Just Kidding...

Turns out we need another vaccine before we can venture to the north. SUCKY. But I suppose we aren’t dead…

So, instead of leaving at 5:30, I went to class at 7:30, Shakespeare. Unfortunately, it’s not only in America that students fall asleep during extremely boring classes. The professor was long-winded and spoke softly: the perfect recipe for a disaster class. Next week I’ll bring my pillow and it’ll be like I never got out of bed. After class I came back to my dorm and slept for a decade. It was probably closer to three hours, but it felt soooo gooood.

I went downstairs for lunch and the minute I said it looked like rain, someone turned on the shower, full blast! We’re talking cats, dogs, guinea pigs, fish, hamsters and probably a cow or two! I figured it would only rain for twenty minutes like that, as long as a heavy rainstorm at home. NO. It was a torrential downpour for a good hour and even after that it probably took thirty more minutes to drop to a heavy mist.

Our second Twi class was this evening at 5:30. The ground was completely mud. After the thirty minute walk to class, our legs were covered in mud spots flung up from our shoes, cars driving by and people walking past. More than once I slid on a mud patch covering a hard surface, like walking on soapy floors in flip flops. At one point, I had to sacrifice my bag to keep my butt dry. Next time: real shoes.

Bring it on, rainy season.

You’re welcome to my breakfast

Each morning this week I’ve woken up to the smell of eggs. I fall out of bed, most likely tangled up in my mosquito net, tell my roommate good morning, and then she welcomes me to her breakfast. In Ghana, you’re welcome to everything. The first week, when we were eating at Tasty Treats, they would always say “You’re welcome” when the buffet was ready. We’d always say thank you back, not realizing that here, it means you are welcome to come and eat. You’re welcome can also mean ‘welcome to Ghana,’ ‘you can have some of this if you want,’ or ‘you can use this anytime.’

In new news: I’m leaving in 6 and a half hours for an extremely spontaneous trip to the North of Ghana. A small group decided yesterday that they wanted to go up to the national park and to a hippo sanctuary from tomorrow, Thursday, until Monday. Two hours ago, Kelly and I decided we wanted to go with!! Keep us in your thoughts this weekend, as travel here isn’t exactly ideal (but it’s nothing to worry about, mother…). Talk to you Monday!

The Week: In Review

WHOA! That week went fast! I’ve fallen into a nice routine, but somehow I lost essential blog writing time. Classes this week were hit or miss. No one really takes the first week seriously. My roommate didn’t even show up until the week was over!

Amazingly enough, I actually made it to all of my classes! But, I can’t say the same for my professors. I actually made it, on time, to my 7:30 class, just to have a girl walk in to tell us the professor wasn’t coming. Thursday we didn’t have that luxury and we were forced to wait 45 minutes before hesitantly leaving. My Tuesday class did meet, but the professor was thirty minutes late. As soon as he walked through the door he started lecturing too, as if he knew he was late, he just didn’t want to admit it. We learned about the differences between the two main branches of Islam, which is waaaay too much information to be handed in two hours. The professor for my psychology of religion class also showed up, but he was much trickier. He sat in a desk, like a student, until class was supposed to start. I think he was trying to make some sort of point, but it was lost on me!

After class, we spend thirty minutes walking back to the hostel and looking for as many short cuts as we can find! A guy from Ohio and I hit the jackpot on Thursday! We cut off a good ten minutes from our walk just by following random dirt paths through campus. Of course I’m not a very good short cut finder. Paths I find tend to be more of a long cut than a short one.

This weekend wasn’t really interesting though. Saturday morning a girl from Louisiana, another from Tennessee, and I did laundry together in the courtyard. There is a service in another dorm across the parking lot that will do it for you. It’s relatively cheap unless you do it often. Because we’d much rather spend our money cooling down with ice cream, we do all of it by hand. We’ve been trying to figure out how to get all of the dirt out of our clothes, but it’s not looking good.

After doing laundry all morning, we took showers and started to get ready for the welcome party the university hosts for international students! Buses shuttled us halfway across campus and up a giant hill to where we were having dinner and the party. Dinner was a buffet from tasty treats! While we were eating there were both student performances and cultural dancers and drummers. The students that preformed were awesome, especially one that looked like a skinnier version of Robert freaking Patterson! The Ghanaian dancers were awesome. They danced like crazy! They even had bowls of fire balanced on top of their heads for one dance!

