This is Ghana.

My internship is starting to get more and more interesting now that I feel like I'm getting to know the people better.

I'll start with a little intro to everyone. There's my supervisor, Naa, who I never really see because she's so busy that she rarely has time to eat. She's both the CEO of WAAF and the head doctor for the clinic. Then there's Jennifer, who is my other supervisor, and I work with her the most. She just moved back to Ghana from the States, where she went to grad school in Illinois. Her husband actually lives in Madison now, which is pretty cool that she has that connection to where I live. Jennifer's pretty much my favorite, so I hope she can come see me if she's ever visiting the US.

Then there's Eddie, who is super confusing, because he has an extra-british sounding accent, but has lived in the US for a really long time, and the other interns and myself can't figure out whether he's married to Naa or not, but no one wants to be the one to ask. Everything about him is a mystery.

Then there's the miscellaneous other staff, who get yelled at by Eddie every 10 minutes for not getting stuff done.

Eddie's interesting, though. He freaks out constantly, but at the same time he's a pretty nice guy, and very personable when he's in a good mood because he's obsessed with networking and stuff like that. So one minute he's storming into the office ranting about the people in the office next door because they apparently never get any work done (he always blames Ghanaian culture for that. He'll rant on and on about the lack of productivity, and then just angrily conclude, "well, this is Ghana…") and then he'll just apparently forget about it, sit down, and start chatting excitedly about the proposals we're doing to start up some corporate wellness programs around Accra. Today he was dealing with some major crisis in the office and yelling at the accountant really intensely for some mistake he made, and then just plopped down in a chair across from me and got excited about networking again. He definitely has some occasional mood swings, which sort of puts everyone on edge. It's not that he's mean or anything. He's just very, very intense about a lot of things.

Speaking of the "this is ghana" comment…it's been really interesting to be working with Ghanaian people like Eddie and Jennifer who have lived in the US for years and have returned to Ghana. They definitely have a lower tolerance for a lot of things that most Ghanaians just seem to quietly tolerate. For instance, Jennifer just moved back here from the US just a few months ago, and she talks about how hot it is more than anyone I've met here. Today she gave me a ride to the trotro stop because she didn't want me walking that far in the heat. It's only like a 10 minute walk, and I was perfectly fine walking since I'm just kind of used to it now, but she insisted. I really appreciated it though.  She also went on a rant one day about how much she hates all the potholes on the roads here, and that the thing she missed about the US the most was driving on roads without any potholes. She also really misses Red Lobster.

And as I mentioned how Eddie's pretty intense about things, he seems to have a severe lack of patience with Ghana as a whole, and is always comparing it to the US. Today he was talking about how he heard about a little girl who died of malaria because her doctor gave her the wrong medicine, and then that turned into a rant about the medical system here. Which this time, he ended his angry rant with "ugh, but this is Ghana, you can be perfectly fine and then just be dead the next minute."

Well, shit. Ghana may be a developing country, but it's definitely not that bleak.

I hope he doesn't make comments like that to all Ghanaians, because I'm sure he offends people a lot by saying stuff like that. He says ridiculous things like that all the time around the office. I mean, of course it's true that Ghana has a lot of problems. But it still has such a long way to go in the development process and he just has so little patience for it. Which I guess in the long run, maybe it'll be good for WAAF that he won't tolerate any of it, because he's been really pushing people to do certain things like improve the technology they have access to, which can help move the organization along much faster. But anyway, I guess I just find it interesting how differently they feel about Ghana after having lived in the US. I think they both still love living here though. Or at least Jennifer does. Eddie, I have no idea.

But I really like the people who work at WAAF. And I'm really learning a lot from them about non-profit work and healthcare advocacy and outreach. I can't tell you all how happy I am that I switched, because this is exactly the kind of stuff I wanted to learn about with this whole experience.

