one month down, 26 to go!

can you believe i've been living in ghana for a WHOLE month already?  i can't!  

everything is going great.  

this week the art folks will be in koforidua again.  since we work with deaf kids, we have to travel so we can practice teaching at a deaf school.  this week is our second (and final) week of practicum.  it's kind of funny; in america you get four years of teaching education and at least a whole semester of actual teaching time.  in ghana, we have two weeks.  last week, i taught for three hours.  this week will maybe be five.  i'm going to be so prepared!  it's ok.  we'll learn as we do, right?

so, want to hear about the fourth of july, ghana style?  i know you do!  well, our schedule is so full that they didn't even give us the day off from classes.  so we had eight hours of medical and safety sessions on saturday.  at five we were finally set free, so we all headed over to our favorite spot.  the owner there loves peace corps (the tradition of trainees gathering at this spot has helped his business tremendously).  he bought a bunch of hot dogs and grilled them for us!  hot dogs are very hard to find in ghana, and he even had heinz ketchup with them!  seriously, the best hot dogs i have ever had in my life.  also, a couple of guys put together a soundtrack of patriotic music, and someone had a beach towel with an american flag, so we were quite festive.  someone had some sparklers too.  it was a lot of fun.  best/weirdest part though, was the ghanaian response.  one guy was fascinated by the obrunis, and especially fascinated by the SINGING obrunis, so he pulled out his camera.  he then proceded to walk around and video tape us for probably ten minutes, just from a distance, like we were his friends or something.  quite odd.  perhaps a future youtube sensation?  

then sunday was scheduled as a free day, but our trainers put together an optional field trip for us.  we visited boti falls, which was great.  ghana really is a beautiful country.  the area where we are now is very wet (well, it's the rainy season now) and hilly/mountainous.  small mountains.  so it is lush green.  driving along, we see the silhouettes of the hills covered with trees and beautiful blue cloudy skies.  i haven't taken enough pictures of the landscape yet.  it's completely different here than it will be at my site, which will be flatter and more desert-like.  ghana has such a range of landscapes for a fairly small country.

anyway, that was the last couple of days.  

i'm typing this at night, in my room.  my homestay uncle and some random woman who is probably a relative just came and brought me "carpet" for my room.  it is a lovely green faux marble vinyl flooring that they cut with scissors.  my room looks pretty great now, as it was bare concrete before tonight.  i am living like royalty here!