeemed myself..not to her, but in the whole spirit of being adventurous/ trying new things, I had octopus out with edmund’s friends at the beach, (as well as went swimming in my clothes) and then he asked if I wanted what I thought was ‘cut meat’, but when we got to the place, and I was presented with the meat…I asked again, so wait, what exactly is this..and he said…caaaat meat. Caaat…..cat. so I apparently tried some cat meat. Which they apparently get from just killing their own cat. And it tastes like chicken. And that was just about the last thing I did with them before showering (which was really a bucket bath) and then getting in a tro back to the center of town, ‘circle’ and catching another tro-tro to labone. And that was that weekend. But as a beautiful transition, their house was labeled/ titled, (which is a pretty common thing to do) TAMALE HOUSE. And then-

The next weekend we went to Tamale. We drove away at 5 am on Thursday morning, and sat on a bus for about 13 hours. I had stayed up all night before, and got on the bus later than some people, so I was in the back, next to a huge box with lunch packages, and at some points used the box as a pillow of sorts. After lunch I slept more comfortably against the window. When we arrived we had a nice little dinner, and I passed out pretty early. The next day two days were packed with activities. The first day we went to a mosque early in the morning, and talked with some religious leaders. Then we went to a doctor’s (dr. abdulai) clinic, and his story was pretty neat. He fixes the poor, and houses and feeds people with leprosy and aids and with mental illnesses who would otherwise be ignored. He does all of his work for free, and although he had been called away for an emergency, it was still pretty cool. We also went to see traditional diviners, and some people had some creepily accurate things told to them. My experience wasn’t that special.
The second day we drove even farther up north, leaving the northern region and going into the upper east region which was more devastated by the floods. We went to a site where people’s homes were destroyed. And learned more about how the floods washed away people’s homes, although the region is completely dry and barren now. We also saw the Pinkoro Slave camp, which is where captured people were brought from nearby places up north before they were sold and marched down to the coast to be shipped across the atlantic. We visited a group of widows as well and bought the neat baskets they make. At that time we were so delayed we only had a short time at the market, so you should have seen us running around this little grouping of shops trying to buy goods which are pretty dif from what we find in accra.
Sunday all we did was drive again. For 13 more hours. And we spent a good part of Saturday on the bus as well cuz Bolgatanga is several more hours north. So it just felt like a really long uncomfortable bus ride. But, since a large portion of the trip was spent in transit, it became a good time to read, knit, and have interesting conversations with people/ take horrendous pictures of everyone sleeping with their mouths open. But the conversations on the bus and late at night at the hotel were good. For the past few weeks we had also had a nyu med student visiting, and I thought he was a bit of a creeper, but he actually has worked out a pretty cool thing connecting Ghanaian doctors with one phone network. His original idea had been to set up a great website to connect doctors in the country, but after arriving here he realized that is not going to help just yet, and instead worked out something with a phone network here. Cool stuff. Which I’ll talk about later.

Finally, as a brief synopsis of the past few days. Thursday as you are all well aware was thanksgiving, and we had a catered dinner with turkey and such, but it wasn’t unhealthily large portions like I would have liked, so it was probably the first turkey day where I left the table still hungry. But it was nice thought, and after we were done I got to talk to most of the dad fam, and that was really nice to hear voices I hadn’t heard in a while. And I’d chatted briefly with momo fam on Wednesday, so good stuff. Then on Friday I went back to visit the first homestay just for Friday night and Saturday. And like before it was uneventful. They served me fries and chicken. And rice and chicken. And KETCHUP. And nothing really happened. They wanted me to watch tv. I’m not even sure why they like me coming to visit, but whatever. I hung out for a bit. And got to be away from the nyu dorm drama for a bit, and got some reading done, and it was just a nice night. The next day I waited around and hung out with one of the boys a bit, and met their dog, and eventually my host parents came back from a funeral, and then took me to a wedding, which was very Christian and normal, but was nice anyway. And then when I got home I was going to study more, but instead just finished the third season of Lost. Today we went to Aburi Gardens, and that was similarly uneventful. We saw some neat trees…not really flowery at all. Just some cool trees, and I rode a bike for the first time in forever. So I guess that was nice.