While I'm on the topic of my internship though, if anyone reading this has any sort of organization or group that would maybe like to help me organize a fundraiser for WAAF, please let me know. It has come to my attention recently that the organization's budget is extremely tight and there's not much extra money to do a lot of the outreach things that they want to do. For instance, we just had a health fair this week that was supposed to be a big thing, like with lots of booths with information about preventative healthcare and free screenings for HIV, but because they didn't have enough money in the budget for promotion of the fair, very few people came and it was kind of a flop. One of my responsibilities has been researching funding opportunities like grants, but from what I can tell, there's really not much of that out there. So if anyone wants to help out in any way, send me an email and let me know! (hcgoodno@gmail.com)

On an unrelated note, I've been feeling so loved today. It's just been such a good day. As far as interactions with people on a day to day basis go, some days can be a little irritating, like if I get called an oburoni one too many times by perfect strangers, or if I'm in crowded areas where salespeople won't stop grabbing my arms or something like that. Other days just warm my heart, like today.

It all started early in the morning on my way to WAAF, when I stopped to buy my favorite dough balls for breakfast and the woman gave me two instead of one. Then, because I ate two I was feeling kind of chunky for a while, until Jennifer told me that I needed to eat more so I can gain weight and then I felt a little bit better. Like I said, she's my favorite. And then she gave me a ride to the trotro stop after work.

Then, I got home a few hours later and got a call from a customer service representative from the airtel phone company, because I apparently didn't fill out a form correctly for the SIM card for my internet modem. And the lady only took about a minute to get the information she needed from me, but we were on the phone for a good 5-7 minutes because she just kept chatting and asking me about what I'm doing in Ghana and what I'm studying and how school's going and other random stuff. She was super nice.

And then later I went to get dinner from my favorite crazy little lady that sits on the side of the road selling food and calls her little enterprise "tantalizing." Every dish she makes she describes as "tantalizing." And she has t-shirts with her own face printed on them. She does make really good food though, I get dinner from her a few times a week now. So I went to go buy dinner and she asked me if I was the girl she talked to whose mommy was coming to visit tonight. And I just said, "no, I wish! I miss my mommy." She just said "oh no, then I will be your mommy. Then any time you miss your mommy you just come to me, okay?" So I told her I'd call her Maame Louise. And then she threw in an extra bag of salad with my dinner. Win.

It was a pretty good day. Everyone I talked to just made me happy. Except maybe Eddie. But he was in crisis mode so whatever. You can't have it all.

Festering wound update: still kind of festering (?), but I think it might be on its way to healing...I hope. I don't know anything about burns or infections or what it's supposed to look like at this point in the healing process. I know this is a stupid thing to request, but if anyone is a doctor or a nurse or knows someone who is and can look at a picture and tell me whether or not I need a leg amputation, I will pay handsomely. Not really. But I'll take a picture and send it, because I really would like to know if I should go get more antibiotics from the doctor because I ran out yesterday and now I'm nervous about getting a fever again. I would ask the nurses who sometimes change my bandages, but I don't know if I really should trust their judgement sometimes because one of them told me it was fine when it was clearly at its worst and needed medical attention. That was when I had a fever.

Tali and I decided after this whole little ordeal that at some point in the near future we need to take some sort of first aid class or an EMT course or something so that this kind of thing never happens again. If I had known anything whatsoever about first aid, I probably wouldn't have to worry. But unfortunately all I know how to do is put on a bandaid.

I think I've rambled enough for one day. Here's another music video! It's another really popular one called "Lapaz Toyota." Lapaz is a place near Accra. I'm not sure what it has to do with toyotas. But here you go.

Oooh chale...

