Last few days in Ghana!

Hello everyone!

I hope all is well!  Anne and I have been enjoying a wonderful, beautiful last week in Ghana.  We think this will probably be the last time we can get internet, so this will be my last update before we touch back down in New York!  We'll be leaving our apartment at 2am Friday morning to catch a 10am flight from Accra to NYC, and then Anne flies to New Orleans and I fly to Atlanta, both arriving around 11pm/midnight... a long day, haha. 

This weekend, Anne, I, and all of the teachers from the school we're working at visited Kakum National Park.  We rode all together in our own "tro-tro"  which is essentially a 15 passenger van stuffed until it looks like one of those cartoon vans that almost explodes.  No lie.  Ours was SO nice, though, especially compared to the ones we usually see, which are essentially held together by bungee cords and fly down the road, hopefully reaching their destination intact, haha.  But the park was BEAUTIFUL.  Anne, sweet girl that she is *sarcasm* told all of the teachers of my fear of birds.  And heights.  So all the way up to the canopy walk, I was bombarded with "WATCH OUT HERE COMES A BIRD!!!!!!"  but it was actually really funny.  And we saw NO birds, and the view was totally worth any fear.  I can't even describe it.  And as we were walking along (the canopy walk is basically 2 by 4s suspended between 7 platforms.  Yeah, don't look down) it started raining.  Not hard, but enough to make it surreal.  It was such a cool feeling.  And even better was being able to be around the teachers as they goofed off with each other.  Theyre such a fun group!  And they loved taking pictures with our cameras.  Like, glamour shots.  It was hillarious--I think I laughed the entire time.    And the ride home was AWESOME.  The teachers had brought our drums and just started a sing along, singing lots of really upbeat gospel sounding songs.  Everyone was singing and Anne and I just laughed along.

Anne and I really enjoyed the rest of our break, too.  Sunday we went to church with John and then chilled at home.  Monday, we went to a seamstress and were measured for a "surprise" from the school.  Even that was a really cool experience.  It was this really small open air room, and the seamstresses just took their time, chattering along as they measured us.  As we were leaving, one asked my name and then said, "I would like to be your friend.  Will you accept?"  Their friendliness here is just so deliberate and genuine and touching.  I think that's definitely what I"ll miss most here.

Anne and I spent the rest of the day doing administrative work for the school.  It's really great when we can do computer stuff since they aren't really used to dealing with data and our experience really allows us to complete more work in a shorter amount of time, so we've been really happy to help them transfer student records to a computer.  Then, last night, John took us to his village to meet his family and see his house.  We thought that she was just going to teach us how to fry plantains, but she not only did that, but she also cooked us a whole meal!!  She was the epitome of a warm, welcoming grandmother.  She even chastised John about not bringing us to her sooner and told us to be very careful eating the street food so we don't get sick.  And she cooked us more food than I've ever seen in my LIFE.  And his famiily just treated us like we were the most important guests ever, it was so touching.  As we were sitting on their patio, listening to the frying plantains and old, crackling radio and watching the sun set against the hills and forest, it just seemed so peaceful and perfect and... like Africa.  Ahhhh, love it.  So needless to say, Anne and I ate so much we felt like we were going to burst.  On the walk home, we met up with one of the other teachers, and after about 10 minutes of talking about how full we were, we saw a FanIce bike.  Let me explain the goodness of FanIce... it's basically heaven.  It's the richest, most delicious and frothy vanilla ice cream known to man.  And it is the perrrrrrfect thing in Ghana.  It's the only cold and creamy food Anne and I eat here, so we love it.  Anne and I got ice cream bars for ourselves and John and Issah, the other teacher with us, and the guy didn't give us change.  When Issah realized this, he literally ran after the bike man and made the man give us change.  It was probably one of the funniest moments EVER.

Well, my time is running out but for the next few days Anne and I will be teaching at the school and eating as much delicious Ghanaian food as possible!!