The Days go by...too quickly

As I realized that it was already the 2nd week of October days are going by faster than they are supposed to and I'm not happy about it. I also realized it was about that time for another post so here it goes.

My classes are still going pretty well, I'm fortunate not to have any that I dislike, but there are one or to that are hard to motivate myself to go to. My schedule during the week is pretty routine now, in between classes I spend my time at Pentagon (one of the student hostels) and after classes I spend time at ISH. My dad came in from Ohio last weekend, so I had to get used to not being in the house alone anymore. It's nice to see him and get to spend some of my free time with him, cause I don't see him that often in Ohio. Last week living at home got even more irritating to me trying to balance when I can go home and when I want to stay on campus. Like with any other university the less time you spend on campus the less time you get to meet people, and hang out with friends. It's easy to start feeling outcast when everyone has their late night conversations and calls each other to go get meals and your never included in that. This week I've made a conscious effort to try to balance my time with people, I'm getting better but the CIEE girls usually get less of my time cause they are hard to find (sorry), I'm working on it.

A recap of the weekend until today will probably be the easiest way to sum up my life here. Friday we went to a friend's friend's birthday party and an outdoor/indoor spot. Before we left of course there was some sort of set back like always...the rain. We've been joking around about how God doesn't ever want us to go out because it always starts raining, but it's seriously becoming too much. Out of the nights we've decided to go out I can only remember one where it didn't rain right before or as we were leaving. To stick to the trend as we waited very patiently for Petrina (my Ghanaian sis) to get dressed it started POURING even though it hadn't rained all week. It slowed down enough for us to leave finally and as we left the ISH parking lot all the lights in it and the 2 surrounding buildings went off. (I don't know what He is trying to say). It was cool but raining on and off so after we decided to leave we hit up Tantra and just kind of chilled the rest of the night, nothing too hype. The next day I stayed home until late in the afternoon and as soon as I got dressed..you guessed it it started raining..anyways. I met up with the guys and we went to an area near my house for Kwesi's (I wont use his nick name) birthday drink up. They cooked good food and we sat around just talking out side then went home pretty early. Sunday was chill, two of the girls and I watched movies on a friend's labtop and just listened to music as the lights went off for 30 minutes or so.

This week has been pretty routine with my classes. I have ALOT more free time now that one of my classes is done meeting but I've found different organizations to give my time to so it's cool. Yesterday after dance class El and I decided to go to On the Run (pizza/chicken/burger/ convince store) for 2-for-1 Tuesdays. As you can imagine it was more than packed and our wait for pizza was over an hour, but chilling in the parking lot brought interesting conversation. A few of the Pentagon boys met us there ( at the perfect time to shoo away some guys trying to spit game) and they got pizza from a further On the Run and came back before our pizza was done..and theirs was deep dish. We all went back to ISH and of course at the site of pizza others joined in. After good conversation they left and the four of us remaining played scrabble and talked until 4a.m. There is never a bad day spending time with my friends here. Almost everyday someone gets on someones nerves but thats to be expected and we start all over again the next day. This weekend my group is going to Kumasi, so next week I will bring you another adventure outside of Accra.

Random Days and Rainy Nights

So I took a hiatus from my blog (as Nana and Anand both rudely pointed out to me), but it was for reason. I guess I had so many thoughts in my head I found it tedious to decide what it was that I wanted to say. Nonetheless, here it goes, sorry to those of you who were actually keeping up with it.

I LOVE BEING HERE. School, which is usually a stressful thing for me as been cool. I like pretty much all my classes (it helps that I'm taking no science this semester) and despite some minor rescheduling I'm making the transition to learning here very smoothly. Its safe to say that I spend more time out of the classroom than in it, I'm going to start my volunteering soon so that should be interesting as well. The weather is starting to change as it hasn't been raining nearly as much as when we got here and the days are pretty warm.

So let me just start with this weekend since I've been away so long. I spend virtually all of my time with "the guys", my cousin Julian and his friends, UPenn, (sorry this is easier than individually naming you three), the girls from my program, and 2 other Ghanaian girls, and being around them has made this trip even better. They are all such cool people and we have too much fun together and very INTERESTING conversations. Friday we decided against going out in town and almost everyone came over my house and we ate and watched movies. It felt just like family as we they got on my nerves by arguing forever over what to watch, laughed, some slept, cleaned up and left at almost 5 a.m. Being the genius that I am I decided to have people over the night before my cape coast trip which departed at 6 am, needless to say I didn't sleep.

Saturday my group left for the weekend to Cape Coast which I knew would be a emotional, thought provoking, and inter sting trip. For those of you who don't know Cape Coast and Elmina are the famous sites of the British and Portuguese slave castles which sent a great number of the slaves to the U.S., the Islands and South America. Before going to the castles we went to the site where all of the slaves from the neighboring countries as well all came to have their last bath before being sent to the castles. Most of us had never heard of it and when are guide told us the history behind it, I all ready had a million images running through my head. We headed to the Elmina castle later that day and the experience was much of the same. I had been to the castle once before, but when your 10 years old and have never taken a history class being there doesn't have the same meaning. Elmina is my mother's hometown, and that brought the sentiment of being there to an even more personal level for me. I previously expressed my concerns with going in a rather large group, about 50 of us, and it came true as there were some people who just didn't take it seriously, one saying "if this wasn't a slave castle it would be a cool place to have a party". Luckily for me, starting at the last bath I tuned pretty much everyone out, there will always be fools, but its more likely in a big group. As I took pictures outside, I couldn't get out of my head the irony of something so ugly being surrounded by something so beautiful.