Since my trip last weekend, I've been having some issues that have prevented me from doing anything fun pretty much all week. After getting my burn checked out and starting a really high dosage of Amoxycillin, I came down with a fever on Tuesday night. I had chills and aches and felt like crap in general, but I decided to wait and see if I felt better the next day. I did feel better on Wednesday, but I still had a fever and was concerned so I went to the hospital yet again to get checked out. I told them I had an infection but they gave me a blood test first to rule out malaria. It wasn't malaria, though I feel like it still could have been serious if I hadn't gotten it checked out. The fever really was from the burn infection so they took me off the amoxycillin and put me on two new antibiotics used to treat staph infections to take several times a day. Now, with all my medicines combined, I'm up to taking around 16 pills a day, which might not be that much for some people, but it's a lot for me to remember to take in one day. It's been a bit of a headache to deal with everything related to this burn, but I think my leg is getting much better (from what I can tell at least) and I haven't had a fever since Wednesday, so that's all that really matters!

The lucky part is, we didn't have class all last week because the professors called a strike. So at least I didn't have any notes to make up due to being sick. I think classes are on again for next week, but I haven't actually heard any news about that lately. I'm just speculating.

In other news, I got a care package from my mommy and daddy on Friday! What's bizarre about getting packages here though is that you have to go to the post office and bargain for them. Bargaining. At the post office. Where (one would think) prices should be fixed. Oh, no sir. Not in Ghana. But I failed at bargaining for it anyway. The woman would not budge, but other people on my program have had varying amounts of luck with bargaining for theirs. Some people can get it down to about 10 cedis, others have had to pay really high amounts, like 30 or 40 or more, but I guess it depends on what the person sent you. But you can bargain it down. I was just unsuccessful.

So I thought that process was odd, but bureaucracy seems to work in strange ways here. It works in strange ways anywhere, I guess, but at least at home we don't have to bargain when using the postal service. It just makes things a wee bit more stressful.

But on the bright side, I redeemed myself and bargained my way to a super cheap cab ride home from downtown Accra afterwards so I was feeling pretty good about that. Until the cab driver turned down the volume of the Nigerian preacher speaking on the radio so he could give me his own intense 20-minute lecture about Christianity on the way home, and about how all the muslims and other various non-believers are going to hell, etc. I just sat quietly. He didn't really care for my input anyway, and it wouldn't have mattered one way or the other to tell him what I thought of his rant, so I just let him talk and talk and talk. And talk. People are very religious here, just in general. And are often very, very outspoken about their beliefs. I can fill an entire blog post about that subject though. I will eventually. I have yet to attend a church service here though, so maybe after I find time to do that I will write about it. It's on my bucket list of things to do here though, because I've heard that church here is quite the experience.

I don't have much else to add this time, and this is kind of random, but since I haven't shared much pop culture in a while I'll leave you with another hit song from Ghana. Possibly soon to be a hit in the US? I have no idea, because I don't actually really like this song all that much, but I heard that Kanye just signed this guy onto his record label. This song is called "Oliver Twist." Which I have heard about as much, if not more, than Azonto. (I apologize for the slightly scandalous music video.)

In addition, if anyone reading is a facebook friend of mine, if you want a good laugh, check out the rap my mom wrote and posted on my wall. (May help to read my previous post, if you haven't already.) That is all. And thanks, Mom, haha :)

Weekend in the Volta Region

Last Friday morning my friend Tali and I left for the Volta region. I don't have class on Fridays, so we left at about 6 in the morning and left to catch a trotro to Hohoe, which is about four hours away from Accra. From what I've described about trotros so far, you'd think it'd be pretty hellish to be on one for that long, but it's actually not that bad. We got on one with a really nice amount of leg room, which is pretty ideal for me. Usually those things don't accommodate my legs, so I have to sit awkwardly sideways, but the one we took was pretty comfortable. So we got off about three hours in to the ride at a village called Tafi Atome, where they have a monkey sanctuary. When we got off we were planning on taking a taxi, but instead we met these two guys who offered to take us on their motorcycles instead for quite a bit cheaper than a taxi. It sounded like fun, and I had never ridden a motorcycle before, and there weren't any taxis around anyway, so we did it. And it was so much fun. The scenery around there was amazing too. My driver's name was Elvis. He was cool, but he failed to warn me about the exhaust pipe, and so when we got to the monkey sanctuary I got off on the wrong side and I hit my calf against the pipe and burned my leg. I wasn't worried about it because it actually didn't hurt at all after that, but it started looking worse and getting more painful in the next couple of days, so I went to the hospital on Sunday night and it turns out that not only is it a second degree burn, but it's also really infected. Yum. It's all good though. They gave me antibiotics and I'm going to go back pretty frequently to get the bandage changed.

