Osu

Last week I decided to drop my Tuesday class, so yesterday I had to walk around campus trying to figure out exactly how to do that. I started in the religions department, had to walk a few blocks to the deans office, back to the religions department and then BACK to the deans office. That was enough exercise for the day. But that meant that I had today free until 5:30! Kelly and I decided to do some exploring downtown in a part of the city called Osu. We took a taxi, too lazy to wait for a trotro, and it turned out to be an interesting ride. There was a huge traffic jam and as we were trying to cut through traffic, our taxi was side-swiped by another car! Taxi driver was not having a good day. They got out and yelled at each other until a truckload of policemen pulled up behind us to see what new traffic jam was holding up the other one. One police man climbed into the passenger's seat and we drove down the road, out of the way. They kept yelling for a bit, then our driver got back in and drove away... he wasn't very happy. He didn't respond to anything we said either.
On the plus side, we made it all the way to Osu without getting in another accident! Osu is basically a big touristy shopping street with nice restaurants (the Indian one we went to is there) and shops. There are annoying street vendors everywhere too selling anything from bracelets and drums to paintings and soccer jerseys. We were there for a fair trade store that specialized in batik fabrics and handmade clothing. The shop was pretty cool. It had a bunch of weird stuff too, like those bags made of plastic drink packets (except these were made of water sachets and ice cream wrappers), ornaments, purses and bags; anything you can dye, they had it. We also stopped by an arts store to buy some paints for a guy in our group. It took us about 20 minutes to find the freaking place! We must have asked twenty people and the first ten said just get a taxi and the second said it's only a few blocks away. Some said down the street, others said up, down a few dirt roads, past the yellow building, left, then right... I'm surprised we found it at all! In case you were wondering, it was down the road, four blocks, turn at the yellow building, three doors down from there.
We got back just in time to rest a bit before heading back out for our Twi class at 5:30. Today's lesson was killer. The professor introduced pairs of letters that make whistling sounds when they come next to each other in a word. Pairs like dw, tw and hw all whistle and I can't figure out how to do it! It rained again while we were in class and stopped right before we were released. It seems like the rainy season's going to start early this year, but all Ghanaians have different opinions. Looks like I'm breaking out the umbrella.
In other news, I'm sorry I have no pictures! I have to walk 40 minutes onto campus to get fast enough internet to upload anything or skype at all. There is an option of paying 50 bucks and getting the wireless from the hostel, but after shelling out 50 bucks for this stupid modem, I'm hesitant. Stupid money!