Sunday morning was mostly spent scratching my mosquito bites. Mosquitoes here don’t make small bites that’s for sure. The red bump where they actually bit is small, but it’s surrounded by a huge pinkinsh red circle about the size of a quarter! After lunch, a group of us headed to the mall to find something to do. We went into multiple stores looking for something we couldn’t quite explain, only to realize what we actually wanted was ice cream again. We got back to the hostel and I got into the shower. When I got out, the light in my room was on! I walked in, dripping and in my towel, to find my new roommate had finally come. Great timing. Her name is Monica, and she’s pretty cool! She’s a senior, majoring in social work and geography. Her family lives in Accra so hopefully if she goes home she’ll take me with her! She doesn’t have a mosquito net, so sometimes I feel pretty stupid; like a tourist, you know? But I woke up this morning and she said she couldn’t sleep! There were too many bugs! So maybe it’s a good thing after all.

Then at about ten o’clock we went to an American sports bar to watch the SUPER BOOOOWL! I, of course, knew the Packers would win. I tried to convince the only five Steelers fans to go home so they could cry in peace, but they insisted on watching… it was 3am before the game finally ended!! The best part of the whole night was even before the game started. Three of us sat with some girls from CIEE and were talking about where in Wisconsin we came from. I asked one girl and she said, oh, just outside of Madison. So I pushed farther and she said she was from MIDDLETON! I was like WHAAAT?? Then she proceeded to tell me that one of the boys in our group, one that was sitting at the table with us, was also from Middleton! Turns out the three of us went to MHS at the same time and didn’t even realize it! The other two were in the same class and knew someone from MHS was also on the trip, but no one realized there was a third, me! I hadn’t recognized the other two, and they hadn’t recognized me because we graduated two years apart.

Small world, huh?

1/31/2011: Classes

Today is the first day of classes! I’m not sure if I should be happy about that… having so much free time is nice, but reeeeally boring. Now I actually have to do something. We had breakfast at 9:30 and left the hostel to check the departments that hadn’t put up class timetables. If they weren’t up today, that meant no class! Our first stop was the history, English and sociology block. All three buildings are joined by a courtyard so we don’t have to walk as far! I signed up for The History of Ghana in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, and then moved on to see the English timetable. It was up to, that meant I’d have to go to all of my classes this week. Shakespeare and His Age, is on Thursdays (at 7:30am… hopefully the professor can make it interesting otherwise I might as well bring my pillow) and should fulfill a required course at home. Then I looked at the poetry class I wanted to take. Turns out it was a Monday class, so I actually had to go to it today. But when I looked at the timeslot, I was doomed. Class started at 11:30 and it was already 11:15! I didn’t even know where the building it was in was. I asked a few people and it turned out that the class was just in the next building over J I was definitely on time, not that it mattered, the professor took full advantage of Ghana time and was ten minutes late.

Class here isn’t very different than class at home. The only main difference is that each class only meets once a week, for two hours. Poetry actually lasted the entire period and was pretty interesting. We’ll be studying some poems I’ve already read for other classes, so it should be easy J.

After class I grabbed lunch and headed back to the hostel. I finally got to check my email on my own computer! After a week, I had 81 emails on AOL and 15 on my school account! I caught up on Kenzie’s blog and all of the happenings on facebook. By then, it was dinner time! After dinner we watched a movie. I fell asleep multiple times while it was running, so immediately after it was bedtime. Tomorrow I’ve only got one class, The Faith and Practice of Islam, which starts at 1:30. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep in. The sun rises at like 5am here so I’ve been waking up at like 8 every time I want to sleep in. Not cool.

I finished uploading!! Now I can actually do posts on the right days haha. That is...if i remember.

1/29/2011: Sunday Sun

I was talked into getting up today, on our day off, at 7:30. I went with Virginia, the girl that arrived late, to the Catholic Church on campus. We left at 8, thinking an hour to find the building was plenty. We got there within half an hour to find that mass had started at 8 today! Apparently it was family weekend and the church was having a huge picnic to celebrate the swearing in of a new set of officials. The ceremony took about an hour so they extended mass by an hour! Even though we got there late, we still sat in mass for 2 and a half hours! I’m not sure I can handle sitting anywhere for two hours straight again. The choir was the best I’ve ever heard! They had bongos and everything! Actually, the entire church could have been in the choir, everyone sings so well!

Lunch afterwards was great too! They had all of the national foods that we’re used to and drinks. I felt like I was at home, going to clubs just for the free food! Except this was a little more legit because we didn’t know there was going to be food afterwards. It was like a reward :). We sat with a few grad students who told us a bit more about campus and Ghana in general.

When we got back to the hostel I decided not to wait any longer for the guy that was supposed to fix our internet. We went to the mall on a tro tro and went to the main store. They fixed it within minutes! On our way back we ran into problems. We took the wrong tro tro and ended up having to walk a mile home in the dark.

When we got back we went to the night market for our new favorite food: fried egg sandwiches! A hilarious 14 year old girl named Vivian makes them. We spent two hours sitting outside her stall joking around! Her stand is pretty popular. There’s usually a bunch of people sitting in chairs around the stall waiting for an order to be filled.

