First Blog Update from Ghana!

First three things I noticed: the heat/humidity(I'm always a bug-spray, sunscreeny, sweaty mess) the dust, and the enormous size of the CIEE program (seriously there's about 50 of us). Also, Jesus is everywhere in this country. And things move very slowly compared to the states, but in the heat it totally makes sense.

For the 11th-15th most of what we have been doing has been orientation and class registration. The registration process here is mind boggling. You can only take courses if they are all one level (i.e. all 300-level, or all 400-level), you can only take certain subjects together, (Linguistics and Sociology conflict, for example), you have to walk to each department building to look at which courses are being offered that semester, some buildings do not have this information available and some do not have the times/ places for classes. Also, walking to each building is a bit of a challenge because the campus is enormous and the heat sweltering. And the University of Ghana is the best West African university, and one of the best in Africa, period. Legon is in the wealthiest region of the country. This example is a teeny glimpse of how under-resourced this country is. Even the best here doesn't compare to the comfort that we're used to in the states. It's not frustrating when you resign yourself to the fact that it's going to take forever, and I definitely recognize that I have the privilege of leaving in four months.

We've been broken up now into different housing, I live in the Nairobi Court building in what is called the Pentagon or the Ghana Students Hostel. I'm really happy with the group of CIEE-ers in Pentagon and the Ghanaians and Nigerians have been really nice too. My roomate, Umi, is Nigerian.

I've been going out as well, to Osu (a subsection of Accra), the beach and a bus tour that CIEE arranged of Accra. I'm looking forward to taking trips over the weekends, we have one coming up this weekend, although I'm not sure where my group is going.

Twi lesson:
eh teh sen: how are you?
eh yeh: I'm fine.
meda ase: Thank you.
obruni: white person (I've completely integrated this one into my vocabulary)

First post!

I leave in four days! And also the blog looked really dull without any posts!

But, more importantly friends, let me know if you want email updates and/or postal mail, and be sure to keep me updated on what is going on in your life!