In this country…cows CAN get arrested // Peace Corps Ghana 2009-2011

ok. THIS has to be the longest I’ve gone without a post. So sorry. It’s been months! Hope you all are well. School has been really tough this term, and the reality of everything finally hit me….which was terrible at first, but I’ve adjusted myself. I’m eating lots of oranges. Maybe that’s perking me up. Well…that and painting a world map in a different town, and having the students paint the United States and Mexico the same color….United States of Mexico? There was also Chargentina…Chile and Argentina’s love child? Huh, anyway. School is almost over for this term. April is going to be lots and lots of fun! Next weekend is hang gliding festival time! Which means! I’m going to go jump off a mountain and fly! It’s going to be amazing!!

Just recently, I was asked to write an article for GYDLines, which is the Gender and Youth Development newspaper that gets circulated around Ghana. It’s a Peace Corps thing that’s all about empowering youths, and I was asked to write an article about education…being that I am a teacher. “Teacher” I should say. I mostly just play with Play-doh in class with the kids! Anyway, below is the article that I wrote! Hope you all enjoy!

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Gaffes

Lion. Loin.

When you’re a 2nd grader, such spelling mishaps are completely irrelevant, especially when it’s oh so obvious that you’ve clearly drawn a LION, but have mistakenly (and unknowingly) written LOIN in big fat bold letters. What’s even worse though, is the fact that you, a 2nd grader with a thirst for knowledge and a weakness for spelling, has a teacher that sees this mistake and fails to correct you…(but you don’t know that).

Now you’re the teacher. You’ve given your class the task of drawing their life in Ghana, and for the most part, your students are working diligently, save for a few that are hiding behind the door doing God knows what. As you walk around, you’re excited to see all the different portrayals of Ghanaian life, (especially that one drawing of handbags and high heels, by that one girl that sits in the back only drawing (can you guess…), handbags and high heels.) Then you stumble upon LOIN boy, and here’s your thought process: 1. Hey, that’s a nice drawing of a lion; 2. That says LOIN, not LION; 3. I should probably correct the boy’s spelling…or not. I mean, how funny would it be to show this to all of my friends?; 4. Even if I did tell this boy the correct spelling, how in the hell would I explain the difference between a lion and a loin…in sign language.; 5. What should I eat for lunch?

It’s tough being a teacher, can’t you see? All these thoughts and heavy decisions to weigh! Should I correct this student? Should I give my friends a good laugh? It’s stressful if you ask me, and being a teacher at a deaf school is even more so. God forbid you confuse the sign for “oil” with the sign for “blood”. “Hey, you should add some blood to that stew!” Just yesterday, a deaf friend came to visit me because I was sick with fever, and when he commented on how hot it was in my house, I (fully intending on responding with “I’m cold”), signed to him, “I’m scared!” Needless to say, he stared at me with utter confusion, gave up on my ability to learn sign language and dumped me as a friend.

If you’re worried that I don’t know sign language (and not about whether I have friends or not…like you should be), don’t be. Everyday I learn more and more sign, and it’s all thanks to the students who are so wonderfully patient and eager to help anyone learn. More so than teaching art, it’s having the students teaching me, that is truly enriching. It’s the after-school student to friend (not teacher) relationship that I love. It’s talking to the kids about life in America, and telling them that YES!, we too have onions and cars, but sadly no Fufu. It’s seeing their faces when I tell them that we have the same moon, sun and stars, that really makes me smile. The best part though about working with deaf kids is the secret language that we harbor. Perfect example: A German volunteer, with newly dread locked hair, once visited the school. A few female students started signing to me about how his friend was really cute, but how dread boy was very dirty and how his hair was appalling. I, fully knowing the way of the German hipsters, sarcastically agreed and signed back that he probably never bathed, beautifully avoiding the conversation where I tried to explain (in sign language mind you) how he purposely wanted his hair to look like that.