Sunday we woke up early and went to Kakum national park where we did a hike up to a mini course of 7 canopy bridges. I will call out by name Elonore, one of the girls, who I was extremely proud of for doing the hike despite being terribly sick all week including the day of the hike. Some people (who will remain nameless) freaked out and cursed and got angry, but still we all completed it and it wasn't really any worse than being on a roller coaster.

This week its back to school, I had my first assignment do this week, so hopefully I do well on that and we will see what adventures this week will bring. If its at all memorable I'm sure it will involve the rain.

This, that, and then some

First and Foremost I need to apologize to everyone who has been reading my blog. I spend very little awake time actually in my house so I have been seriously slaking on the updates but I promise you that I will update more often from now on. So now it's been over a week since you last heard from me so let me recap the week.

Last week classes were "supposed" to start, but because of the number of students and the lack of space available for class sizes, school didn't really start until yesterday, but I will get to that later. So Monday I went to get my student ID and officially register at the school and some of the girls and I went around the different departments to find out what classes were available and the time and such. Now for everyone in the U.S. let me explain that they don't do online registration for classes so please don't take it for granted. Basically it isn't difficult you just walk to the department you want to take a class in give them a passport photo or just write your name on a list depending on the class. Now the difficult part comes in dealing with some of the workers who are obviously annoyed at the number of students they have to deal with and are often not very helpful. Another problem was that your class time may or may not be there today or may have changed the next day. So my procrastination came to an advantage to me since I just waited until Thursday to register and pretty much everything was there. I didn't really do much the rest of the week, just familiarized myself with campus and hung out with my cousin Julian and his friends and the usual suspects previously mentioned.

The weekend started on Thursday, it was Francesca's birthday so we decided to go out, which turned out to be a bad idea because 1. she ended up not being able to come 2. the club we went to was whack on Thursday's. The good things that came out of it was we got to chill with Kakra and Trigga who are very sweet and hilarious, and because of some promotion Hayling and Jason did a freestyle battle which was very fun and we got a free bottle of champagne. (I won't say who technically won b/c I thought they were both really good)
Friday the UPENN crew departed to Kumasi but I had a good time without them lol. We had part 2 of Francesca's birthday celebration and Julian's friends (I'm still mad he ditched us) showed Camille, Francesca and I a very fun night. We went to our favorite place to eat CELSBRIDGE!! and chilled there until about 1 or 1:30a.m before we went to the club. Now I don't know about you, but in Ohio the club closes at 2a.m. sometimes 1:45 a.m. so I'm not used to how hard they do the night life here. We went to the same club as Thursday but this time it was packed, I don't like the DJ so much but it was fun. (I'm very critical of DJ's because I get tips from the best..Most Wanted) Anyways William, Ben and the rest of the guys were sweethearts and they definitely wore us out, we aren't that used to leaving the club at 4:30 am. Being here is making me actually like the club again because people juist go to have fun and enjoy life, not so much fight, stunt, and play whack music. Saturday I helped Julian move into campus and ate at Celsbridge again..I know its getting bad.

Class officially started yesterday and it was pretty hectic. I woke up EARLY to get things from the bookstore and get to my 9:30 a.m. class on time since I don't live on campus (even though I'm always there). The bookstore was pretty small for a school of I believe 30,000 students. Surprisingly they don't try to rip you off and charge you double or triple what your book is worth like at Ohio State, my Twi book was roughly $4. After arriving at my class and waiting for awhile someone announced that the class was moved to 5:30 p.m. so we all filed out and Ashley and I went to ISH ( International Student's Hostel) to waste away three hours before our next class. We left to our next class early only to find out when we sat down that there were two other classes scheduled in the place at the time and neither was English. So we trekked to the department to find out where our class was and after sitting down it wasn't even worth it. I had an American professor, and once again I didn't all of a sudden start hating Americans I just really came here for the Ghanaian experience, but that didn't even bother me as much as she was just a bad lecturer. So after Ashley and I almost fell asleep lol I went to my Twi class (one of the most used Ghanaian languages) and my professors are very fun and enthusiastic. After that I once again went to history class only to find that it was postponed until next week because they had scheduled two different classes at the same time, needless to say I'm learning to relax alot. Today I had my first Ghanaian traditional dance class and I love it. Not only is it fun but I need the workout, all this food is insane, and I figure my class plus walking around this huge campus should be enough. That's all for now and I promise I'll try not to let a whole week go by again without me writing.