And now…I have a ton of school work to do, because I have a huge research paper due in a week along with several other little papers, and we start shooting our documentary this week. So it’s going to be hectic. And I also need to finalize more serious planning for Ireland and whatnot. But I had meant to write before about some exciting things going on, and all I can think of right now is how I finally read the Color Purple, which I love as a movie, and as a play, but for some reason could never get into the beginning of the book, but we had to read it for a class, soooo I got past the beginning and then loved the book even more than either the movie or play. So yea. I’ve read some really good stuff here, both for class, and not, and I wish I’d taken more advantage of my free time to do more reading, but I think I did well enough, managing my knitting and some movie watching and dealing with the slow internet and personal growth –writing thoughts in journals and stuff. But it’s crazy to think I’ll be leaving so soon. There is so much more I wanted to accomplish, but there’s always next time. Is what I keep telling myself. Our last big trip is next weekend to Wli falls. I’ll write again….at some point…(I’ll be an aunt probably by the time I get around to writing again…YAY!!!) Much love to everyone-

thoughts

so i'm terrible at journaling. i always have been. i'm actually getting better at writing my thoughts down, but it's not an organized process at all. i use the backs of notebooks, and write some thoughts in different emails to people and write some journals to myself as word documents, and some thoughts i actually put down in the journal i brought for that purpose, or on here....but mostly its just on the backs of pieces of papers and class notes. so even though i'm writing it down my thoughts are all still a mess. o well.

but let's see. i feel like there are always a lot of little things i want to write about and my last few posts have been annoyingly long. so i'll just write a bit about my community service because that's what i'm thinking about right now, and i'll try to write short little notes more often...as long as the internet cooperates. the past week has been rather hectic with school projects, and fun because of my community service activities. In one class, we have a group project due next week. In the documenting class we actually started some real filming with a small 5 minute exercise, but it's hard to get our group members together. Another class we also have an assignment due and are supposed to be working on our final paper already....it'll be a doozie.

but community service. on monday i went for the trumpet lesson thing i do, and didnt expect much to happen, because....well. the school is really disorganized, and half the time i don't know what is going on and i never know what to expect. Originally i had been told i could come teach 5 kids during one of their free periods on friday. i asked the kids if i could teach them after school some days to give them extra time to practice. Also, i had been canceled on a few fridays because other activities were being done. So now i go on fridays to see if they want me there, and mondays and wednesdays after school. but on mondays the girls have football practice, so i only expected the boys to be there, and i expected the two of them to just want to leave. oftentimes my lesson is not so much of a music lesson either and more of just a pass the trumpet around and let whichever random kids are hangin around take a turn blowing. they seem to enjoy that more than me trying to teach music anyway...so whatever. it's their time not mine. BUT this monday was cool cuz there was an older kid there who apparently has been learning trumpet as his church, so i was actually able to show him things, and that was exciting for a change. now the trumpet books will come in handy because at least he'll understand them.

my other community service is finally really having something happen too. At the West African AIDS Foundation WAAF, i really had to push for the Passion Squad to get started again, which is the program teaching in the schools. and i had helped before fall break pass out questionnaires to assess the kids, but this week we actually had three days to teach the kids after school. yesterday, today and tomorrow. we'd been told from 2-5, but we haven't gotten started before 3 either day....but thats just how things work. yesterday was really quite amusing when we had time for questions with the kids to see what these kids think about and the questions they have, and just how their minds work. there are so many funny things. at first me and the other leaders were telling the kids not to laugh at another kids questions, but there were a few even we couldnt not laugh at they were just so outrageous. today we talked less about HIV/AIDS directly and were more covering puberty info with the kids, which they should have gotten a bit of education about in schools, but from what we saw rather limited education, and it was interesting seeing what some of the things they think are. We also got a few rather disturbing questions, and are going to have to figure out how to address topics such as rape which came up, but i might be able to go to their club meetings in following weeks, and there are some kids who you can tell just really have a lot going on in their heads and it's really good. so generally i'm excited even though the end of our lesson today was a bit of a downer. i have to run off to dinner now, but will try to write again soon because just so much is going on. for example we have another (and last official) homestay this weekend. so i'll probably write sunday or monday about that and other things. unless i think of brilliant things to talk about tomorrow. like the craziness that is the post office or the tro-tro station. or the interesting british girl who works at WAAF with me, or the awesome xmas/ new years plans i'm concocting....or something. til then- nicole