Signing is wonderful, and even though I’m often times in need of a hand massage, and occasionally getting “blood” and “oil” confused (minor difference right?), it’s probably the greatest thing I know I’ll ever accomplish. Well, that and knowing that sometime in the next 1.5 years, I will teach that boy how to spell LION.

L-I-O-N.

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Turkey Turkey Gobble Gobble!

The only times I can ever remember seeing a turkey in America are usually on the last Thursdays of Novembers. Slathered in garlic and dripping with deliciousness, stuffed with various nuts and berries and other deliciousness that makes up stuffing. Well, that’s not the case here. There are turkeys running free in my town, and they’re huge! I never realized how big a turkey was, until I saw one yesterday fluff up its feathered shield and make some god awful sound. Poor poor turkeys. I hope I am not tempted to eat one (well part of one, because eating a whole turkey just seems impossible), at the ambassadors this week. I have been vegetarian since the day I left America, and I’d say I’m liking it. I mean, I’ve never been tempted to eat the often fly infested meat that I’ve seen here, nor have I been tempted to buy the unrecognizable meat bits that are sold on Ghanaians’ heads in the market. I am always so very tempted though to eat an ungodly amount of soya kebabs, which I’m positive are coated in MSG, because they are sooooo delicious. Mmmm food, the love of my life. I want to open up a restaurant when I get back, anyone in with me? We can serve pounded blobs of yam and cassava at sky high prices! Haha, gosh, I can’t imagine what would happen to fufu and banku if it ever made it’s way to the US. Ohhhhhh kkkkkk, so Thanksgiving plans in Ghana consist of the US Ambassador to Ghana inviting us all to his home in Accra for a swimming/turkey filled feast! Apparently the same house that he lives in once belonged to Shirley Temple, how cool! Not much more to say on that, cause it hasn’t happened yet, but I’m sure in a month or so you’ll get the full detailed version of just how much I ate, and just how much I enjoyed it.

Since Halloween though, not too much as happened. Teaching remains to be exhausting and overwhelming and challenging, but the kids remain to be enthused for the most part, and the older ones are still helping me learn sign, which is so wonderful. I had a 3 hour lesson the other day with a few girls, while some boys worked in the art room. It was wonderful and somewhat reassuring to know that I can do this for the next 2 years. Henning and I stayed at school one weekend and just spent the whole day doing art projects with the kids. One of my favorite students, Sammie Osei, is absolutely amazing and constructed a toy car out of metal cans and used the rubber from flip flops to make wheels. Then he began making a helicopter out of wire, to follow the wire alligator that he made. The detail is stunning and would put so many kids at art schools to shame, no offense you art folk. I want to bring him to America and to an art school where I can only imagine he will do wonders! The girls and I made friendship bracelets and just seeing how excited they were about it was great. The older kids are really wonderful. With the younger ones I brought out bubbles, which initially started out as a fight, but once we got some sort of organized line going, it was great! They loved them!

Two weekends ago, I think, I went to a Ghana Black Starts futbol game. One of the guys that works at my school invited the German boys and myself to go with him and about 15 other guys. All deaf. Max, Henning and I were the only hearing people in this group, and when we got to the stadium in Kumasi, we had to pretend to be deaf while we went through security. All of the actual Ghanaian deafs, all had ID cards stating the fact that they were members of the Ghana National Deaf Association of that they were students at a deaf school and when the police asked to see ours, it was so much fun trying to play charades and visually tell them that we were foreigners with no ID card and that we couldnt hear anything they were saying. I think my superb acting skills went a little over board, but it was great. Us deafs got to bypass all lines, got in before anyone else did, and we got to sit in the socalled VIP section! It was so great….wait…except for the fact that whenever the fans were singing and playing music, I had to delay my reaction…for fear of being caught. haha I really got into it. But communicating in sign with all of these guys, and not having anyone know what we were talking about, was amazing. And the game was so much fun! Never in America will you see fans so patriotic, playing music non-stop for 4 hours, wearing color coordinated outfits, yelling and screaming endlessly. It was amazing! Ghana tied Mali for 2-2, but to be able to see this amazing team play was something! Wooo