But in any case, the monkey sanctuary was really awesome. The tour guide brought a bag of bananas and was calling the monkeys out as we were walking through the forest, and it took a while but they eventually showed up. So she had us hold the bananas in one hand really tightly, and they just come right up and jump on you and eat right out of your hand. I was so excited. Except it was kind of scary when two of them started fighting over the banana I was holding when they were on top of my shoulders. I got a scratch on my arm from one of them out of that little tiff. (I immediately thought of that one Hey Arnold episode where Helga gets scratched by a circus monkey or something and starts thinking that she got a rare monkey disease where you turn into a monkey…if anyone knows what I'm talking about…I know Stephie knows.)

And then after that we went to another nearby village where they weave authentic Kente cloth. We learned about the history of it, like how it was one of the first methods of weaving clothing in Africa and how the patterns all mean something. And they gave us a tour of the village and showed us how it's made and then both Tali and I bought a strip of fabric for ourselves. They sell Kente cloth at art markets all around Ghana, but I thought it would be cool to buy it at that village since I met and talked to the guy who made it. His name was Mowli, which I guess is a different name for Emmanuel. Here's a picture of him wearing the kente strip I bought from him:

I thought that village was really cool though. Pretty much everyone who lives there knows how to weave, because they all start learning around age 7, both men and women. And there are steps to the learning process too, like you have to learn how to make the threads into yarn before you can even start learning how to weave, etc. So that's basically how the village makes their living, by just weaving and selling the fabric to the markets in Accra and Kumasi. It was really amazing to watch them make it too, because they can do it so quickly! It was very cool.

So after that we took another hour-long shared taxi ride into Hohoe, where we caught another taxi to Wli, which was the village where the hotel was. It's so beautiful in that village. We were surrounded by mountains and no matter where you looked it was just a fantastic view. The village was really rural and remote, and we couldn't even get cell service where we were. Which wasn't bad, except for the fact that Tali and I were waiting for two of our other friends, Zoe and Rachel, to show up at the hotel that night and we realized after we got to the area without cell service that we had forgotten to tell them the name of the hotel. Whoops. But there were only two hotels in the area within a five minute walk from each other so they found it just fine.

So then on Saturday, Zoe and Rachel went off and did the hike up to the Wli waterfalls, and Tali and I stayed and hung out around the village for the day. On Sunday we did the hike and the other two went to see the monkey sanctuary on the way back to Accra.

I can honestly say without exaggerating that this hike was the most physically challenging thing I have ever done in my entire life. But it was really rewarding. So there are two parts to the hike, the lower falls and the upper falls. It takes about 45 minutes to walk to the lower falls, and it's all just a flat walk. That part was fine. Then we started the hike to the upper falls. And it was insane.

First of all, we had this character of a tour guide named Wisdom Mighty. He was super chatty and had pretty much boundless energy. He did the hike in flip flops and was just trotting along, chatting on his cell phone and making excuses to his friends about why he wasn't at church that morning. He did all this while climbing an effing mountain without even breaking a sweat. Meanwhile Tali and I are trailing about fifty feet behind him, huffing and puffing and "sweating like pregnant fish" as he playfully described it, and begging for water breaks about every ten minutes. It was a hell of a hike. And by that, I mean it was hell. Except there were pretty views the whole way up! So I guess that took my mind off of it for very short periods of time, when I wasn't concentrating on trying not to faint/vomit. And there was one point where Wisdom stopped us, took off his shoes, and disappeared for like five minutes into some tangled bushes up this steep incline and came back with some fruit called Angaa or something like that. It was extremely sweet, and tasted kind of odd. I don't know how to describe it. Maybe like some sort of weird fruity jelly candy. Or maybe like lychee fruit, but even sweeter than that.

