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!!!