Last weekend, two other volunteers that live close to me, held a HIV/AIDS futbol gala, which consisted of an all day event with 4 different futbol matches made up of 4 different teams from neighboring towns. In between each match and during half times, there were HIV/AIDS info sessions, (dramas put on by local schools, a talk by a man who has AIDS, talks by the health board, etc.). There were about 6 or 7 other Peace Corps volunteers that were there, all of us wearing bright yellow shirts that said “AIDS IS REAL”, and we were all doing various activities. One of us was helping with the free testing that was being done, which was wonderful, even though half the Ghanaians only got it done so they could get the free little goody bag that was filled with balloons, condoms and pamphlets….oh boy. I was doing condom demonstration on wooden penises, which was hilarious and sketchy at the same time. Then I switched to a “game” called Journey of Hope, which teaches Abstinence, Faithfulness and Condom usage. Most of the crowd was made up of Senior HIgh School students, and they were great and knew a lot of stuff, which was wonderful! It was a fun, albeit, long event, but something I would definitely like to try in the future. During the halftime of the last match, 5 of us went on the field holding these big posters, which apparently told some sort of story to go along with the narration in TWI, but really they were so random. There were two that said STD’s and AIDS, and explained what they were, and then there was one that was supposed to be portraying germs, but it really looked like neon green and pink cookies with faces. There was another poster that had a man in a business suit, smiling…and he was supposed to be the guy with AIDS…although why he would be smiling I am not certain…and the last poster was supposed to represent our body attacking the disease…and it was a clip art picture of a white, army man with a machine gun in his hand….haha. Amazing, I know.

I think that pretty much covers it all, eh? Leaving for Accra tomorrow and hoping to get more music on my ipod, so I don’t have to listen to the same 5 albums that I currently have on there because my computer royally messed it up…2 of the albums being Maroon 5, which I am sooooo not a fan of.

Oh boy, missing you all loads

….is nothing special. I tried explaining Halloween to some of my students…and aside from not being able to sign the words “pumpkin”, “jack-o-lantern”, “carve” and “candy”, I realized during the process that Halloween is the silliest of all holidays. But definitely an all time favorite…it’s just a pity I wasn’t able to don a fufu outfit on this day. Oh phooey. My friends and I did have high hopes of making “yam-o-lanterns”….but realized that it’s probably hard to gut a yam. So instead, right now we are all singing old 90′s songs that were at one point..worthy of NOW! HITS Cds….and we all sound miserable, but nevertheless enjoy belting out a good Semisonic or Natalie Imbruglia tune. Feel free to chime in while you read this, folks….you know you love a good Smash Mouth tune.

Ah, so…school…..is wonderful and difficult and rewarding and tasking. The lower primary kids, aside from being terribly cute, are so troublesome and it’s so hard to manage them because their sign is sooooo not up to par. They do understand when I say that if they don’t pay attention, I will go back to America..and sometimes it works…and they stop choking each other and putting each other in headlocks…but only sometimes. The upper primary kids are so wonderful and eager to help me learn sign, which I love, because I have learned so much more from them than I ever did during training…like the sign for “menstruate”. Uh huh. I actually had a very long conversation with a few boys (not about menstruation…goshh!), about how in the mornings they are boys and during the evenings they are guys. Not sure if they were trying to get me dig deep into the meaning of that convo…so I left it at a few nods and shakes in a very approving direction. But it was great to laugh with them and see them joking around..oh so animatedly in sign. There is one boy here, Yaw, who I love and want to take back to America and enroll in acting school. When he tells stories, his whole face and personality comes alive and it’s AMAZING. I’m demonstrating his facial expressions now…see it? I also taught some boys how to ballroom dance..and they in turn taught me how to dance like Michael Jackson. It had to have been very awkward for them to watch…because I can really only pop my right shoulder in such unconvincing ways…while the left one stays stationary…fearing that I might actually pop it out of socket again. Either way, I tried…one shoulder and all.

