Day 3

We got our first taste of the ocean today. The weather is still incredibly hot, but beautiful.

We had drumming and dancing lessons today.  Needless to say for anyone who knows my background (8 years of Native American dance and drumming), I caught on pretty well.  It was a lot of fun!

The lady in the pink is my instructor for the trip.  She's pretty awesome. 

Such amazing views out here.  I really am going to miss this place when I come home.

This is our entire group, the drum and dance instructors and two members of the ProWorld staff that are from Ghana.  It was a lot of fun, but we danced bare foot, and the floor was much dirtier than it looks.

I went wading in the ocean today, the water was really choppy and shortly after taking this, I got hit by a big wave and had sand in my shorts the rest of the day.

This will assuredly become a profile picture too, the weather here just lends itself to great pictures, even when I'm in them. :-P

Do you see the lizard?  He's Ghana colors which is really cool!  His body has stripes of red, yellow and green, just like the flag.

A little closer picture.

So this van took us to the events today and back.  It looks not much longer than a standard US minvan, but it holds TWENTY SEVEN people.  There were six rows of 4 seats and one row of three.  It was huge!

Ever wonder what 600 condoms looks like?  Now you know!

There's another almost 1,000 in that bag.  We counted them all out for donating to the NGOs tomorrow.

Day four is looking to be exciting!  We're getting up in 8 hours and going to go help build a house, then we get to go swimming in the ocean, followed by a language lesson, then more swimming in the ocean.  I'm going to bed now, tomorrow is going to be a long day!

A hike around.

This is our street.  We're standing right outside our gate.

Y'all know me and flowers.  This is the tree right outside our gate.

This little lizard was so cool, I had to get a picture of him.  The letters on the top step is the address of the shop.

We stopped for sodas at this little restaurant and a parade came through.  Then they came and mobbed us and tried to get money from us.  The store owners ran them off for us though.

More plants, this little swamp was full of these vines and yellow flowers.

These columns were on the side of the road.  The last column has a number to buy the pieces to build any type of column you want.

We were on our way home after our hike.  That's our neighborhood up in front of us.  It's a pretty affluent area compared to most of the city.

I'll probably post at least once more tonight. We're going for another hike later and the rest of our group will be here tonight, so look for another possible post.

Start of day 2

Our House.

The Gated entrance.

Some Flower Pictures

The banana trees.  Pretty sure no one knew that I was taking this.

The little kitty that lives in our yard.

My bed.  It's pretty hard, and so is the pillow, but its better than a cot or the floor.

My shower.  The three of us guys have a bathroom to ourselves.

The dining room/ meeting room.

The kitchen.

The pantry.  The pineapple look a bit odd, but they taste amazing!

This bread is some of the best bread I've ever had!  It was soooo good for breakfast.

I made it!

Hey all, I am in Ghana!  The weather here is amazing!  A little muggy, but still wonderful.  I have one video already, but I am charging my iPhone to use as an iPod, so I can't download the video right now.  I'll get it up later.  It's of the 8 of us waiting to get money at the airport here.  For those of you from CoMO, this was about like going through CRAp, but its an international airport.  The flight was soooo long, and the guy in the seat next to me totally invaded my space the whole time.  I froze to death too, it was soooo cold on the flight, but to be fair it was -59 F outside the window.  The second picture, I know you can't see anything, but I took a picture out the window of the plane.  I'm hoping that when I clean up the picture at home that the stars will become visible.  I took a great picture of orion, the constellation was at eye level right out my window.  It was pretty cool.  I took pictures of the dinner we were given and I'll attach that to this post.  The meal tasted pretty good, but looked pretty gross.  The bus ride from the airport to here wasn't too bad, the driver drove like crazy but we got here safe and sound.  I don't know much else to tell you for tonight, I'll add the little video to this post later.  I miss everyone already.

Today's the day

Today's the day!  I leave in just a few short hours.  Bags are packed and ready to go.  Of course the weather just gott horrible again.  I hope that I can get out of KCI now.  My puppy is sad, I think she knows I am leaving for awhile.  I'm going to miss her a lot.  Well, its time to shower up and head out.  I hope everyone enjoys their New Years and I'll see you all soon.

Almost there

Here we are, just 11 days away from the trip starting.  I'm so excited that it's almost time.  Of course I'm mortified as well, but yeah I am so excited. I made it through all my classes, and am officially a 7th semester nursing student now, which in and of itself is pretty exciting.  I'm 32 weeks from having my BSN at this point. That's only 26 weeks of class.  The time is going to go by so fast.  I can't wait for that time to come, and I know that this trip is just one more aspect of getting me through to that point.
Enjoy your holidays, and hopefully you will all start leaving me some comments soon.  If we have internet when we get there, I will try to do video blogs rather than typing while I am there.

Last immunization

Started the typhoid meds today...  Next Friday I will be completely immunized for the trip!  Sent off my application for my visa yesterday, and got some more financial aid to help.  Down to just a few more days to go.  27 days until we leave.