I hoped in the shower when we returned and only then found out how much sun I got today. I suppose I should have realized it! We walked to the church and back, to the tro tro station, and then from the next station to the mall! It hasn't been too sunny since we've been here. There are always clouds, but today was pretty sunny. I hear that as soon as the Harmattan is done the sun will be out more often. At least I have a base coat now I guess!

11/29/2011: The Rainforest… Welcome back, Allergies.

We woke up early, like we do every day, and took off for Kankum National Park, a rainforest reserve. It must have been 85% humidity because I was wet the instant we walked off the bus. It was soooo different than the landscape in Accra! Remember, Accra is mostly a sandy strip of dry, temperate, savannah basically. Kankum was full on bugs, moisture, trees, plants, vines: think Tarzan style. We took a small hike, maybe 15 minutes, up to the first platform of the park’s main attraction: Africa’s only canopy walkway. It was a rope bridge that was strung between seven platforms that straddled a big valley. Walking across the bridges, we were at the same height as many of the treetops but many were even higher. The platforms were attached to big trees, so there were ants everywhere. It was cool to see the way they followed each other and what they were carrying! But those were the only animals we saw, it didn’t really matter though! The variety of pants and the view of the hills in the distance was enough to make us all happy!

We hiked back down, dripping by now, got back in the bus and drove again to Elmina. We ate lunch in an awesome restaurant that was on the beach. When I mean on the beach, I mean you look out the window and there’s sand, water is 100 feet away. It was at this point that I discovered that I had been sneezing more than average. something in the forest must have triggered my allergies back :( I hadn't had any problems before this...annoying nose. After lunch we drove back to Accra, but somehow it took MUCH longer to get back than it took to get to Cape Coast in the first place. We left lunch at about 1:30 and didn’t pull into the hostel until about 6:30! Needless to say, we ate dinner and crashed for the night.

1/28/2011: Cape Coast

We got up extremely early today and left for an overnight in Cape Coast, a town on the coast about three hours from Accra. The last girl to arrive in Ghana showed up last night, just in time for the trip! Unfortunately though, she took her malaria pills without eating first and ended up just like I did, sick. After half an hour she was feeling better and we took off for the weekend! We had to drive all the way though Accra’s crazy traffic, which in itself is a completely different story, before we could start heading in the right direction. It was fun to see places we were starting to recognize and buy foods and little things from vendors out the window. People walk up and down the aisles of cars trying to sell anything from posters or food to handkerchiefs and gum. We all got plantain chips and fried doughnut things for the trip. As we creeped out of the city, we saw more and more houses surrounded by huge walls. All of the walls were topped with barbed wire or shards of glass! Many families had planted vine plants to cover the awkwardness of the barbed wire so many times the thorns from roses or other flowering plants were made of metal…

We passed a ridiculously huge shanty town/suburb named Nima. The tour guide that was with us for our city tour came with as well and he said that that part of town was mainly Muslims from all over Ghana. As soon as we passed the last few houses in Accra, we drove past a HUGE lake, Weija, which supplies most of the city’s water. We also saw a bunch of really weird things. A man was sleeping in an overturned wheelbarrow in the median of the giant highway we were on. A lady was selling Pringles on the roadside; she held two in her hand and fifty cans on her head! We also drove past a refugee camp set up during the Liberian war. Some of the inhabitants have already gone back to Liberia, but many stayed because Ghana grants asylum to those who want it. What was really interesting was the conversation we had about Cote d’Ivoire. If they start a civil war because of all that’s going on over there now, that camp and many others will fill up with refugees again. Ghana prides itself in being called a haven but a lot of people that come don’t spend much money and move on quickly.

We finally got to Cape Coast, had lunch, and then toured our first castle. Cape Coast castle was primarily used for holding and transporting slaves. We toured the holding cells first, which were completely dark. The guide said that when a few archaeologists from the university came in, they excavated through about 6 inches of human waste before finally hitting the actual floor. Thank goodness it didn’t smell like it. The castle butts right up to the beach for easy boat loading through the ‘door of no return’. Overall, it was a sad tour, but very educational!

We drove down the coast a little more to another slave castle, Elmina. We didn’t tour but we were allowed to run around for a few minutes to take pictures and stretch our legs on the beach. Each castle sat right on the sand and they were beautiful beaches! Too bad the history was so ugly. After Elmina we got back on the bus and headed toward our hotel. It sat almost on top of a lagoon that had a family of ‘friendly’ crocodiles. I’m sure if they were hungry enough any crocodile could become friendly… we only saw one anyway, and he was swimming away from us. The best part of the hotel was the water heaters! Not that they would turn on…