Blogs from Legon, Greater Accra, Ghana, Africa

I know, super late, and I'm missing Week 13. To be honest, I don't remember what else happened during the week 14 besides ending my class at Ashesi and my internship. So with that said, here are all of my pictures that I've chosen to share with you all from my internship (a couple are repeats, but they're just so darn adorable that they had to be included in this last post about them)... read more

This past week was a relaxed week due to not going to my internship and having Wednesday, which is normally my full day of classes off because of Ghana's Independence Day holiday. Without doing really anything significant this week it ended up being a great week for my body to decide to get sick. I was sick when I woke up on Monday morning. I had the shivers and was sweating more than I normally do. I had a headache and my stomach hurt. It was definitely not a good day for me. So while thoughts of the possibility of me having Malaria flew through my mind... I just ignored it and tried to tell myself that sleep would cure me. The next day I felt 10 times better, still had a few symptoms but I ... read more

This past week my "Maame (Mommy) Instincts" kicked in and my photography skills (with the help of instagram). As everyone says, pictures say a thousand words... so while I tried to write captions under all of the pictures, use your imagination, because trust me, the week was not only of smiles, there were tears and upset faces all around because that's exactly what all maames see on a daily basis. So I'll just do a quick recap to let you get straight to the photos: 1. I failed at teaching my first English class...structure of the classroom is not the same. While I wanted to me more interactive with the class, I was interrupted by the teacher to just read from the book, word for word...After that first attempt, I just continued to observe from my ... read more

My eyes are hallow, empty without the life and happiness that they had just yesterday. My host mother saw me yesterday evening when I returned home and merely said, “I see that you’ve cried, your eyes tell that you have felt pain, what happened?” Having cried for an hour straight earlier in the day, only a few tears were left in my tear ducts as I retold my day, I had not been the one who had to endure physical pain itself, but had been a witness to it, a bystander to what I felt was wrong. With the crack of a stick, I learned that I was powerless. I have been so privileged to be told that “I can do anything that I put my mind to,” “If I can dream it, it can come ... read more

I landed in Accra, Ghana on Friday, January 11th 2013. Stepping off the plane from my lovely upgraded business class seat (where you get real silverware and hot towels), a rush of humidity hit my face. Remembering to not pull out my camera to take a picture of the plane, like I did in Russia...I jumped into the shuttle bus as quickly as I could to avoid the mosquitoes. Then the line to get through customs grew and grew...making what I expected to be a fast trek through, more than an hour long wait. Once through and my luggage pulled off of the conveyer belt, the quest to find the hopefully still waiting there CIEE sign to take me to their safe haven began. Weaving through men asking to take my luggage for me and if ... read more