Loving Ghana

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quick summary of how we spent our days...not much time to finish but tomorrow is a free day so i will catch up then.

WEDNESDAY
after class and posted my first blog we had our free day to roam around campus and such. kim, quana and i went to lunch at the gas station (they have a small store & all types of food places to eat inside). hawiian pizza was on the menu again...yummm! we stopped at the drug store after that for notebooks & kim needed eye drops. walking on the side of the road to these places & back to the university made me realize that in some ways it looked like the movies/tv portray africa. everyone knows i love E.R. reruns, well the way they showed africa in some of the episodes was exactly like it is here: dirty road (some of the time-right now there is a lot of construction going on), lots of cars, crowded with people selling things on the side of the streets, carrying all types of stuff on top of their heads, the dust, cars honking and all was exactly the way i've seen it. its just crazy, some days i still cant believe im here. after that i did laundry, the old fashioned way...bucket of soapy water and air dry. i didnt mind it that much, but i do miss my washing machine! after dinner we went to the coconut grove hotel where they have salsa dancing each wednesday night, we met some of the students from the university there. it was fun, obviously i did not dance!! :o) but watching everyone else was fun. they played "i will survive" & the "electric slide", but their versions. they do the electric slide different from us, so again the girls stood out more. haha. we went to a small bar after that then home.

THURSDAY
we had oranges at breakfast today. the outside looks like limes & inside like lemons. they were lighter tasting. we all enjoyed them. we all looked forward to relaxing on the beach, but didnt get that. everyone was bugging us to buy things and talking to us and aghhh after a while it gets frustrating. one of the guys we met said to me, "you can't blame them as they are trying to make a living just like you and anyone else." i understand that, but we're not used to that way of living & having to bargain & being bothered all the time just because everyone things americans have a lot of money. i did get a beautiful painting. kim pointed out to me that a lot of these people have amazing talents (weaving, carpentry, painting, woodwork, etc) and they are selling on the streets & barely making it by. its sad, but my professor said its just going to get worse when we travel more north because the poverty level is a lot higher there.
we all went into the ocean. damnnnn the tide is strong!! waves are really big too. a few times i get pulled under. some of the locals helped us because they're used to it, but i've never been in something like that before. one guy asked tana if she was drunk because we kept getting knocked over...haha! we did meet a lot of great people and are going back to the beach tomorrow. some of them play at the beach wednesday (music) so we might go back to see it. there was a cute little boy playing with kim and i. we took pictures with him. he was doing cartwheels and running all over the beach, basically putting on a show for us to take his picture. the kids love getting their pictures taken!! which makes me happy because that's what i love documenting, the children and the people's everyday routines and way of life.
that night we had these women (jen & veronica & ama) and their children over, they were selling cloth & were going to make us outfits & dresses and such. the babies (joy & godwin) were so much fun to play with, always smiling and laughing. the younger girls, sarah & marta were so different, personality wise. sarah was very outgoing, walking like a model and loved attention while marta was more shy. reminds me of my cousins brittany and morgan. we had a great time with them. i have pictures of them all.

FRIDAY
i took medicine my doctor gave me (an antibiotic) thursday night and it made me sick friday morning. so unfortunately i had to stay home and couldn't go to the botanical gardens and the two schools everyone else visited. i was pretty upset, but we're going to go back there so i can see what its like, the schools at least. thats the most important thing to me to experience while im here. time is running out & dinner is very soon, so i will write about today, hopefully tomorrow morning. miss you all so much!!

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