Well it seems it's been about 3 months since my last post. Wow. Where to start?
Well Christmas was amazing. I spent it in my village with all my friends here and I even had a few Peace Corps friends come. We all meet up early on Christmas morning and started cooking/drinking. We had goat and fufu with light soup which was delicious. We started with palm wine, which progressed to many other drinks. We hand a Ghanaian style "bar crawl" for most of the afternoon. Essentially we had to go and greet everyone in the few surrounding towns, and greetings are often accompanied with drinks, lots of drinks. Spending Christmas here wasn't quite the same as home but it was still a lot of fun. We went to the Wli waterfalls near Hohoe which was beautiful. It's about a 2 hour hike straight up the side of a mountain. Not easy-o. They warned us it'd be tough, but I didn't really take them seriously. It was worth it though. I got to check out another volunteer's site and his school. It's interesting to see the way other volunteers spend their days. For New Years we decided to head to the beach in Keta. It was interesting to explain the "New Years Kiss" tradition to Ghanaians. PDA is pretty uncommon here so the idea of a whole room full of people exchanging kisses at the stroke of midnight is a little bizarre for them. We decided that instead of paying 40 cedis (20 USD) a night to stay in the summer huts, we would sleep on the beach under mosquito nets. Not as comfortable as I thought it was going to be, especially because our mosquito net had quite a few holes in it so I was quite covered in bites by the end of the trip. The water was incredibly warm and the weather was wonderful so it was a nice vacation before school starting back up.
I made it to Accra to watch the Superbowl! It was a lot of fun, but also kind of weird being a group of Americans at a Spot freaking out about this game, that most Ghanaians only have a vague idea of.
Second term at school has started. I'm feeling really good about somethings and not so good about others. I've grown really close with my Form 1 students. I have the most classes with them, so I see them at least once every day. They're really starting to understand me, and do well in class. We're currently not teaching too much because the 6th of March is fast approaching. The 6th of March is the Ghanaian Independence Day. All schools put together "marching bands". I'm not sure if that's the name they give them, but a few students that are good with drums provide the music, while others who are good at marching will march. Schools from around the same area will meet to have a marching competition. It should be a lot of fun. We also have sports competitions coming up. Girls will compete in football, netball, and volleyball.
I've been working on a project proposal for a Community Health Fair. There will be 6 topics covered: HIV/AIDS, malaria, nutrition, hand washing, eye testing, and weight/blood pressure testing. It's in the very early stages right now but I'm really excited about it. Peace Corps does grants for work with HIV/AIDS so I'll be able to write a grant for that aspect of it to get money for testing supplies so a huge aspect of it will be a free HIV test.
AHH what else is new? 3 months has flown by so fast. In June will be 1 year, and another education group will be coming. I'm looking into be a trainer for them because I think it's something I'd really enjoy.
We've started work on setting up our library as a computer lab which is a huge step in the right direction.
My form 3 students are preparing to write their B.E.C.E. exam in a few months and they're all getting pretty nervous (so are the teachers).
I've developed a slight addiction to buying new fabric to have dresses made. It's getting quite expensive.
Mom and Dad sent me a new smart phone YAY! (thanks, love you guys bunches!) anyways I'm on Whats App so its like free for you guys to text me and for me to text you (or send videos/audio recordings). So if you have a smart phone the download Whats App and my number is +233540372697. I know I've forgotten a ton and I'll try to be more consistent with blog posting. Much love!
