I bless the rains down in Aaaafrica!

This morning I awoke to the relaxing sound of rain outside my window. And then when I was awake enough to remember that my laundry was out drying on the balcony, I bolted out of bed to go grab my clothes before they got another unintended rinse cycle, and got tangled in my mosquito net in the process.


My laundry stayed dry, thank goodness, and despite the abrupt awakening, it was a great way to start the morning. (Especially because my next door neighbor, who usually blasts hip hop first thing in the morning, was playing "Samson" by Regina Spektor instead, which was a very nice change. Definitely glad we had a music swap). But I just love it when it rains here. Back when it was still Harmattan season when the air was so hot, dry, and dusty all the time, there was one morning on my way to my internship where it started raining, and I think that was the first time rain had put me in THAT good of a mood. Even though the window on the trotro was leaking and getting me and the guy sitting next to me all wet. I was just glad not to be wet from my own sweat for once.


So it seems we're entering the rainy season now. And though it's still pretty hot and a lot more humid than it was before, it's really nice to not have the sun beating down on you constantly. And the cool breeze and the occasional sprinklings when I'm walking to class are pretty nice for cooling off. I'm really enjoying this weather, since it's a nice change after what feels like weeks and weeks of unrelenting sun and a constant 90 degrees.
Instead, I wore a sweater this morning. It was just delightful.


I had a really good weekend as well. Friday night I stayed in, but Saturday, we had another CIEE outing to a children's home in Haatso near where my internship is. We spent the day sanding and painting the walls, and hanging out with the kids a little bit. It was hard work because we had so many walls to paint, and by the end we were all just covered in dust, paint splatter, and sweat, but it was a really fun day. And later on after we'd showered and relaxed for a while, a few friends and I went out for pizza.


Then on Sunday, my friends Zoe, Tali, Kate, and I decided to do some more exploring of Accra, since we've been here for so long now (over 2.5 months, if you can believe it!) and haven't seen everything there is to see yet. So we went to the National Museum, near an area in Accra called Adabraka. Which I'm always tempted to call "Abracadabra" but unfortunately, that's not quite right.

Pretty cool mask. A rabbit, perhaps?

But the museum was really cool. Someone on our program told us not to go, because he said it sucked but we went anyway and I think it was worth it! Honestly, they had a lot of really cool stuff like old artifacts from all over West Africa and lots of information about old traditional cultures and stuff, which we really don't get much of a chance to learn about every day. I feel like I've been learning so much about modern Ghanaian culture in the cities, but not a whole lot about rural, traditional life in Ghana. So there was a lot of cool stuff that I learned. Like about the importance of puberty rituals, like when girls are initiated into womanhood and one of the things they have to do is swallow an egg whole. Or if a woman has twins and one of them dies, she has a doll made that represents the deceased twin, and cares for the doll as if it's a child until the surviving child is old enough to take care of it him/herself.  I just think stuff like that is so interesting. Here's what it looks like:

So then after the museum we went to go find somewhere to eat, and ended up at a place called White Bell, which was pretty much a place geared towards westerners and was overpriced, but it had a really nice atmosphere. And they had a lovely selection of music from artists like Enya, Elton John, and Dolly Parton. (?)


Since then, school has been going pretty well for me the past few days. I got my Twi test back and got an A on it, which is absolutely not any sort of indicator of my actual skills in Twi, which are nonexistent. I can deal with Twi just fine when it's written, but I'm kind of hopeless when I try to speak it. Which doesn't help me much since most Ghanaians don't even write Twi anyway. It's mostly just spoken, and English is more commonly used in writing. I'm working at my pronunciation though. It's just so hard to figure out the tonal aspect of it.


Speaking of school though, I'm beginning to realize how spoiled I'm becoming as far as getting work done goes. There isn't much homework here at all compared to the classes I take at UW. I caught myself complaining the other day about having to do my Twi homework, which consisted of writing out a whole six sentences. And I had a paper due last week in my international relations class, which I didn't even know about because I felt sick the day it was assigned and I wasn't in class. So I went up to the professor after class and asked him if we had an assignment due that day and he just said "yes, it's due if you have it, but if not you can turn it in later." Um. What?


Things are clearly much more relaxed here. But I'm taking a summer class like a week after I get back from this trip so I'm a little bit worried about getting back into the more stressful mindset of school in the US. Especially since it's a class that's four days a week for two hours a day and is only a month long but a semester's worth of material. Here, I only have class 3 days a week. And although classes last 2 hours, the dictation style of lecture makes it go at a much slower pace than I'm used to. So hopefully I can handle jumping right back into school when I go back to Madison in June.


Sooo anyway. This coming weekend is Easter, as I'm sure some of you are aware of. And though I'm curious to see what kinds of things they do for Easter around here, I'm almost certain it involves going to church for most of the day and I'm not so sure I want to do that. So since we have Friday through next Monday off, my friends Zoe and Chekwube and I might be going somewhere for a day trip to just get out of Legon for a bit. I don't know what we're doing yet though.


I will leave you with this: in honor of the rainy season, I give you one of my old fav's from the decade I'm kind of glad I missed..."Africa" by Toto :)

(I have no idea what point this video's trying to make. It's kind of bizarre. But you gotta love the song...)