Blogs from Ashanti, Ghana, Africa - page 10

4/16/09 Hey everybody. Even though school has been out, I’ve still been pretty busy over the last week and a half. I spent a lot of time marking my end of term exams last week, and I am proud to say that I’ve finally finished marking all the questions. Then I spent a number of hours adding up the scores for each student and recording them into my computer. It is amazing how long it takes to simply record the grades of an exam when there are 235 students. Now that I have all the scores in my computer; all I have to do is calculate the final grades for the term and write them in the terminal report for the school. I think I mentioned this a long time ago, but I’ll mention it again ... read more

4/7/09 Hello, and a happy April morning to all my avid readers. It is April once again and you all know that means lots of family birthdays, and therefore lots of family dinners. I am truly sorry that I cannot be there to enjoy them all with you, but make sure to have a Jack and Coke for me to help drown out the noise just a little. I have a few things to write about so let’s get to it. Last week the form 1s and 2s finished taking their end of term exams on Thursday. I wasn’t scheduled to invigilate any exams so I took the opportunity to mark my own exam. I spent a lot of time marking the theory questions on my exam last week to say the least. Although it has ... read more

Hey All!! Twice in one week?! Yeah, I'm in a generous mood...and I'm kinda backlogged! So I thought I would play catch-up before taking off on another far-flung adventure. So, this past weekend marked my second extended visit to Kumasi, and while the quantity of the itinerary was relatively small it was more than made up for in the high levels of quality! What was the mission this time? Cheer on Ghana's national football team the Black Stars, as they took on Benin in a 2010 World Cup Qualifier Match! While this was once again an independent trip, there were so many ISEP people going it might as well have been an ISEP sponsored trip! There were about twenty four or twenty five of us that left, all on different days and different times. My party ... read more

3/15/09 This week has been abnormal to say the least, but I am finding that weeks like this occur quite frequently so I am accustomed to expect the unexpected. As you all know, last Friday was Ghana’s Independence Day, and as a result the following Monday was a national holiday and there was no school. In the past 2 weeks, the school has officially had 4 days off, but in reality, many students took even more days off. On Tuesday there was inter-school girls’ volleyball. Since I am not scheduled to teach on Tuesdays I took the opportunity to go watch the competition. Last year the event was held at ABSEC, but this year it was held at Christ the King Catholic SHS in Obuasi. Last year our girls took second at the event and advanced ... read more

It shouldn’t be so difficult to take “our family” on a trip. As I type Kirk and I are emotionally in “Neutral”. Praise had his American Visa interview at 7:30 this morning. To not bore you with all of the questions, details and reasons I will simply repeat what the officer said. “He is temporarily denied. This is a special case as you have no legal custody of him outside of Ghana. I will keep all of this paper work and we will call you with a final decision.” Exactly when they will call he did not say - one day - one week - one month ??? Due to the increase in “World Wide Child Trafficking” this decision could easily go either way. The American Embassy is not trying to be difficult rather they are ... read more