Now it begins

I've been wanting to write a new post for the past two days, but lack of internet at key creative moments has slowed the process. The days are going by in a rush and are so packed with orientations and getting to know people and the campus that it has been a whirlwind that is almost still surreal to me. Everyday I feel so blessed to know that this is going to be my home for the next few months in a completely different world.

I met my group on Thursday night for dinner and I was somewhat disappointed about the lack of blacks in the group. Out of forty-one students seven are African-American. I've had mixed feelings about it because anyone whose ever spoken to me knows I'm not in anyway prejudice, but the experience you get as a "black American" coming to Africa is very different from the experience that white Americans get when they come here. The consensus when we discussed why people choose Ghana out of over 100 other different places offered was that all of the black students came to find something of their history or of themselves that they wanted to get closer to and most of the white students came to be different from their friends who were going elsewhere ( mainly Europe). Granted I do commend them as well as all of the black students including me for stepping out of their comfort zone to come somewhere new, but I definitely sense more of a meaning to it in the black students. Besides certain little things, most of my group members are cool interesting people, and I do think that many of us are here to embrace the cultural experience, which matters most to me. Our coordinators are so fun and helpful it's nice to have people who love their jobs be in charge of helping you in a completely new experience. I'm definitely ready to get out of the group mentality though and just do things with some people because to be honest unless your one of my good friends..I really don't want to go to the slave castle with thirty something white people, but anyways I hope that didn't sound harsh.

Besides the numerous orientation events with my group I've been spending most of my free time with the UPENN family (Hayling, Ashley, Jason) and two girls from my group who are mad cool Francesca and Camille. We went on our first late night excursion Thursday and went clubbing with Francesca's cousin and friends. After being bamboozled one of the friends and going to what we later found out was a teenage club we went to another one with off age people ( and many over age possible grandfathers). I can honestly say that I haven't had that much fun going to a club in over a year. We were being completely outlandish and wilding out to every song but we couldn't help it. The atmosphere was cool the music was good and everyone was just having a good time, besides the old dudes trying to hit on us I have no complaints, good thing for having Jason around he is our protector. We also had some minor hitches as we went from place to place that night. After stopping at one of the night police barriers one policeman having a bad day decided to pull over our taxi for having four people in the back, and unfortunately for us the second car of people we were with also had four people in the back so that didn't help. After some convincing he just told us to go and everything was cool. That was one of the funnest most random nights ever and it was only the first week. Last night was alot more chill..we went to eat.. and Hayling and Camille almost choked on the spices..but the food was great and the conversation was good, some of Nana's friends that he met in Ghana came to join us, my cousins came with us as well and we came back to my house for a little bit. I'm so excited to keep meeting such cool people, and when school starts it should get even more interesting...stay tuned :).

My Arrival

So, I'm usually not a blogger, but after reading Jason and Hayling's blogs (my boyfriend's band-mates/roommates also here in Ghana) I thought it would be pretty selfish of me to have this experience and not share it. The fact that I've been asleep for the past 6 hours while they turned our electricity off and now am wide awake also helped in the decision (they use the electricity from the huge dam here..but it has barely been raining the past year or so, and every few days in the evening they may turn off the power to save energy) .so here it goes. I arrived on Sunday night after a loooong but otherwise smooth almost 24 hour journey from Ohio. My experience is a little different since I've been to Ghana before, but I'm sure this trip will be much different than the rest. I've never been here in August and it was a very cool evening, which I was pretty happy about. My dad is back in Ohio so I arrived to an almost empty house ( a relative and two others who help my dad around the house).

On Monday morning I woke up to my cousin Julian skipping work to come see me, which I was happy about since no one else was around yet..(thank goodness my dad has the internet). After Julian went back to work I decided to unpack (very proud of myself) and I realized that I always pack way too freaking much (guess I didn't learn how to pack for the overhead bin-SMDEP). Anyways, after arranging my room I went to the grocery store to get a few things and on the ride over decided that I had to get reacquainted with the forceful to say the least Ghana driving. I'm pretty sure two tro tro's were inches away from the car as I sent tensely in the passenger seat praying they didn't scratch it.

Today I went to Univ. of Ghana (Legon) to welcome Ashley, Hayling, and Jason (all UPENN fam) to Ghana..but unfortunately they weren't around oh well..they called me later so I'm sure I'll see them tomorrow. The campus is big.. I mean I do go to Ohio State..but I didn't expect the campus to be almost the same size.. I'm sure to get lost and feel like a freshman my first week..or two. Unlike walking around OSU there were nothing but black students walking around, which kind of excited me. Even though I haven't done much lately..being here just gives me this calm I'm not used to. Completely different sounds, smells, scenery...definitely nothing you could ever see in Ohio. People may look at me cause of my "American" accent, but they definitely don't look at me cause I'm black..I have to say I love the feeling of being here.

So now it's past 1 a.m. and I think that's all I want to say for now. I'll try to do this every week and I hope to give you a vision of my trip, but I can't promise I won't get tired of doing this in the next few weeks. I have orientation on Thursday, so I'm sure I'll have more interesting things to say. Pictures also to come...