A few weeks ago, the Indian volunteers in Ghana (a whopping total of 4!) were invited to Accra to attend Indian New Year with a few Peace Corps and American Embassy workers…sound awkward? There was cake and ice cream though. Raj and I arrived just in time to see Ghana win the Under 20 World Cup…the first championship win for Africa…in anything! It was insane. There were parades of cars and stages set up on the streets with huge screens that projected the game, peoeple running around with flags of Ghana covering their parts (they love their country, yes they do), drinking palm wine in the streets and basically losing their minds. It was amazing to be a part of such a celebratory day! I even lost my voice … (for maybe a minute or two)…

Things are going well though. This week I tried to get the upper primary kids to start appreciating art…which I soon realized would take more than 1.5 hours in the library. I wanted them to look through the art books in the school’s decently sized library and find a painting or drawing they liked, and then the following week return to the library and draw the image they picked out. HA! What a joke assignment that was. All of them ended up either looking at magazines or children’s books. One girl told me that looking through the books was boring. I told her that that made me cry. There were a few though that made it all worth it though. They would look at Manet’s paintings and start coming up with stories for the men and women seated in outdoor cafes. Or they would look at some of Goya’s paintings of people executing others..and ask what was going on. It was wonderful.

Oh some students also came over and made yam in my kitchen and then gave me some … to which I promptly attempted to make yam mash (the Ghanaian equivalent of mashed potatoes….duh!)…and uh…it turned out..chunky.

So school has finally started, and after 18 years of being a student, I’m now a teacher..decked out in your typical navy blue dress suit pant suit thing, complete with an up-do and wreaking of perfume. Well no, not really. It’s weird though being on the other side of this whole student/teacher/school thing, but the power trip is fun! Woo! I’ve started teaching all of Primary, which is 1-6…and will hopefully soon be teaching kindergarten as well, although I can’t imagine them being any more rambunctious than the lower primary kids, who are CRAZY. They hit and slap and beat and “yell” at each other, and my sign is not up to par yet, so trying to get them to stop and pay attention proves to be a real task! The upper primary kids are wonderful though, and so helpful and so into art and it’s such a pleasure teaching them, not that it’s not a pleasure to teach the younger ones, but it’s stressful and exhausting at times! Last week I did paper airplanes with the lower primary (1-3), which sounds like something silly, but it was amazing! They had never made them before and had so much fun creating something that they could play with afterwards! Even some of the teachers enjoyed crafting planes, because they too had never done them before. Ah! It was just wonderful. With the upper primary kids I tried to get them to pair up and draw each other, but their concept of realistic drawings is only shaped by all the art they see in Ghana, which is very cartoon like. But they took an interest and showed a little creativity, which is all I could have asked for. Life is picking up, so that’s good. Talked to some kids last night about Michael Jackson, which was followed by them putting on a dance show for me, complete with some moon-walking, hip thrusting, shoulder popping, which was then followed by a convo on MJ’s nose and why he went from black to white. It’s amazing how patient the students are with anyone who hasn’t mastered sign language yet and how willing they are to teach you. They’re just so excited to have people to talk to, which I love. Hmmm, what else. I bought a guitar and have been trying to teach myself, since I do have 2 years to master the art of strumming, which will only lead to a tour of the world once I’m done here. Be ready. I’ve learned “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”, “Kumbaya” and parts of “Happy Birthday” , so I’d say it’s safe to say I’m a pro. The guitar is a GIVSON, not a GIBSON, and I have named it Shamus. I have also mastered the art of popping corn, and realize that it’s all in the kernel. Ok, out!

