: )

so i've been informed that I haven't posted in awhile... sorry! Anyway, last week was a FABULOUS week. A lovely person known as a one James Misner came and visited. We had an amazing time!

On saturday night we played pull with my roomie and her boyfriend. It was actually pretty cool. I have to say i'm quite proud of our skills. neither of us have really ever played pool and yet we beat them. it was beautiful. The next morning we went to this place called the Green turtle. It was a long drive and for those of you who know james, you know that he can't really sit still. He did ok this time : ). he fell right to sleep. We had some issues getting to the place cause it's in the middle of absolutely no where. we had to drive on a dirt road with nothing around us for about 20 minutes to get there.

Anyway, we got there and it was the most amazing place. It's totaly eco friendly so it's all solar powered and the toilets, showers and such are all self composting (i probably didn't spell that right). everyone who works there is from the local village and most of the money generated by the place goes back to the village. so it was cool. We took walks and slept on the beach the entire time we were there. (as well as a canoe trip) and................... WE GOT ENGAGED! It was beautiful. He did it right at sunset on the beach. The ring is beautiful and we are incredibly excited!

After the fabulous green turtle and engagement we decided to go to hohoe which is a village that is near the two highest mountains in ghana. we climbed one of them. It was definately NOT my idea. But we did it! It was a bit painful. I told him that if he had proposed from the top i would have said no. this trail was straight up. Not like american trails on mountains which kind of go around so it's not steep. nooooooooooooo this one went pretty muchs traight up. we actually had to use our hands in some moments to climb up the rocks. I'm glad we did it though. I can't look back at it and not laugh.

The town of hohoe was pretty cool too. It was really quaint and we just got to walk around and find random little things in it. It was like one amazing date week!

Overall, the week was amazing! I wish you all could come here! I definately had so much fun. sorry this isn't very detailed but i'm almost out of time. love you guys!

My trip to the Post Office...

Sorry I posted twice but my roommate deserves a little space on the blog. My wonderful mother sent me two large boxes of necessities (you know... mac and cheese, peanut butter, chips ahoy...) and i had to go and pick them up at the post office. Now the postal system in ghana is a bit corrupt. So my roommate said she would take me. We get to the post office and walk up to our first counter. Basically this guy started typing in random numbers into his calculator. I think he was just making crap up actually. Now just a note, things here are very cheap. I can eat 3 meals a day for about a dollar. I taxi ride into the city costs about 3 or 4 and an hour on the internet is about 80 cents. So when i arrived at the post office, the man took one look at the USA address and the fact that i gave him an id card that said that i lived in one of the International dorms (usually only rich ghanians live there along with the int'l students) and decided to make some money. he wanted about 27 dollars per box as my "tax". He basically said we were rich and could afford it actually. As you can imagine i did not bring 54 dollars with me. So my roommate told him that i was from northern ghana and that we were both on scholarship to the university. He kept on looking at me cause i don't think he quite believed me. But hey, my roomie is cute and she basically sweet talked another lady behind the desk to be on our side as well. I just kinda grunted the entire time and she did the talking for me. My roommate got the man to go from 54 dollars to 4 dollars.... She's definately my hero. We basically had to run after that cause two of my friends (who were obviously not ghanian) showed up. We also ran cause the guy asked for my roommates number.... oh well! you gotta do what you gotta do! Miss you guys!

Ok so this (the one with the bridge) picture is the canopy walk that I took at Kakum national park. basically these crazy canadians built this "bridge" between a bunch of trees. There are 7 of these bridges with platforms on each tree when you complete thye bridge. the highest points are 120 feet above the rainforest. It was actually a really cool experience. slightly frightening when you get to the middle parts... once you realized you've done three bridges and that no matter what you need to complete at least three more to get to solid ground. It's a bit scary. Let me tell you... there was more than one missing bolt on these things...

The picture of the ocean is at the Elmina castle. In a nut shell, this beautiful ocean view was the last thing thousands upon thousands of slaves saw of their home. It was surreal because this castle was so beautiful on the outside but on the inside was horrific. there were 50 of us on the tour and even we were feeling claustriphobic in some of the spaces. this fort was run by the portugeuese at one time and then the dutch. Both were equally barbaric in the treatment of these people who's only fault was that they were on the losing side of the war. Many of these people were stuck in this castle for months at a time waiting for a ship to come for a life of hardship in teh caribbean, the Americas and Europe. What was interesting was that the tour guide put blame not only on the europeans, but the victorious tribes who collected their fallen enemies and walked them to the castle to be sent abroad. It was totally a reminder of humanity's capactity for evil...

