Waezo

5:32 pm Ghana time

Waezo! Welcome!

I know you're not going to believe me, but every time I think of Ghana, I think of goats. They are everywhere. On the street, in the fields, in the houses, chasing around the chickens...they run around wild like dogs in the states.

I started work today at the Volta School for the Deaf. All the children that live in the region that are Deaf attend this school. I have a class of twenty kindergarteners, ranging in age from five to ten. I observed today, and I'll start teaching tomorrow. The school has two kindergarten classrooms, and I am in the more advanced one--they are learning to write their names, while the other kindergarten is still learning their colors.

There is another volunteer placed at the school, too, and today we brought an American football. They were AMAZED. The school does not have any athletic equipment whatsoever, and they had never seen an American football. The other volunteer and I went out to the field to teach them to play. We played five-on-five with the fifteen and sixteen year old boys during recess time, while probably 30 other kids watched.

I am amazed at the Ghanaian hospitality that I find everywhere. These are literally the most hospitable people I have ever met. Yesterday when walking back from the internet cafe, another volunteer and I got lost in some random field. We stopped at a house to ask how to get to Cross Cultural Solutions, and a lady that lived at the house walked us home. The children at the school are the exact same way. While we were playing football, the little girls held our bags for us. They always pull out chairs for us to sit in, and one teenage boy offered me his shirt to wipe off my sweaty face (you wouldn't believe how hot playing football in Africa is).

Random:

I visited the market yesterday and bought some fabric to have a woman make a dress for me.

We got a taxi for the first time today, and it only cost us two cedis (about US 2.15) for a ride into town.

We had fufu for lunch, which is basically mashed yams. And my new favorite food.

Surprisingly, the time change didn't take any time to get adjusted to. I flew through Amsterdam which was 7 hours ahead of MO time, then back to Ghana which is 5 hours ahead.

It took a little while to get used to sleeping under a mosquito net, but after I saw all the palm-sized spiders that take showers with you and the scorpions that enjoy hiding in your bag, I figured the net was a safeguard I didn't particularly mind using...

Alright, time to walk back to the home base for dinner! I'll try to write more later...but the keyboard keys are in a different order and it takes 30 minutes to load, haha.