11/26/2011: Ghana Time

Today was the first day we were completely on our own foodwise. I had a fresh mango for breakfast, taaaasty! Of course, the fresh mango juice was all over though. After breakfast we had to make our way across campus without our guides. We made it! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the campus is starting to feel smaller. My feet definitely don’t agree, but I’m finally getting the layout down. For our last day of formal orientation we talked with a lady from Tennessee about culture shock. It was muuuuuuch more interesting than listening to the professors ramble on (one even read all of the student guidelines straight from the handbook). For lunch today, I tried a traditional plate called Red Red. It was really good for being so spicy! It’s made of black eyed peas and some sort of sauce

After lunch, Kelly, Hannah, and I walked around and signed up for our courses. I should really say we attempted to sign up for them! At the university, registration is much different than at home. We have to go to each department we want to study in, put our names on a list of people that also want to take the course, show them our id, and then we may need to go further by giving them a passport photo or fill out a form. Because they have so freaking many students on campus, 34,000 including grad students, each student is limited to taking three subjects a semester. Our first stop was the Religious Studies department, where I signed up for a class on Islamic practices. We went from there to the English department, and while they have the list of courses they’re offering posted, they didn’t have the timetable. This was the same story with the history department! Classes start on Monday, four days away, and the office said that class times should be posted by then! So I’m going into my first week of classes signed up for one, single course.

A lot of us call this Ghana time. As long as whatever needs to be done gets done, it doesn’t really matter when. If you’re meeting friends, expect them to be 10-20 minutes late. We aren’t in our permanent rooms because they weren’t cleaned by the time we got here. It’s definitely something we’ll have to get used to, but since I’m always five minutes late anyway, I feel like I have a head start!

At five o’clock, Kelly and I took our first Tro tro alone to the mall. As soon as I get the map of the town burned into my brain, I’ll be more comfortable on them. Right now I’m still scared I’ll get off at the wrong stop or I’ll get out to let someone off and then get left behind! We shopped around a bit before looking into our real mission: watching a movie. We paid 10 Cedi ($7), to get into Gulliver’s Travels, and 3 more on popcorn. The best part about the popcorn in Ghana, besides it being $2, is that it comes in sweet and salty! Either way you get both; they mix together really easily, not that I minded! The ads before the movie started were super interesting. One played to Spice Girls music, another was a Coca Cola Santa commercial, but the best part was the intense air conditioning! The movie was ok, but I was shivering by the end. I guess some things are the same in multiple countries J