12 days until I'm home :)

I finished all of my papers!!! :) I feel so relieved! Now I only have one exam to study for which is on Wednesday... and then school and everything is over. This weekend a few of us are going to travel a little and go to some beaches and just work on our tans before heading back to the freezing cold weather in MI lol. On Monday one of the girls (Alicia) is leaving so on Sunday the Aya Center is taking us all out for dinner and dancing which will be really fun! Other than that I really don't have any other plans set in stone. A couple of people are going to a voodoo market in Togo which sounds ind of interesting so I might put that on my adventure list?? Miss everyone and cant wait to see you in 12 short days :) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

Update! TWO WEEKS LEFT WOOOHOOOOOO

The past week was pretty interesting. There have been a ton of power outages… more than the usual one a day… it makes the heat unbearable because the fans don’t work. The heat has been CRAZY… I take like 4 showers a day just to cool down. Mosquitoes have been worse that usual too… but I think that’s just because we are forced to leave all the doors open for airflow in the house. Thanksgiving was quite interesting because we tried to cook a 5 course meal for 30 people in a short amount of time with a dinky stove and no normal tools. I now know that if I can make Thanksgiving dinner here I can definitely make it in the US no problem. The convenience of going to a store and it having all of the ingredients seems so crazy to me… just to get the ingredients to make green bean casserole took a couple of hours because we had to go to one place to get a pan, a few different places to get enough green beans, and everywhere to try and find cream of mushroom soup lol. Insane… let me tell you. And then there was the turkey crisis. The boys said that they found a store that had already cooked turkeys so we were just going to get one of those since it was almost impossible to cook one on our own with our little oven. A few hours before dinner the boys went to go get the turkey and they realized that it was actually like lunch meat in a box that they thought was shaped like a turkey… leave it to the boys to screw up thanksgiving. They got a frozen turkey… defrosted it in the microwave and cooked it at full heat in the oven for the three hours before out guests arrived. Apparently it turned out to all of our surprises lol… and everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had some fried veggies, a fruit bowl, green bean casserole, stuffing, turkey, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, rolls, and apple pie. People chowed  I also found some ranch dressing which I have been searching for the entire time I have been here and have had no luck finding… so I also made myself a salad smothered in Ranch  People invited guests and friends from their internships and the Aya Center. We had about 30 people all together I think. Dinner was at 7, but everyone stayed really really late. One of the guys from the Aya center brought over all of his DJ equipment and blasted music the whole time and everyone danced, it was so much fun. We had all the kids make hand turkeys and pilgrim hats  I was really sad that I could not have Thanksgiving with my friends and family back home, but this was pretty ok.
That weekend we all made the trek to the cultural center. It’s like an art market where all the people go to sell their artwork. We toured there the first week that we were here but we weren’t allowed to buy anything, just look. It was really overwhelming then because all of the vendors were pulling at us and yelling obruni come buy from me. It wasn’t much different this time but it was less of a shock. I got to practice my bargaining skills which I am pretty impressed with- I got some good deals  My favorite quote that all of the vendors say is “Obruni… its nice to be nice” which basically means come buy my stuff for really expensive lol. Now we use that quote all the time at the house. The cultural center was pretty tiring so we all went home after a long day of shopping. Bringing back all of our stuff on the tro tro home was quite interesting. The tro tro home was also interesting because a preached decided that we would be his audience for the day and stood up in the front seat facing us and yelled bible verses in Twi the ENTIRE way home. I’m kind of used to this sort of thing by now, but this guy was kind of over the top.
We also went to a World AIDS day concert. Tom, a guy we live with, has spent his whole internship for the West African AIDS Foundation planning this one event. We got to meet a bunch of famous rappers and the whole event was a total blast! Everyone enjoyed themselves.
On Sunday I packed one of my suitcases with souvenirs to see how much room I had left lol… its sad that I am already packing… but I am SOOOOOOO excited to come home! I have two of my papers done, my twi test done, and my presentation done… so now I only have one more exam and a paper to do. I also finished my internship on Monday!!!! I corrected exams from 7am to 4pm with no breaks but got them all finished and recorded. This upcoming weekend we are all planning on doing a little exploring and def going to a beach so that we can look tan when we come home  Cant wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanksgiving and more waterfall pics :)

More birthday pics...and CAKE!

Update :) Three Weeks Left!!!!