EGYPT

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!! i'm going to a party tonight with my friends and really changing my appearance a bunch...to be a little boy. haha. i look funny without any jewelry and baggy pants and a sideways baseball cap. trying to get rid of the chest was a little problem, but it still works....i'm like a shorter version of chris. i'll get pics up soon i promise. heres the looooonnng note i wrote earlier in word cuz our internet was being SLOW. enjoy!

alrighty. so i didn't write before fall break, so i'll have to start there to catch us all up on the past couple weeks of my hectic life, and then get to the 'good' stuff of the actual trip to egypt for 9 days. so i left off the before the weekend of our second homestay. only about half of our group went for the homestay, which was in a village a couple hours drive outside of accra, and we worked laying a foundation for a house and building mud bricks for about 2 hours before lunch and a little bit more after lunch. i only helped making the bricks, which consisted of digging up dirt, adding water to it, stepping all up on the wet mound to make it a nice even consistency of mud...and then scooping that into brick forms. i'm not sure how helpful we really were, but it was fun. then about half of the group that came went back because they didnt want to spend the night in the village. i think only 13 of us stayed, and consistent with all of the trips through the nyu program, the 8 boys in the program turned out an even more pitiful showing than they already represent. out of 40 girls we'll typically have about 30 of the girls participate, but for some events none of the boys have done it... it just makes me laugh. but anyway, the 13 of us stayed over, and this experience was very different from the other homestay, because none of us had a real interaction with our particular host families. it was more just like we were provided a place to stay, and then had activities we could do within the village. i got a tour from a young girl before dinner, and had some fish for dinner which was actually pretty good. after dinner they had a performance for us with singers and drummers, and we all danced badly of course, but it was fun. it also rained earlier in the day which is how some of us got our showers...and that evening it rained again, and was kind of nice to fall asleep to the sound of rain on the roof. unfortunately most of us then woke up to the sounds of goats and chickens making all sorts of racket. in the morning i walked around again, and had another wonderful breakfast of omelets, which I’ve strangely fallen in love with here. We had the option to go to church, but that’s not as big of a deal here. I actually walked with a group to the church, but no one was there from the village yet, so I decided to go for a little hike with one of the other girls. We also played around with the younger village kids a bunch that morning. It was generally a fun experience, until some of the kids started begging, cuz that’s just always hard to deal with. Coming back in the afternoon was pretty uneventful, but we missed a fun football match in accra. Hopefully we’ll get to see one some other time.

So the week leading up to our fall break was stressful, partly because it was midterms, but mostly because we had no idea if we were actually going to egypt for the week. our travel agent here had been sick most of the week before, but was miraculously better two days before the trip to collect our money, and said she'd get our tickets and everything together later that day. so we thought we'd wait til the next day to pay and collect the tickets all at the same time. but no. she needed the money first. which we didnt realize til the next day.... so then we paid her the day before the trip. and when we got our tickets and tour package, things were not exactly as we had planned, but she wasnt in the office to talk to any more, and we were leaving....so we had no choice really but to just go and when we got there we had to sort it out...

so on thursday, 5 of us went to the airport and played cards for about 3 hours waiting for the plane. it was four of us in the group, but another kid in the program was meeting up with his dad there and was on the same flight. we basically slept overnight, and woke up to the sunrise over the desert. i got my first glimpse of the pyramids out of the plane window. when we landed we were met by people from the company and things were handled as far as that, but that morning we spent reworking our tour plans, and then started seeing stuff. the first day we just saw the museum, but that was cool. mummies and hieroglyphics and other ancient egyptian stuff galore. the next day was packed full of seeing all over cairo- memphis, sakarra, bazaars, the pyramids. At Memphis we saw a couple big statues, a little sphinx, etc. it wasn’t that exciting and we were only there for like 20 minutes I think. But they did have one big statue of one of the pharaohs, that was so big, and it was laying down, and the guys head was still taller than us. Next we went to one of the famous sakarra carpet schools, where they make really nice rugs. From there we drove to see our first pyramid, but this one is from an older period, and has steps to it. After we learned about how papyrus is made, and bought some nice artwork on papyrus, and at another bazaar got cartouches, which are necklaces with our names in hieroglyphic symbols on them. We did a bit more shopping, and in the afternoon headed to giza to see the real pyramids!! we took a camel/ horse ride out to the pyramids. i rode a horse out, and the other three rode camels, and when we made stops the others took turns on the horse. but when we were riding out the guide let me have the reins and i ran across the desert a little bit, which was thrilling! the pyramids i might add were also quite intriguing. haha. (actually i was only fascinated by the horse ride. thats the whole reason i went all the way to egypt) but the pyramids were sweeeeeet. we got to walk up to them and touch em. we didnt get as close to the sphinx as i would have liked cuz we got there late in the day, and they were setting up for the light show, so the area in front was closed, but i got the main idea. and there's always next time...except its apparently eroding a lot... but still. i learned a lot on this trip about what to do and not do and how to do stuff. it was a good (although expensive) learning experience. it was also nice though coming later, because we got to watch the sun set behind the pyramids. That night we spent more time wandering around near our hotel, and met up with a really nice guy who showed us where an internet café was, and then we went and smoked hookah with him, which they call shisha here, and guys can be seen doing it any time of day or night, but girls never do, so it was funny being female and smoking here.