That house is a picture of the govenors house. Right outside his front door, hundreds of men stood chained, hungry and filthy, while in the back of his abode were the women. Many times he would stand on his balcony and chose a woman to take for the evening.

On a less depressing note! the cavern looking thing is actually a dried up waterfall! Since it was the dry season the waterfall wasn't running but it was beautiful anyway. I mentioned this place earlier, it's Boti falls. It was even more beautiful in person. and much larger... i wish i'd put someonein the picture to give you a better idea of how big it was.

I'm sorry there are no pictures of me. I've realized that i was always the one behind the camera. I'll work on it ; ). Ok love you guys!!!

Stupid things i've done....

For those of you who have been posting (and those who haven't! I love you all!) i just wanna say it's cool to hear from you guys! I wish you were here with me! I hope everything is well with you.

So we went away for the weekend again! this time we went to Ada Foah which is basically where the Volta River meets the ocean.

We meant to leave at like 8 am but in typical ghanian fashion we left at 9:30. We we took a trou trou to Accra and then attempted to find a trou trou to Ada Foah. Of course no one can give you a straight answer here so after 30 minutes we finally found the place we supposed to catch the trou trou. Then we found another group of opportunistic young gentlemen who we think were trying to take advantage of us. Luckily there was one person in our trou trou who noticed the guy emphatically shaking his head outside of the trou trou telling us that they were going to "trap us". So we went and found other means of tranportation....

The ride up there was pretty uneventful. When we arrived we had lunch at a hotel on the water. This place was really expensive. By really expensive i mean a meal cost us $6. That's outrageous here. We're used to paying about $1 (usually less) for our meals. So we ended up splitting our (surprisingly small by ghanian standards) meals. But it was totally worth it because we sat outside and had this AMAZING view of the Volta river. and it was i think the most perfect weather ever. And to top it off, we noticed a scraggly man sitting next to us and we thought he looked very familiar. We could not for the life of us figure out where we knew him from. one of the girls finally realized that he was the coach of the Ghanian Black Stars team! Now for most people that's not very exciting but it was for us. This guy is the coach of the team that beat the US in the World Cup. The Black Stars are like the pride and joy of ghana. I think maybe even more so than Kofi Annan. They had a "friendly" match against Nigeria about a couple weeks ago and i think everyone in ghana was sitting in front of their tvs that night. Ghana beat Nigeria for the first time in FIFTEEN years. needless to say people were rioting in a way that was remenicint of the red sox beating the yankees...

Anyway, after our lunch, we called the place that we were staying and they sent a boat over to pick us up. It was more like a very long canoe for those of you who think i spent a weekend in luxery ; ). we motered over to this cluster of huts. They were set on this strip of sand with coconut trees everywhere. There were nice hammocks between the coconut trees giving the best shade! once you walked behind the huts over the sand dune there was the beautiful ocean. It was awesome standing in the middle of the sand strip and seeing a calm flowing river on one side and large and powerful ocean waves on the other. This place was awesome! the huts were so beautiful and relaxing at the same time. our floor was the sand and basically the walls were just palm trees braided together. but the beds were ridiculously comfortable. I'm not gonna lie, best night of sleep i've had since we were in Ghana.

Now for the stupid thing. Like dumb americans (american because i later realized that i didn't see a single ghanian getting into the water), we decided to go check out the ocean. one guy went in and had to struggle to get back out of the water because the waves were so strong and the undertow just pulled you right back in when you tried to get out. So we stayed further up on the sand. Anyway, we honestly only went into our ankles but the waves would come everyonce in awhile and drench us. So you'd fall back from time to time. For you ladies, you know that sand just gets stuck in the most awkward places. So i decided to bend down and clean out my bathing suit. Well apparently i didn't have enough time between the next wave. i was quickly knocked down and dragged out. about three people tried to grab me but the wave pretty much had me. I tried to swim to shore but it wasn't working. Phil grabbed my arm but just managed to fall too. I kinda gave up and hoped the wave would just carry me to sure which by the grace of God it did. I think i really scared everyone though. I felt bad. Oddly enough i was more mad at the fact that i lost my hairtie...

After that, we decided to stick to the river side. We hung around and red on the beach. Then the stars were beautiful at night. there weren't really many lights so we cold see them soo clearly. We woke up at 5:30 so we could catch the sunrise and it was just so peaceful. it was an awesome sight with the river to our left, the rising sun (well kinda...) to our front and the calm(er) ocean to our right. After that we kinda just relaxed and read in hammocks and such until our banana pancakes (i nkow your jealous) were ready.