Also, here's a picture of me ready to pass out, while Wisdom is chatting away on his phone in the background:

So by the time we got up to the falls, we had been hiking for a little over two hours. (Imagine doing one of those stair climber machines for that long on uneven steps with a walking stick. That's how I felt.) Zoe and Rachel told us that the top would be worth it, and for the entire hike up, I didn't believe them because it was so exhausting. But it really was worth it. I don't know if it was how beautiful the falls were or just the sense of accomplishment, but being up there was just wonderful. Plus we got to sit down and enjoy the mist and eat the crackers and cookies we brought along while Wisdom taught us some Pidgin phrases like "Eyy Chale day break" which means good morning. And he taught us the hand signal that means "one love".  And then we had a little sing along, to the tune of All in One by Bob Marley. (I think we were a little loopy from exhaustion by that point.) But it was fun. Until we had to hike back down. It took less time than the hike up, but it was just as difficult because it took a lot more concentration not to lose my balance. My legs felt like jelly and I almost fell several times, and I was so exhausted and almost to the point of having a two-year-old style temper tantrum because I just wanted a shower and a bed more than anything I've ever wanted in my life. But we got back to the bottom in about an hour and a half or so and headed back to Accra that afternoon. I was fine again once I had rinsed off a little bit at the hotel, had my wound re-dressed, changed into dry clothes, and was safely on a trotro waiting to head back home with a cold sachel water in one hand and ice cream in the other, being entertained by the guy trying to sell these little booklets that seemed to contain all kinds of random information ranging from chinese zodiac signs to premature ejaculation. Don't ask me what that was about, because I have no idea.

But overall I had a really great weekend. It's funny how you can sometimes look back on things like that hike afterwards, and be glad you did it and only concentrating on the really great part and the sense of accomplishment, rather than the fact that getting to the falls was so insanely difficult. Or seeing this festering, infected burn wound as a memory of a really fun day instead of regretting taking that motorcycle. I have no regrets about the weekend whatsoever. Every painful or otherwise difficult moment brought me something else to look back on with great memories. And now I'll probably have some really nasty scar on my leg that will have a bit more of a story behind it. Which, I admit, will be kind of cool because right now the only scars I have are from minor surgery and from when I fell off my scooter in fourth grade. (#firstworldproblems)

I also enjoyed this weekend because I really enjoy being in more remote, less crowded areas. And walking down quieter streets, hearing "Hello, you are welcome!" by the nice people who live there. And the hotel owners took really good care of me with my burn and everything, and everyone around was just very welcoming and friendly. And the little kids were adorable too. One little girl who looked like she was maybe two or three years old just walked up to me, and grabbed onto my pointer finger and just waddled down the street next to me and wouldn't let go for a long time.

It was a really nice place to stay. I loved it there.

Happy 55th birthday, Ghana!

Last Tuesday was independence day in Ghana! My friend and I got up super early and took a trotro into Accra to independence square, where we heard they hold a parade every year. It was very formal, not really quite what I was expecting. It was basically a military march around the square. And then President John Evans Atta Mills gave a speech, though I could neither see nor hear it. But some cannons were fired and some planes flew overhead  trailed with red, yellow, and green smoke, so that was pretty cool. The ceremony ended before lunchtime, so we met up with a few other people in my program, along with one girl's host brother and his friends. They showed us around the area for a bit. We sat and watched this brass band in a park for a while and then this random Ghanaian family came up to us, gave me a baby, asked us all to take a picture with them, and then invited us to the beach. We didn't go. But I thought that was a little strange. Another example of the super-friendliness of Ghanaians. :)