the next day we saw old cairo and the citadel, which included more shopping, and haggling, and the citadel is a huge mosque, and it was intense. We spent a couple hours in this really touristy shopping area, and it was always really funny walking around with 3 girls and Justin, because we all kept getting calls to come over to people’s shops, but then they’d look at us and exclaim…o my, three wives how lucky, and so on and so forth. So the whole trip was full of wife jokes with Justin. and then we took a train to aswan overnight. We were in a 6 person little cabin with chairs, and had some fun conversation with a backpacker from Switzerland, but his background makes him a mutt from all over and he was really cool. The other guy is from peru, but spent a lot of time in iraq, and showed us a bunch of card tricks. All together in our car, we determined we could say thank you in more than 15 languages. It was neat conversation, but less interesting sleep in the seats. We got to aswan exhausted, met our new guide, put our stuff on the cruise boat, and did a quick tour of a couple things in aswan. Another group of 5 girls from nyu Ghana had gone to Egypt, and we saw them at one of the temples, which was funny, because their guide is roomies with our guide. But we said hey and continued on our merry way. That day was a bit of a blur at this point, but we did see some pretty temples, one of which we had to go out on a boat to. The next day we had no tour plans, and the boat wasn’t leaving until late that night, so we used the day to just relax. In theory, I would have liked to have used the time to wander around aswan a bit, since we don’t have much free time to just explore, but I got kind of sick the day before, and used our free day to sleep off some of the head cold I came down with. I still was coughy and had a runny nose for most of the rest of the trip, and still do a bit, but it was good timing I guess that the day I felt really bad I had the day to just sleep. That night the boat took off, and after an hour parked at our next stop. In the morning we got out and saw another temple really quickly. Later in the afternoon, farther up the nile we got off and took a horse drawn carriage ride to another temple. By that evening we were pulled up in luxor. We spent all of the following day seeing luxor temples, and saw our first finished obelisk. In aswan we’d seen the largest attempt at an obelisk, but it was queen hatshipsut’s unfinished obelisk, still left in the quarry, because it had been too big of an attempt, and the stone had cracked. On the west bank of luxor, we also saw the valley of the kings, and got to go into three tombs. This was really neat, because at most of the temples, the color on the walls had mostly been washed off, but down in the tombs, the colors were really nicely preserved still. I think the fact that all of the hieroglyphics on everything originally had color was one of the biggest shocks for me, because when I’m used to seeing ‘ancient egyptian’ things, I think of designs cut into the stone face, but it was more complicated than that, and there was color on all the designs, most of it has just not survived all this time. We kept getting glimpses in corners, or on ceilings, where the sun and elements hadn’t completely washed away the color, but down in the tombs it was really stunning how intricate all the stuff was. Too bad we couldn’t take pictures in the tombs. But later that day we went to queen hatshipsuts something else, and there were a lot of color on some of the walls there, so I took a lot of pictures to remember how color was used. I really enjoyed luxor I think.

