Tuesday we had another informational morning followed by an afternoon learning how to ride the public buses which are called tro tro's & walking through one crazy busy market. The tro tro's are very interesting to say the least. We walked to a stop to wait for one & all this buses (I think they look more like vans personally) fly down the road with one man hanging out the window yelling whichever stop they are off to next. They only cost around 60 paeswas & can take you all over Accra.
Yesterday we began registration for school, which is nothing like it is at Montana State. I used to complain about that process, but this one is so much more difficult. A group of 4 of us spent about 3-4 hours running all over campus trying to figure out the days & times that classes are offered. They are each only held once a week for a two hour lecture. We have to just show up for the rest of the month & then we don't technically register until the end of the month. I'm still trying to figure out how it all works. I did stop into a little brass artifact museum to cool off & ended up learning a ton inside. The guy working it showed me all these tiny metal structures of people, animals, swords, all kinds of things & explained to me what each of them meant. There were tons of pieces in the exhibit that Ghana had just bought back from a woman in Germany for $75,000 in 2005.
We got our ID cards that afternoon so now I'm officially a student at the University of Ghana! Then we had a short lecture on the Cape Coast. The short version is that it's a castle that was built by the Europeans for slave trade. That's where we will be this weekend so I should have a better knowledge of it when I return.
Last night a few of us went with some of the Ghanaian students from our hostel to a reggae night on the beach. There was hundreds of people there & live music up on a stage. We sat in wooden chairs in the sand & took walks down the beach while we listened to the music.
We were out pretty late but luckily had a day off today so I slept in until around noon which I never do at home so I guess that goes to show just how exhausting it's been here so far! I'm finally getting used to the heat & humidity even when I'm walking a million miles every day. My first are consistently dirty no matter how clean I get them in the showers. I'm starting to get used to the cold showers too. They really aren't that bad when it's a million degrees outside :)
We spent most of the day at the mall today looking at the clothes there & running other random errands. The malls here are not the ordinary malls that we're used to but you can find a lot of things you need there. They even have little grocery stores in them. Today I found some peanut butter & crackers so I was very excited to eat something besides rice! Everything here is so spicy so I've had a hard time finding things that I like. I'll ask my Ghanaian friends before I eat something if it's spicy & if they say no then I'll give it a try. I don't think they know what spicy is though cause every time I bite into the food my mouth is on fire!
We found a movie theater this afternoon & saw the movie Frozen. American movies don't make it over here until after they have been shown in the US, but I hadn't seen that one yet & it was adorable! Ghana is currently a developing country which is super cool to see. They are starting to get a real economy going but still not as strong as the US. They warned us that the resources are still scarce so we will experience water & power outages, but this doesn't seem so bad when these things are relatively new to this part of the world anyways. I would love to come back in 10 years & see where Ghana is then!
Everyone here already knows me as the girl that loves all the children & babies. I melt every time I see one! Today walking from the tro tro to the mall a little boy grabbed onto my arm & asked me if he could have some of my water & I couldn't resist so I just gave him the whole bottle.
One thing I have really had to learn here is patience. I
keep thinking my dad would never survive here (sorry dad :) Everything takes forever &
nothing starts on time. My form of communication is very slow. My phone isn’t
on most of the day & I now have a Ghana phone number connected to
a Ghana network. Internet is the same way, it is very slow & it’s hard to
find spots with good connection. They tell us lunch will be at noon & we
won’t end up eating until 3. But so far I don’t mind, it’s just something that
I am getting used to. I actually kind of enjoy it. All of my friends here are so engaged in everything we do because we aren't sitting around on our phones or laptops while we're all hanging out everyday. It makes me feel like I really missed out on a lot of little things in life back in the states.
I have met some amazing people here so far & began some pretty awesome friendships. It's hard to believe that I've only known them for a little over a week. The boys in our group are so awesome & big brotherly towards us girls. They're always helping us out & looking after us. But I still miss & love all of my people at home :) Tonight we are going to a welcome party that they are throwing for us so I will check in again when we are back from our weekend trip! Love to you all,
Kasey
These are a few of the Ghanaian bills. They are called cedis (pronounced CDs). One American dollar is about 2.4 cedi's so the prices always seem so expensive until you do the conversion & realize it's actually much cheaper!
They have the most beautiful flowers here! I'll have to start a collection :)
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