Later on the girl's host brother took us to an art market a few blocks away. Markets in Accra are a bit stressful for me. You can't really just leisurely browse and pick out what you want. You're pulled in about 6 different directions by people saying "come, oburoni, I'll give you good price! Sssss Hello! Sistah!" (Hissing is how people get each other's attention.) But anyway while we were there my friend met this dude who pulled us away to show us his shop where he makes African drums. We met the guy's brothers too and they all played drums for us and then spent a while teaching the two of us how to play, which was really fun. Then after that we just got lunch and I caught a trotro back to campus. So that's how I spent my Ghanaian independence day. But I guess going to all the events around here isn't really the norm. Most people just stay home with their families and just relax and enjoy the day off, or go to the beach or something like that. There were a lot of people at the ceremony in the morning, but not nearly as many as I expected there to be. Also, the traffic on the way there was virtually nonexistent. The trotro drive that usually takes about an hour and a half on a typical Tuesday only took like 20 minutes.

Speaking of which, I don't know if I've mentioned how bad the traffic is around here…it's pretty ridiculous. When I was still going to the police hospital twice a week, I had to leave by around 6 to get there by 8am. Now it's a little better with my new internship because I go in the opposite direction to a smaller city called Haatso instead of heading to Osu, which is a much busier area. But the commute always kind of relaxed me in the mornings. It's funny, because I would normally be super annoyed by traffic in the US, but here I can just sit back and listen to the radio on the trotro, which is usually some sort of reggae station. I only get annoyed if I'm on a particularly uncomfortable trotro or one that's packed beyond capacity, or if the radio station playing is one of the twi talk-show stations and it's so loud that I can't hear myself think. But besides those situations, I'm getting really used to this system. I like it because it's really cheap and easier to use than the metro buses in Madison. All you have to do is wait for one to show up that's going in the same direction, and get on. You don't have to look up bus times, or routes or schedules or anything. There's just a million of them so you know you'll catch one eventually. In fact, I should start my own trotro system back in Madison with my van. Ten cents anywhere around campus, 30 cents to the west side, 40 cents to the east side, 60 cents to middleton or other suburbs. And my trotro will have to have a name like the ones here do. They're usually plastered with religious sayings or whatnot, but I think mine will just say something bucky-related to cater to my campus passengers. But I'm still only going to play reggae, to give people a true trotro experience. And wear down the van so much that the door is literally held on by a frayed rope.

I also don't mind traffic because it's fun sometimes to just look out the windows and see what people are selling on the street. You can actually buy almost anything imaginable out the window in traffic. There are numerous people selling sachel waters (purified water in bags), fruit, fried dough, bread, mints, gum, plantain chips, hard boiled eggs, sodas, and then more random stuff like sponges, razors, toilet paper, towels, jewelry, sunglasses, and toys. One guy tried to sell me a musical caterpillar that lights up. He was really persistent, too. And I saw another guy selling mini toy guitars one time. (I've been going through guitar-playing withdrawal so badly lately that I actually considered calling him over so I could buy one. But I decided that would probably be a little weird.) But it's pretty interesting. At first I thought the whole system was kind of odd, but if one day you leave home realizing you've forgotten something, there's really no need to go back because worst case scenario, you can probably just buy whatever you need on the street. It's even better than a convenience store because you don't even have to get out of your car. When I get back to work at Walgreens, I'll have some new ideas for how they can up their sales. I'll just hawk our suggestive sell items on East Washington. Although I'm sure that's illegal. Which is lame.

Anyway, happy belated Ghanaian independence day to all. Hoorayyy

Taboos. And some more travelling.

Sorry it's been a while!