That night we got on another train to go back to cairo, but this one was not as pleasant. We thought we were supposed to leave at 10, but didn’t really leave til after 11. when the train got there, our guide led us from one end to the other. Then he went back to the front end of the train again. Apparently the conductor or someone was supposed to have our tickets, and he was supposed to get them, but he didn’t speak much English, so communication here was difficult. Then he came back and got us from waiting at the back of the platform and took us all the way back to the front, where we boarded, and started to get into our seats. The trains here are all different too btw. We opted not to take sleeper trains cuz they are so much more expensive, but the front of this train was 4 seats across, and was clearly the section where most of the local people sat, and in the back of the train had been 3 seats across, and was clearly where the tourists were sitting…but we were cool with sitting up front. But then they came back and told us we were in the wrong seats. The 27-30 seats we were supposed to be in were on another car. So we just started following them. We thought, o the car behind this one. But then we talked through 10 cars. And we actually counted. At this point we were back in the tourist section, but our luggage was 10 cars in front of us. And we had a problem with that. So we were going to go in twos to retrieve it, at which point the train had started to move, and we had to drag/ carry our suitcases back through these 10 cars. After walking that distance 3 times we knew it was 10 cars… so anyway we were not really happy, but were exhausted, and confused, because we still weren’t actually in our seats on this train because other people were in 27-30, but they said just sit a few rows back in these empty seats. That would have been fine if we hadn’t stopped around 1 am to pick up people at another stop, and we then happened to be in someone’s seats…who stood over us and argued in Arabic a bunch until they told us to move back one car again, because that was really our car. But still ‘our’ seats weren’t available, so we were placed in other empty seats, and moved our luggage again and then tried to go back to sleep…. We were a tad tired in the morning. But we got picked up by our new driver, who was taking us to Alexandria for the day. We didn’t really know what we were doing there, and in theory were supposed to be rushing around, but we left Alexandria pretty early, and I’m not really sure what we saw, but we got to see the Mediterranean, so that was cool. We also saw a couple catacombs, one of which I would have liked to spend more time exploring, but the other 3 were in a rush… but o well. Theres always next time. That evening we had mcdonalds, just because we thought it was so amusing that its everywhere in Egypt, but that did not agree with my stomach at all, so Saturday morning before the plane ride I didn’t really do much. We walked around a bit, but mostly just waited for the van to take us to the airport. And for now there ends my Egypt story. The plane ride back was pretty comfy though because I had a whole row to myself in the back to sleep across.

we got back Saturday night really late, and I slept most of Sunday, but there was a concert in accra, that was supposed to be Saturday, but was postponed due to rain, until sunday instead. So I went and saw john legend, who is apparently a grammy award winner, but it was cool cuz he was putting on a souls of Africa benefit concert for the people devastated up north. It was supposed to start at 4. we got there around 6:30…things didn’t start happening until around 9…john legend came on from maybe 10-11…and we were literally front row….standing up against the barricade. I don’t even know him, but for 2 bucks, they were pretty sweet ‘seats’ or standing spots. There were no seats in front really. There was a VIP section over to the left, but like far left of the stage, and that’s no fun. After him they were resetting up the stage for a guy that would appeal to the rastas more, but we didn’t know him either, and at midnight they still hadn’t started, and just had some people talk, and then they were having some other guy play for a bit, and we decided we were too tired and we’d already seen john legend who was who my friends wanted to see…so we left. It was weird though, because at the entrance, you literally had people feeling up your pockets, and it’s a good thing we’ve learned to keep money in our bras, but some of the other people from nyu Ghana who went in other groups and did the VIP section had phone and money stolen… but such is life. And now it’s Wednesday, because I had a lot of classes and stuff on Monday and Tuesday- they are my busiest school days, and I had a couple papers due. But today I’m going to chill a bit. Do some laundry. And hopefully upload some pictures. Be on the lookout for Egypt pics, as well as the long awaited hair cutting off pictures where I look ridiculous with parts of my hair cut off and the little clumps left where the braids used to be. Anyway. This weekend we have no group plans, but I’m thinking about making a little trip up the coast a bit. I’ll try to write again next week. Much love everyone~

will write more soon

so i'm back safely from my trip to egypt for fall break, and it was generally lots of fun, and i know a lot of people are itching for details and pictures, but i've been a bit busy with class and homework and sleeping off a bit of a bug... yesterday i started writing about the trip, and i'll work on it more tomoro, and hopefully get the full story up for you all soon.... i haven't forgotten about this...i just need a bit more time. for now i have to go write a paper. til later~

busy

so i've been busy with a lot of different activities lately. classes are starting to seem more like classes and the workload is increasing. My community service activities are also starting to get off the ground. I should hopefully start teaching AIDS prevention in schools soon, and I've already started a little trumpet class. I was planning on writing more last night, but my comp was being slow, and then I tried to write again before I left Saturday morning at like 5:30 am for Kumasi, but again the comp didn’t work, so now I’ll catch you all up on my various trips and stuff. Last weekend we drove to Kumasi, which is the second largest city in Ghana, and which should have been about 4 hours north of Accra, but with all the traffic, it took more like 7 hours both directions. I feel like we spent more time on the bus then we did actually visiting Kumasi. We saw one of the museums we were supposed to and had a couple hours to run around the cultural center and the market and some specifically wood shops, and so we killed a bunch of money there and all bought lots of gifts.

