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 :)