Faith, Hope, and Love

My time in Ghana is wrapping up. Just a few more days. And for the most part, I've had a blast and I'm a little sad about going home. I love, love, love my host family and I'm sad about saying goodbye. And I've begun to build some very good friendships that I want to continue to build. But there have definitely been times when I have really just missed home. Missed my everyday life, or just missed having someone who really knows and gets me around. The week in Cape Coast was especially tough. While I enjoyed the slave trade, batik and dance lessons, I just felt extremely homesick that week. I not only missed my life in the U.S., I also was missing my family in Accra badly. Oddly, one thing that got me through was listing to Todrick's single "It Gets Better." It was nice to hear a familiar voice in my ear, and the message of the song was always nice. No matter how tough things got, things do get better. (He coincidentally updated the song while I was

Here are all the Batik designs made by the students and I: My finished design   Flo's design Dahlia's design Miranda's design Gladys's design Ivan's design (and yes, I realize that it's cock and balls) Rodrigo's design Joceline's design Lauren's design (she chose to stick with just one color)  Claro's design Most of them were done with design drawn and cut out by the students themselves. And a few have incorporated designs done by the owners of the shop. It took us a week to work on these, but we loved every minute of it and are proud of our work!

As part of the "study abroad" portion of our AFS trip to Ghana, the students and I got to participate in Batik lessons. Batik is a wax-relief way of creating fabric design. It's quite popular in a lot of African cultures. The process itself is simple enough, although we learned quickly that there is a high level of skill needed to achieve the perfection you ultimately would want. But, it is something that I think I'd like to try on my own at home. Or just do again as part of a workshop/class. For those of you who are more into arts and crafts, here's the process if you want to try it at home. Step 1: Concept Creation First, you need to do a bit of sketching to come up with possible designs you want to see on your fabric. It's best to come up with at least two different ones. Something we didn't realize as we were drawing is that you want these to be bold and be able to be somewhat large/big. If it's too small, it because an issue later. Step 2:

One thing that my dad insisted I do while I was in Ghana is see Kumasi--the city he called home during his years in Ghana. It wasn't in our plans for the AFS program, so it was something I had to figure out on my own. And of course, since my dad seems to know someone everywhere on the planet, it wasn't too difficult of a task. It started with a phone call to a Reverend in Accra. Rev. T said he'd get me to Kumasi over the weekend. He planned to stop over at my host family's house on Thursday to meet me and discuss the plans in detail. He wanted to take me on Friday and return on Sunday. I was hoping for more of a Saturday day trip or leave Friday night and get back Saturday evening. I was already a bit hesitant about who I'd be with in Kumasi, but I also really love my family in Accra and sort of felt guilty at the idea of "ditching" them for a whole weekend. I also had to be ready to travel to Cape Coast by 11am Sunday morning. Anyway, Rev. T comes by

Each morning, I wake up around 6am. I lay in bed and listen to the constant chatter and occasional laughter from my two host sisters, my host mom and whoever else is awake. I'm tempted to roll out of bed and join them, but generally stay in bed until 7:15 to catch them before my host mom takes the two girls to school. I say my farewells to the ladies. Sometimes get online to check my e-mail. Chat with my host brother (and sometimes dad, if he's up). Share some pleasantries with my host mom's sister who stops by each morning. Get hot water to take a bath. Get dressed. Take my 500 gazillion (or five) vitamins. If it's Sunday, add another vitamin. If it's Thursday, add my malaria pill. I put in my contacts. Go eat breakfast. And then either catch a ride, take the trou trou (Ghana's public transportation system, which must have a blog post of its own), or walk to meet the AFS bus. Generally nothing eventful happens, except this morning my breakfast was stolen by a

Today was the first official day of our project. We are renovating the kindergarten block of a government school in a low-income part of Accra. The work had been interesting as we are sorely equipped for the work. First we tried to scrape and sand down the walls of the building. It was hard and mostly seem to produce a lot of dust. We gave up after about an hour and decided to just begin painting. Except then everything peeled off. We eventually figured out that the rollers were the problem and stuck to paintbrushes. It went smoother after that. Afterwards we went to Rufus Park which was amazing! Life size chess set, Ludo board and some other game. We see-sawed and played on the swings and just ha a good time hanging out. We need more parks like this in the United States (or at least in my corner). Now we are at Peter Pan restaurant and the kids are gorging out on burgers and smoothies. Overall, it has been a good day. I definitely thankful for the

I love connecting/spending time with other Africans. There's just this automatic bound and shared experience that I enjoy exploring. But with older Africans--teens or older--there's always that awkward moment when the subject of marriage comes up. The African: Are you married? Me: No. The African: Eh?! Why now? Are you at least dating someone? Me: No. The African: You mean you're telling me you don't have interest in anyone?!?! Me: No. (although, if I'm honest, this is a semi-lie) And with that response, I can feel their absolute disappointment in me. Or if they are the creepy old African men we all avoid, I can feel their hope that they've met a desperate girl who will fall for their cheap lines because she doesn't want to be an old maid. 've learned to take this reactions with grace and generally not get irked by them. They are just more awkward than anything else. I had this same conversation with one of the volunteers with the program w

There is so much I've neglected to write about over the last two weeks. There are still tons of little Costa Rican memories to shares, I have some summer reading that I've knocked out and plan to review, I went to a professional development and learned a lot of cool things, I was able to knock a few things off my bucket list, and now I'm on my way to spend the next month in Ghana. Yes, Ghana. Yes, a month.  I'm ridiculously excited! But, I won't lie, there is also some level of trepidation. I'll be living with a host family, be a group leader for nine YES Prep high schoolers, and well... what happens to my life back home? It's not like time will stand still for me. What might be different when I get back? It's silly, I know. But I can't help to wort a little bit. Ultimately though, this is like a dream come true and I plan to make the most of this opportunity. And regardless of what fears I have, the best things happen when you step out and take risk