The weekend before was the homestay through AFS. It was an interesting experience. My family made me a lot of chicken and starch meals, and only wanted me to watch tv. I tried to be helpful, but they didn’t want help with dishes or anything. Their two older children are working in Canada as a doctor, and studying in Chicago through AFS. Their youngest came home from his private school for the weekend, but mainly played video games. There were 3 other kids in the house, but I never really did figure out how exactly they were related. It’s really complicated how everyone is your sister and brother and mother and whatnot, because they aren’t really related in that sense, and I get confused. But I had fun going to a naming ceremony on Saturday, and less fun sitting through four hours of church in a language I didn’t understand on Sunday, but my family has invited me back and since we’re always gone on weekends I’m going to go visit again this evening. When I was there last time, I watched a pair of birds build a nest in my window all day Saturday. It was actually pretty crazy because they started from very little when I noticed them, and had completed it and laid an egg by the next day…too bad when I told Abigail she wasn’t as intrigued and threw it away. I spent a lot of time with her- Abigail, the 7 year old- last time, helped with her English homework, and the father wanted me to teach her how to knit, because I had brought a project with me. I also tried to show her Sudoku, because she slept on a mat next to my bed for some reason, so I stayed up with her the second night while she mainly drew pictures, because I don’t think she understood the number game really. Communication was probably the strangest part of the experience, because they all communicate in Twi with one another, and it’s not like they’re talking about me, but it just felt very strange to either be excluded, or purposefully included in conversations. I will be doing another homestay this weekend, but in a village instead, and we're doing a Habitat for Humanity project working out houses that Saturday before we spend time with our family.

Let’s see…what else has been happening. I went to a dance class last week, where we learned to drum and dance, and then we walked back through one of the communities to the tro-tro station, and that was an interesting experience. I’ve also gotten sick of being charged a bunch for taxis, especially to the part of town that’s like the distance of a few blocks away where we go for groceries, so I’m doing a lot more walking even though all the taxis will honk at you a million times. One of the funniest times walking home though was a couple of weeks ago when we had a huge storm, I thought it would be fun to walk home in it and I got soaked, but all the Ghanaians huddling in their little shops looked at me like I was crazy. It was really refreshing though. I’ve also been running a bit in the mornings, but I have to do that really early or else I can’t breathe because of how thick the air is during the day. Last Friday was also fun, because at the school where I started teaching trumpet/ music, they had teacher appreciation day, which just sort of consisted of each class getting a chance to play football/ soccer, and we played one of the girls games. It’s crazy how differently the girls and boys play, because the girls were pretty terrible and they all just sort of attack the ball all at once, so there are constantly like 10 people around the ball just kicking madly, which helped me get a nasty bruise on my leg, but when the boys played, even the little boys, the ball spent most of its time in the air, because they were just superb at kicking it up and over each other. It was actually really fun to watch. Last week I just had a bunch of free time cuz one of my classes was canceled, so I actually went and sat in on one of my friends classes, and walked up and down Spintex Road, which I saw on the way to my ‘family’s’ house, and there were just a bunch of neat shops along there. I also stopped near there so I could go check out what the Accra Mall is like, because I just wanted to see how different/ similar it was to a mall feel, and it was strange how much like a mall it felt. They have this big store called Game that’s like a Kmart or Target, but based in South Africa. The mall is still being constructed, but the few stores that are open just have such a different feel from the market or street vendors. It kind of felt like walking into another world. It was just pretty strange. I also finally had a seamstress make some clothes out of some of the ridiculous amount of fabric I’ve bought. I had some really neat pants made, and now she’s working on a shirt and dress. It’s a fun process.