Ghana Standard Time. Good thing I’m used to Indian Standard Time, or this whole adjusting thing would be a lot more difficult. Students at my school were supposed to move in this weekend, with school supposedly starting on Tuesday of this week, but I think only 2% have done so, and school will now be starting “hopefully” in October. It really is quite sad though, because the reason for this is money, and students and their families not having any to even get a car to bring them to school. It makes me so sad, along with the fact that students will come to school and usually stay in school up until the Junior High School Level, but then that’s it. Senior High School costs money, and either they don’t have it, or parents don’t want to pay it, so the students just go back to living the life they did pre-schooling. Those that do go on and do wonderful things with their life, then end up leaving the country, leaving no form of role models for students left here. 20yr old kids, who sometimes are in 5th grade, can’t do basic math. Who is teaching them?! Why do Ghanaian grads have to leave; why can’t you all stay. My friend said that Ghana should lock the borders and prevent any smart people from leaving the country. Maybe that’s true.

Other than that though,

Been up to nothing really for the past few weeks. Hanging with friends and cooking delicious meals. (Raj got Indian food and spices and pickles…so we made uttappams one day, which were fabulously amazing.) The Germans have been good company, so it’s nice to hang out with them and learn their crazy german card games, where you can make up new rules mid-game…it’s crazy, I know. I started painting my room, and so far have drawn an old man named Herb, and two birds singing. The mural idea is still there, but first I have to do more cleaning. Hung out with a few kids the other day and tried to learn yet another card game, but all I could gather was that “K” always won and 7 was really “L”…..yea..

So based off of the title of this wonderous entry, I’ve been sick. ah! well better now, much much MUCH better now. I think I had bacteria poisoning for a while, which alas…enabled me to get acquainted with my toilet – on a very, VERY personal level mind you. It’s a pity the toilet seat is completely off and is only held to the toilet seat cover by duct tape. I should work on getting that fixed. If any of you want to send me one of those nifty blue, fishy, aquatic toilet seats in a care package…that would be kinda awesome. And I would love you forever. But to continue on the beautiful journey of my illness, I was also throwing up and had a fever of 101.8, at which point I had to put on the one pair of pajama pants I brought, the one long sleeved shirt, and curl up in my bed with the 2 blankets that I have…in Ghana, like someone braving the harsh winters of the Big Apple. Surviving on a diet of bread…and uh…gatorade, I have finally conquered the disease and am 100% A-O.K now . Wahoo! Raj and I made a delicious meal of pasta and fake velveeta pepper jack cheese, courtesy of a friend who left it in my fridge. We’ve been cooking a lot…or rather experimenting a lot, which usually turns out to be good, which is satisfying to know because groceries are limited here and you gotta make do with what you got!

We’re headed to a town called Mampong today, to visit the tailor, go to a “restaurant/bar” for some jollof rice and drinks, and to check out their market. I need to buy a mirror and a mop.

This is my third day in a row on the internet, so more posts looks promising! Wahoo! The internet in Jamasi has been fast lately.

Ok, bye!!!