Went to Kokrobite beach last Saturday, which is about an hour or so drive from Accra. It was a really last minute decision to go. I heard about everyone's plans the night before and was considering going, and then in the morning decided not to because I woke up too late. But then as I was heading out to go find something to do by myself around the city, I ran into my friend outside of ISH just as he was getting in his car to go meet everyone there. So I ran and got my stuff and went with him. The beach was beautiful, and it was just perfect weather that day. Later at night, we listened to a live reggae band (even got on stage at one point) and had drinks and chatted and walked on the beach a bit. It was wonderful because it was cool and breezy at night and there were so many more stars out than there are when you get closer to Accra. It doesn't sound like a very eventful day, and I know my descriptions of things are lacking in detail, but I think it was probably the best day I've had since I've been here. I was just in the best mood all day. I'm not really much of a writer so it's hard for me to put it into words.  I just really love the coastal areas further away from the city, like Kokrobite and the area around Cape Coast. It just has a much different feel than Accra does, in that it's much more laid back and relaxed, the people seem more chill, and the scenery is beautiful. I love it so much. Not that there's anything wrong with Accra, but it is nice to get away from the busier feel of the city every now and then.

On an unrelated topic, I started working at West African AIDS Foundation on Thursday, and I loved it. I'm so excited about this, because it's exactly what I wanted to do. We went to a primary school in Haatso to give them a presentation on HIV/AIDS. I mostly observed, but it was still really interesting. I was blown away by how much the kids knew already about not only HIV, but sex ed in general. They were all around 9-14 years old, but they all just knew so much. Much more than I think they teach at the same level in American schools. (I was pretty shocked by some of their questions, but I won't get into that. It's funny that something that came out of a 9 year old's mouth is too inappropriate for my blog, but that's the truth.) I was surprised to see how non-taboo that subject is here. Which I think is actually a good thing because then it's easier to get people to talk about stuff like HIV when it's much more of a problem here than in the states.

I used to think that sex was really taboo here, because they told us in orientation that public displays of affection and stuff like that are pretty taboo, but I've slowly come to learn that sex is actually talked about quite a bit. Even just the other day, we had a guest speaker in my development studies class who was talking about population growth and family planning, and he ended up giving way too much personal details about his own sex life and use of different types of birth control. It was super unnecessary to share, in my opinion, but whatever. There's only 13 of us in that class, all from my program, and this speaker asked the only guy in our class if the pull-out method works for him. I couldn't believe he thought that was appropriate to ask someone. That aside, it was pretty hilarious.

That's another thing. I feel like there's some discrepancies between sex education in the US and sex ed here. Because we had a professor of population studies recommending the pull-out method to us as a form of birth control that is considered legitimate in Ghana, whereas in the US everyone's taught in sex ed class that it's not a reliable method by any means. We told him that, and he was actually surprised.

So anyway, all that was kind of interesting to me.

But back to the school thing. It was so much fun to go there and see what primary schools are like. They're really disciplined and the teachers seemed really strict. The kids stood up every time they asked or answered a question, and they all stood up when an adult entered the room, and other stuff like that.  They were all so adorable too. They called me Auntie Hannah and were begging me to come back next week. I think I will, because I loved them so much. And the fact that they called me Auntie made me just die. I'm used to being awkward around small children and so the fact that these kids loved me so much made me so happy. I realize it mostly had to do with the fact that I'm an oburoni, but whatever.

So today, we took a day trip to the eastern region to a city called Aburi, where we toured a cocoa farm and a botanical garden and stopped at a street lined with little shops that sold wood carvings. So I bought a few gifts for people and practiced my bargaining skills. I was aight. Got some cool stuff for pretty cheap.

Overall it was a pretty good day. Aburi is so beautiful. It's on a hilltop and the view while driving up there was amazing. And the gardens were also really beautiful. The more I see of this country, the more I feel like it'll be really hard to leave when it's time to. I can't wait to travel more. I'm starting to plan a trip to Togo with 3 other people a couple weeks from now, and eventually I want to head up north to Mole National Park, where you can see lots of elephants and stuff. Other than those trips and the 2 I have left with CIEE, that's probably about all I can do without going broke. But I'm really excited about it.