I really need to write more often so that this isn’t just a bunch of little one line stories, but a couple of other notes on life I guess are that I spend a bunch of my time after dinner watching the TV show Lost with a couple friends cuz someone bought all three seasons, and that’s fun. I should also hopefully have my Fall break Egypt plans finalized this afternoon…..i’m hoping. On another note, our water heater for the laundry room has been broken for a week, so I washed my clothes in the boys house this morning early when none of them would be awake anyway, and then because one of the boys is real smart, I learned where the lint filter is in the dryer, and cleaned ours and was able to dry my clothes a lot better than before. It used to take like 3 cycles to dry stuff, so we’d been air drying, cuz none of us realized the filter was inside the machine… Also, in an effort to save water and energy, I’m constantly turning off lights and air conditioners and water heaters, since we’ve been trained so well, and my roomies are getting better at doing that too. Mom and bill would be proud too, cuz I’ve trained my roomies to save water, by letting yellow mellow… which still grosses out some people in the program, but it really helps, cuz our house runs out of water after everyone elses every time. Go saving water. Haha. I also save money by boiling a lot of water, and then using kool-aid to flavor it!! Yea hydration! I’m a big dork and am going to stop now, except for-

The only other big news for now though is I took some pictures of my head, and so some pictures are finally up. I'll get pictures from my friends of when I actually cut the hair off later, but now you can at least see what it looks like. There are also pictures from my homestay visit in the second Ghana album

http://picasaweb.google.com/nicole.beall/GhanaPart2

I've also put up some of the pictures from the roadtrip that alicia, daniela, and I took this summer...so those of you who wanted to see some of that can, and I'll work on labeling them later. I’ve also not gotten all of them up, but it’s a sampling, and you can see some of them here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicole.beall/Roadtrip
and
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicole.beall/OnTheRoadAgain

I’ll try to write again soon…or at least before fall break (which is oct 18-27) and I should be able to have internet while I’m there, but we’ll see… My phone should work there too probably, but I won’t use it much, as always. Talk to you all later~

baldy

so i actually shaved my head today!! i cut off the braids that were left and then cut off the hair in the back where i'd pulled the braids off. it was a funny process, and feels great, but still looks kind of silly because my hair is in little clumps where the braids were. you'll see what i mean when i get the pictures, and hopefully video up online. in other news, i 'assassinated' my first target this morning in the game we're playing, but it took me like a half hour to do, because for some reason my hands start shaking whenever i attempted to kill her....so i guess in real life i couldn't kill a person? at least not for no good reason. it's a good thing all i had to do was clip her with a clothespin then. the other really exciting thing that happened today was I went to one of the nearby schools and finally sort of have a trumpet thing set up. i brought one with me to try to teach kids how to play, and i'm still not exactly sure what i'm going to do, but school only started up for them last week, and I practiced today and printed off some basic sheet music, and basically am just excited to have another fun activity, because my other community service activity is not going so well, just because there hasn't been much to do. But i'm going there tomorrow with renewed hope and i'll try to push forward and just get my own thing going. that's at the west africa aids foundation. i'll write more on that when there is stuff to write. now i think i'm just going to try to knit a bit, play with my very short hair, and maybe try to call my old roomie again to wish her a happy bday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY NANDINI!! goodnight to the rest of you all! ps. if you want a funny image of what my head sort of looks like, my roomie here says i look like the creepy doll in toy story that the evil kid had cut all the hair off of. anyway. good night~

little notes

hello all... there are a lot of little things about living in ghana that i want to write about after living here for a month. first off, it totally doesn't feel like we've been here for an entire month, but it has been. which means only 3 left...and part of me feels like i haven't done anything yet. it's just crazy how quickly this semester is going to fly by. It's been interesting so far. Everything moves at such a slower pace, yet at the same time i feel like so much is going on and I can't keep up. I want to do so much and see so much and part of me doesn't even know where to begin.

i started writing this blog entry about a week ago now, and have just been really bad at writing. there aren't huge things to write about any more, but there are just so many little things i've wanted to comment on. I'll try to write more little notes more regularly. I've bought a lot of beautiful fabric at various markets, but haven't taken any to the seamstress yet. We actually have one lady who comes to our dorm and we can have her make stuff. I'm going to design some dress, pants, skirts, shirts, and a safe vest with extra pockets for storing stuff like mom's friend did, and hopefully give my fabric to the seamstress this week. if anyone wants me to get them something in particular, let me know...or else you might just get a surprise.

Transportation here is an experience in itself. We have vans which bus us around during the school week to classes, which is mostly helpful for my class at the university of ghana which is about a 30 minute drive north of us. I'm sick of taxis because we constantly get ripped off, so i've taken to a lot more walking, and have become a fan of the local transport, mostly because it's an adventure every time. Most people get around on what are called tro tros, and I've ridden on a tro-tro several times now. it's basically just a big van that they cram full of people and drive between different places and will drop you off along the way. it's really cheap tho, and not that sketchy. However....

