Friday, June 11, 2010

Lost My Camera

My camera is nowhere to be found....I am pretty bummed about it. Hopefully my parents can send me a new digital soon.

Vision quest was fun. There are goats everywhere and the children in the village are a lot of fun. We made paper airplanes for a bunch of school children. They really enjoyed them and took great care to make sure the planes did not get damaged when they joined in on some other games being played during their break. I think my origami skills might get handy when/if I get out of training and to my permanent site! woot.

Northern Ghana is nicer weather wise. Less humidity. If I could swing it, I would like to have a site somewhere in the north. Though If my luck is anything like my camera keeping skills I will probably end up in the south.

We start training next week! We will finally learn more about our assignments, what we will be doing, language that we actually need to learn (Twi was not the spoken language in the region of my vision quest), and hopefully most questions will get answered.

It is kind of expensive to buy Ghanaian cards and even more expensive to mail them out. So if you do not get a card right away please do not let your feelings get hurt. Just remember my immediate family is big and so is their priority. My PD peeps, I will try to send a card to the department I have not forgotten about you....just living on a volunteer's salary.

I tried goat meat. Not my favorite meat in the world. A little grainy and fatty. The goats are everywhere in Ghana. This morning there were hundreds of them just sleeping in the roads. The metro (a gov't bus w/o AC) had to go slow while the goats woke up and moved out of the way...but the metro did not slow for the dog in the road (poor doggy). I hear the dogs here are mean though, and if I do not want rabies I should keep a healthy distance from them.

If any of you are thinking "Hey, lets send a care package" here are some things I found that are not sold here but would be nifty to have:

Headlamp (for going potty in the dark)
Nutella
Shampoo
Sun Lotion Higher than 20spf
Tuna or Chicken in those serving size bags located next to the canned tuna in your local store The bagged ones would totally be sweet!!)
Crystal Light packets
Cookies
Hard Candy

Anything fun or homey

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

14 Hours of travel = one sore bum

I wasn't expecting internet time....sooo with a surprise internet connection come a little update. I am well and freaking hot (humid sticky hot). A small group of us just finished a 14 hour bus ride North to Tamale to stay the night a regional office before wee continue on tomorrow to our assigned sites to shadow different volunteers.

Ghana is beautiful. Hopefully I will be able to post a picture soon.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

On My Way

**Disclaimer** The views and opinions are not those of the Peace Corps and are solely that of the author.** =P

Today is my last day stateside and I do not know when my next opportunity for internet will be. I am the whole spectrum of emotion right now...anxious, excited, overwhelmed, excited, sad, happy, excited...you get the idea.

My bags are packed and I probably packed more than needed...but I will probably also get to Ghana and realize something I forgot that really did need. That is life. My luggage, bike helmet, and I fly out at O'dark 30 this morning, June 1 , and will have a brief visit into the Philly area before heading out to Ghana on June 3rd. (I hope at some point I get to see an elephant...or hippo)

I still do not know the full extent of my duties in Ghana...but I think that adds to the adventure of it. I am off to do something new, make new friends, see new things....and hopefully do detrimental damage to the mosquito population.

Love and Miss you all.

Catherine