I feel like it’s getting a little redundat to preface every blog with “so i know i haven’t written in a long time…” so im going to let you guys do the math on how long it’s been since i posted. ive never had ample time or time at all to sit down at a computer and post everything, so hopefully this can do some justice to my absence. firstly, let me just say that I MET THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I MET OBAMA. OBAMARAMA AND HIS BEAUTIFUL WIFE! he was recently in ghana here to meet prez mills and peace corps was invited to a farewell ceremony at the international airport before he took off for the US. at first we werent sure if us trainees would be allowed to go, but all peace corps volunteers were allowed to go, so we all met in accra and then headed over to the magnificent embassy where we got on these ridiculously awesome chinese buses with red carpets and tvs and reclining seats, and made our grand entrance to the airport. there were a lot of ghanaians there too, and almost every volunteer that was in country..which was awesome to get to meet them all. in line, i actually met a colunteer from togo that graduated from c of c! small world. anyway, after all the frisking, peace corps was led the the very front of the staging, right in front of the podium and right in front of air force one….which IS UNBELIEVABLY GINORMOUS! im pretty sure that plane itself is larger than ghana’s airport. it is gigantic! me being small and short, somehow found a way to squueze myself to the front of the thing, and after 1hr or so of waiting and standing on my tip toes to see what was all going on, he came!!!!! he gave a short speech alongside president mills, and then talked about peace corps!!!!!! it was awesome, cause we were all standing in the front with a PC flag and we all screamed so loudly when he mentioned us and when he told ghana that they should take their own initiative and follow our lead. THEN he came around with michelle and they shook hands and I SHOOK BOTH OF THEIR HANDS. as i was shaking his super sexy hands (thats for you meera…and yes they were nice), he said “thank you” as he gazed into my beautifully artificial sparkling green eyes. it was such a surreal experience, and even thinking about it now is so weird!ahhhhhhh, it feels like such a long time ago that that happened.

since then, we’ve gone back to training and spent another week at practicum which was beautiful. i taught the kids how to make paper airplanes and that was magical, because they had never done that before. maybe i mentioned that in the last blog, i dont remember. lots has happened. ahhhhh

right now i am at my site. we are on site visit right now, where we get to spend a week a the place we will eventually be spending 2 years, and thankfully i am replacing someone, so jess has been showing me the ropes of the school and the town of jamasi and introducing me to all the locals which is awesome. the place ill be living in is quite awesome! and huge! its on campus, because the school is a boarding school, so im right in the heart of that, but thats ok, because i have access to the kids all the time which is what i wanted. even after spending just a few hours with them, i can tell that they are amazing and its going to be absolutely wonderful. the place is like an apartment/ house thing. you walk in and theres a HUGE living room and then further in is the bedroom and the bathroom with a shower and sink. so i have running water and electricity! the kitchen is pretty sweet and stocked with goods. i have an oven and a stove!!!!! i can bake cakes! yes! and shes done such an awesome job of decorating! there are murals everywhere, done with chalk on chalkboard paint, which is fabulous! im so excited! jordan and raj, two of my really good friends, and my closest neighbors, are so ridiculously close. raj is about 3 mintues away by car, but definitely biking distance; jordan is about 15 minutes away!! wooooo.

the town of jamasi is quiet but on a hill so its overlooking these mountains which are beautiful and there is so much greenery!! i have yet to see any crazy animals, except a monkey on a leash the other day, and a slaughtered goat and chicken…oh and one day while i was eating breakfast in my homestay, my homestay mother was chopping up some frozen cow intestines….mmmmmmm. did i mention that ive become a vegetarian……obvious reasons, really.

homestay family has been wonderful and they were all excited to hear that i was going to get to meet obama. i had another get together at my house the other day, which was a great success. dance party! wooo.

uhhhhhhh theres probably a lot more that i havent put on here yet. oh wait. on our way to accra to meet obama, we passed thru a funeral going on. you must understand firstly that funerals are celebrations of life over here, so people drink and party and dance and have a good time. so as we were driving thru some town, there was a parade of people in black and red drinking and holding balloons made out of condoms and holding up the coffin which may or may not have been empty…but judging by the way they were “holding” it, im hoping that there was no body in there. it was getting tossed all over the place. there was also this one guy in this ridiculous scream looking mask that jumped onto the bus we were in , right by the window i was sitting next to, ontop of the ladder that was attached to that side of the van. it was hilarious.

oh man, i dont know what else to say! ive gotten a new phone number, so take note of it in the about me section! other than that, i miss you all so much and hope to hear from you all soon. continue sending mail, because its gonna get lonely here and hearing from you all makes my week!!\

hugs and kisses

ohhhh! i will try and post pictures sometime soon, once i have found a computer that is not infected with anything…so it might be a while.