This past weekend we went on a trip to the green turtle lodge...which practices eco-tourism, and the place itself was nice. our trip getting there will be one of those funny stories to tell people. we were originally a group of 6, but one girl was sick and the other had a concussion earlier that week and the nurse said she couldn't go...which was probably a good thing. So the four of us took the govt subsidized STC bus to Takaradi, which is past cape coast and elmina, where we went as a group a couple weeks ago. we left later than we expected and then the bus took forever, so in any event we didn't get to Tadi until almost 10pm, at which point there was no cheap way to get to the smaller towns near the lodge, so we all crammed into a tiny hotel room, and left at 5am. We caught a tro-tro to the village near the lodge, and once in Agona we had to get a cab to the lodge cuz the local tro-tros weren't heading out that way yet. Once we got there things were much more relaxing. We had great food and the beach was awesome (no garbage bags) and there weren't that many other people. However the waves were pretty crazy and after about 30 minutes and a couple monster waves we were beat. Then one of the girls got a sunburn..but not me! i put on lots of sunscreen. One of the really exciting parts was that the british owner had a german shepherd, and i haven't seen a large, healthy looking dog in a while. It was also nice to know that it was safe to play with this dog...so i did. we mostly just relaxed all day, enjoyed a game of monopoly, got a fair amount of knitting and reading done. That night two of us went on a turtle walk, because the lodge also works to protect sea turtles that come on shore to lay their eggs. They're trying to re-educate people to not harm the turtles. We basically had a nice brisk walk along the beach for 2 hours...but no luck with seeing the turtles this time. o well. i didn't sleep well because i'm not used to mosquito nets and ours kept falling down. in the morning we went on a canoe trip up the river with some of the locals in the nearby village, and then got a little tour of the village. we left with about a dozen new little friends....meaning a bunch of kids followed us around. we also got some sweet shirts that say green turtle lodge, ghana on the back...and OBRUNI on the front. it means white person. i don't know if i'll wear it around here, but it'll be fun to have back home to remember how many times i've heard that term. when i was sitting getting my hair braided a couple weeks ago, i had several kids who just kept coming back up to me and saying...obruni..where are u going obruni....but i wasnt going anywhere. my hair is a whole other story, which i'll get to shortly. However to finish with this weekend. The canoe trip was at 630 am, and we wanted to get back on the road early to avoid getting back to accra late. so the hotel chartered us a tro tro around 11, and it didn't get there until about 1. which is typical. it was also sunday, so they said people were at church. but still. everything takes several hours. every meal takes hours to arrive. i'm trying to get used to it. but there was a group of primarily british volunteers about our age going back to accra too, so we all took the tro-tro to tadi, and then chartered another to accra, and that was much quicker, cheaper, and scarier, because the major roads on ghana are 2 lanes, and everyone passes, and sometimes just barely. Since i had a lot of time on the bus coming back i started pulling my braids out in the back. It has been 2 weeks now and they're starting to look bad, and i can't deal with not washing my hair every day. Plus i think i took the beach with me, because there is so much sand stuck under the braids to my scalp. so basically the hair has to go. i'm pulling the braids off of my hair in the back, and then i'll probably just cut off the ones in the front and shave it after dinner. I'll post some really funny processing pictures soon though.

and speaking of dinner, i'm going to go to that soon, but a few last comments. we were supposed to do a home-stay last weekend with a family in accra, but that will be next weekend and i'll write on that experience then. The only other really fun thing going on is most of the group is playing this game called assassins, where we each have a target and have to 'kill' that person by pinning a clothespin on them. but it's more complicated then just that. no one can see you assassinate them, and there are things that give you immunity, like right now it's having a blue pen behind your ear....so i slept with one tucked into my braids and it's been there all day. but it's funny how sneaky people are being when they have one of their friends, because for instance my friend katie who couldn't come on the trip with us told kristy a lie about what the immunity had changed to, because katie's target is kristy and she was trying to trick her into walking back into the compound not protected, but that whole scheme didn't work out. I'm still alive, but not really that into attacking my target. anyway. it's just about dinner time. i'll write more when there's more to write. my final note will be that the thing i think i'll miss most about ghana is their chocolate ice cream because it is amazingly creamy!!!