This past weeked a couple of us decided to hang out in Takoradie, a city on the western coast of Ghana. After work on Friday, I hopped a tro-tro and got on an STC bus to Takoradie. THe ride took about 5 hours. The bus was pretty nice- air conditioned and everything. When we got there it was already dark so we thought against going exploring in the strange town, so we just watched Spread with Ashton Kutcher which was a pretty good movie. In the morning we went straight to the beach. It was sooo nice and sooo clean and we were the only ones there. After swimming we went to lunch at one of the hotels on the beach which was really really good :) Then we went and explored the market. Unlike in Accra where there are stands and vendors EVERYWHERE selling stuff, in Takoride, people only sell stuff in the central market. Its a HUGE circle in the middle of the city. Its a lot cleaner and more organized than the ones that I have been to in Accra. Also there werent any tro-tros in Takoradi so we had to take taxis everywhere, and there was no traffic which was a huge change from Accra. When we were in the central market there were these 6 guys that all came out in jump suits with huge backpacks on and a hose thing coming out of it... I thought that it was the ghostbusters Im not kidding. But they stood on different road dividers and a ton of people swarmed them and got into a line in front of them. Turns out they had coffee that they kept warm in the big packs on their back so they would just fill up cups with the hose and people went wild for it... it was so weird. After the market we went to the harbor and saw all of the big ships :) That night we went to a club for dancing. After dancing for like an hour the power went out so everyone went outside and people blasted the music in their cars and we all continued dancing :) SOOO FUN! After that we went home and slept and left for home in the morning.

Monday, teaching at school was boring. The ICT teacher was writing the exams so I basically did nothing and left at noon. Then He told me it would be the same thing on Tuesday so I didnt have to come in til Friday... but then I found out theres no school on Friday because its a muslim holiday... so I guess I really didnt do much at my internship this week. Next week I'll just be correcting exams and then my internship will be over.

I have been using my spare time to write my papers. I have two done and one to go. I gave my presentation on the first one so thats over with. We also took our Twi test and the teacher let us use open book (such a joke) so im sure we all got 119.5% :)

Other than that have just been working on Thanksgiving. We got everthing together Tuesday night and started cooking Wednesday night when we ran out of gas... lol figures we are cooking for 30 people and the gas goes out. We had to wait until this morning to get more gas. I dont think there is any way that dinner will be done today lol. Hope everyone is used to Ghana time :)

Im getting really really excited to go home! Less than three weeeeekkkkkkssssss :)

Me in my bday outfit:) Shoes!! My birthday gift to meeeeeee :)

Teaching ICT has been a little more intersting. They called in some computer techs to try and fix the computers so classes were cancelled for a few days and I just sat around feeling useless because I dont know how to make computers work lol. They ended up fixing 6 of the computers so we uploaded some software on them and then finally I got to teach with more than one working computer. It was glorious... unfortunatley the children dink around with the computers and push random buttons and click things that they shouldnt and by the end of the first day there was only one working computer left... and all that was working on it was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing... in Spanish. Some kid switched the languages and now we dont know how to change it back because everything is in spanish. Needless to say we are now constantly trying to refix the computers instead of teaching the children on the one working computer... same shit different packaging :) The kids are preparing for their exams so we are mostly reviewing the stuff that we have been teaching them this semester. I also had to watch kids get beat with a computer cord/plug because the teacher couldnt find his cane- it was horrific and i never want to have to sit through that again- i felt totally helpless and taken aback!

This week we went to the mall a couple of times so that i could find an outfit for my birthday. The club that we decided to go to has a dress code and none of us brought party clothes or shoes so we all went shopping (the girls). It was so fun and after a full day of shopping we all had gelato (the best icecream EVER). It was like being back home and it made me kind of homesick :( We also stopped at the mall and saw 2012 which was really good- although I wish it had more of the history of the mayan predictions and the religious references- because Im a nerd like that.

We went out Saturday night to a club in Osu called Cinderellas. It was so much fun OMG we danced from 11-5 in the morning- my feet were numb from being in heels for that long but I looked like a rockstar so it was totally worth it :p Sunday was a day of recovery for most of us so we just chilled around the house and slept a lot.

My actual birthday was so nice. Everyone came over from the Aya center and bought me a bottle of sparkling wine :) and the people in the house got me a pink cake that said "Happy Birthday Princess" and had a ton of candles and it tasted SOOOOO YUMMY! and of course there was icecream too! I felt really spoiled. I also got some sour gummy worms, a chocolate bar, and a Chelsea jersey with my name on the back :) My family also sent me a bunch of cards and pictures which made me homesick but was really nice! I def felt special and had a great birthday. I don't feel like im 22 yet, hopefully it sinks in soon.

Now its down to crunch time... 26 days left. I have to write three papers and make sure I wrap everything up before heading home.