hello all!! i have 15 minutes before this computer shuts off, so ill try to make this detailed. wooooo. practicum training started again this week, which is awesome. yesterday and today we got to work on our own batiks, which is going to be reallllly cool. they have these beautiful stamps ofthe sign alphabet, which i have waxed already onto my fabric! woo. i taught p3 the past two days, and we made puppets and then put on a puppet show today. it’s eally hard to sign “lets make a puppet show” so, i had some definite improvisation!
last week there was a shindig at my homestay…because my fam owns a bar. so most of the volunteers and trainees came, which was awesome. the dance off between us and the locals was pretty embarassing, but we danced nonetheless..which was really the whole point of the thing. my homestay parents had a great time, which was wonderful..and my brother just got a kick out of seeing white people shake it.
found out that people here eat cow skin and goat shalala…..you know. the usual. good thing im vegetarian now.
sunday, we got to take a trip to boti waterfall which were spectacular!!!!!!!! they’re only about 80 ft. high, but the pressure is amazing and we got drenched in the mist, which was so lovely considering it was about 1098234098234 degrees out then. despite the heat though, some of us took about a 2.5 hour hike, which was about 55 degrees uphill, on rocks….bah! it was wonderful, although my legs and buttocks are feeling the pain now. we made our way to something called “umbrella rock”, which is this simple formation of rocks that form a sort of shaded area. the best part though, was being able to climb up a rather sketchy homemade bamboo ladder to the top, and to be able to see all of ghana beneath us. just like the lion king (minus the hyenas and lions and giraffes and loin clothed men.)

got some fabric yesterday to make some clothes which i will go pick up in about a hour! yayayaya. so excited. there is this beautiful patchwork fabric made from scraps that they call “pc-pc” here! i got lots of that and am having a dress made! yaayy

nothing else that i can think of. i miss you all! havent received any calls (if you’ve tried…ahem lisa…ahem cough), but i hope to hear from you all soon!

!i am still alive! ive finally managed to find a computer that works reasonably well, which is great. things are continuing to going really well. all the visual arts teachers have been in koforidua for the past week doing something we like to call practicum. it’s where all the teachers are sent to different schools to practice teacher for a week. we are at a deaf school here, and just two days back i gave my first lesson in sign. it is too difficult to describe how unbelieveable this experience was. it was exhilirating to be able to communicate with kids with just hand motions and facial expressions. it was absolutely wonderful. i was assigned to teach primary 6 and junior high school 2 kids, and taught them lettering and perspective, respectively. it was great!!!!! our sign is limited, because we have only had a few lessons, but we knew enough to get the students to understand. we had evaluations during these classes, which we all did well on. its so great! ahhhhhhh!!

yesterday was the end of festival, which is a time where no music or drumming takes place, to honor the gods. to conclude the festival, everyone gathers at the chiefs palace to give firewood, so that the chief can cook enough food for the gods…something like that. my homestay daddy (he calls himself that…not me…) is the speaker to the chief, so he led the ceremony….because apparently the chief has been in the US for 2 years……who knows? i was sick, so i couldnt make it, which was apparently quite a spectacle, because my homestay daddy had to announce to everyone that i wasnt there to see him pour the libations…he then called me twice to see if i was ok! which i am now!!!!!!! just a passing fever.

other than that, things are sort of constant. we get up in the morning to do either attend classes..or to go teach, and when we get back to our homestays, we eat and do more work. training is intense and apparently the hardest part, but its where we get to bond with everyone…so la ti da.

i got a phone!!!! so all you lazy mofos out there, if you cant write me, please call me!!!!
el numero is 054 237 0228. skype has some plan where you can call ghana..or you acn text from skype or whatever. send snail mail too, because i dont know how often ill get to get on the net, and snail mail only takes about 1.5 weeks to get here!!!!! yayaya

miss you all wayyyyy too much, and cant wait to hear from you all!!!!