Later that afternoon we went to a Rum making village. It was cool. we thought the tour was gonna be so much more though. They jsut wanted us to buy the rum though. We didn't spend to much time there. they had us sitting on benches and our butts were sore. And after that we took the boat home! It was an amazing weekend! And if you read this far i'm amazed!!!

Travelling!!!

So unfortunately, there are actual classes here. My classes are potentially interesting and potentially dull all at the same time. It's kinda weird cause there is reading but the books may or may not necessarily be in the book store... It's a bit confusing to understand them too. so as it stands i feel as if i may not getting the most academically out this trip...

On the flip side! i went away for the weekend! Unlike many other countries in the world, Ghana has one travel book. A book by Phillip Briggs. He's become our Ghana guru. Anything that Briggs says we take it as pure fact. So Phillip Briggs said that there was an interesting town called Kofordua. So we (me and 6 other people) went!

Briggs was right! The town was really pretty. It was nestled between hills and it was very green. Since Accra is so developed, there isn't much grass or greenery. it's pretty much just dusty. So this was a welcome sight. over lunch we consulted our guru yet again and the book said that there were some waterfalls about thirty minutes away. So after lunch we went in search of a trou trou to take us to the falls. after almost getting robbed by a group of opportunistic young "gentlemen" we found a taxi to take us up there. it was cool cause we saw rain for the first time since we've been here!

Anyway, we got up to the falls. Basically they had no room for us up there. we must of looked so sad that they were like "we do have a hallway...". So we slept in a supply closet. there were small plastic lawn chairs in there but they weren't condusive to sleeping at all so we all slept on the cement floor.

Anway, that night we hiked down to the beautiful falls. Well the falls weren't really running cause of the dry season but the caverns were beautiful! After that we went to a funeral. We heard the music from our closet and decided we wanted to go. we went and danced but then decided to leave when it started smelling like pot...

The next morning a village elder came and got us so that we could great the chief and his men. it was basically a traditional greeting ceremony. There was a lot of speaking twi and i didn't know what was going on. They did make us drink the palm wine though. that stuff is ridiculously strong. i didn't want to disrespect them so i took a miniscule sip and then the custom is to throw the rest on the ground (which i did gladly). After that we hiked to a couple awesome caves and rocks.

We then went to a church service (cause again we heard the drums). it was crazy! they made us dance around the church. just us. it was interesting.

But yeah, that was my weekend! you definately can't get things like that in a classroom! I miss you guys! talk to you later!!!

Classes

So there are no cool stories for this week. Everything has been great here. I've started my classes which have been interesting... Even though we're technically into the 2nd week of school one of my professors is trying to change the time and or day of the class. But overall the professors have been really cool. I thought that i was going to have a hard time with the lecture style of classes but it's nice cause there is no pressure for participation points ; ).

The one downside are my Twi classes. we have them every day from 4-5:30, Monday through Thursday. It's at that point in time when i feel most sleepy... Now for all those who know me, you know that I suck at languages... like really really suck at them. in fact i'm still trying to get a hang of the english language. So a language where the majority of words and sounds are nasely and pretty much run together. it's a bit hard. oh well! it's only for 6 weeks!

I have to hand it to them, they managed to pick a classroom that is ridiculously far from everyone. In fact to get to class on time we have to leave thirty minutes early...it's a large campus. if it wasn't such a small class i don't think most people would go.

Last week i went to the beach! i think it was my favorite poihnt here thus far! There are 38 of us and so it's hard to find something to do where all of us could get together. the beach was perfect cause we could invite whoever we wanted and we could do whatever we wanted as well! I'd definately say it was one of my best times at the beach ever. Ok, sorry there isn't much to report. i'm sure something crazy will happen to me this coming up weekend. Talk to you later!

White Rice, Fried Rice or Jollof Rice?

Or Chicken or chicken or chicken? Yes folks today we talk about food. let me tell ya! Ghanians make good food. a bit spicey but after awhile you get used to it. The only issue is that there isn't that much variety... You kinda have to search for it. IN fact i didn't eat any meat for a couple of days mostly because if i had one more piece of chicken i might have died. We try to mix it up and get some fruit every once in awhile. But pineapple has a habit of hurting after awhile and you don't look ver atractive eating mangos... But they are soooooooo good here. Today we remedied our chicken and rice rut. We had American food! We went to this overpriced Friendly's knock off and i thought i was in heaven. I had a sandwhich! I know that's not very PC or very adventerous but hey everyone get's a craving for the food that they have at home. And the best part? We didn't sit down and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of Cipro, Immodium and pepto tablets. in fact no one popped any of those pills after a meal! Oddly enough that was pretty much a first! It's funny how acceptable table conversation topics change....