LIFE IN THIS GHANA

Friday night was the Kentinkrono wolfpack's 'spa night' held on the floor of my room at my homestay. You're probably wondering what this spa night entailed.

We started by washing our faces with Neutrogena facial wet wipes. Then we purelled our hands before Q-tipping our ears out and flossing. Never felt better. I even used my limited supply of mouthwash I brought for just-in-case emergencies; but it seemed appropriate to use for the spa night. Better than Canyon Ranch in Miami. (well not really even close, but circumstantially comparable).

This weekend I think 13 of the 14 gals got fitted for dresses at Izzie's mom's shop, which is conveniently located right in front of my house. I'm getting a 70s funk of a dress made that I am super excited for (it should be ready tomorrow)! For fabric and a custom fitted dress plus labor; it only costs about 30 ghana cedi.....or about $15-$20; pretty good deal.

I actually got greedy seeing all of the beautiful dresses being made up and asked my homestay mom if she knew of anywhere else I could get dresses made. She told me I could get one made for only 8 ghana cedi if I came home from school earlier this week and met with her and her tailor. When I rushed home from dance practice today to go get fitted for another dress; my mom surprised me and already had one made up for me that is a beautiful, green patterned batik (that I'm sporting right now) that she gave me as a gift. I proceeded to then give my family the pottery and necklace I'd brought from home for their gifts since my mom surprised me with this incredibly kind dress that I never want to take off- bucket showers, sleeping under the mosquito net- it's staying on.

We got to go to the pool on Saturday which is on the Tech college campus in Kumase, a pool that had way too much chlorine and a healthy amount of algae growth. No sign of guardia yet. Izzie brought her homestay sister, Nanakia (I'm definitely misspelling this :-/ ) who lied and said she can swim...so we spent some time in the shallow end dancing after some failed attempts at swimming lessons.

The evening brought another night to our favorite bar spot- Candies. Jake got to play with the Hi Life band which was pretty awesome to watch and we half-practiced our traditional Ghanaian dance routine to less than rave reviews. The after-party continued as some of us took a shared taxi (that had to be pushed backwards by a team in order to start---reassuring I know) back  to Claire's house where we had vast quantities of jolof rice and chicken before bed. No better midnight snack.

I spent Sunday hiking around a tree, butterfly and bird sanctuary about a 30 minute drive plus a 2 mile hike outside of Kumasi. We got to hop on the back of a truck bed to get there and we thoroughly enjoyed the bumpy hitch hiking. This sanctuary reminded me of Costa Rica and was incredibly beautiful and there seemed to be millions of butterflies we got to frolic with; even though peek butterfly season apparently isn't even until March. The trees were gargantuan and all were labeled for their traditional medicinal purposes.

Off to our rural village homestay for 2 weeks after our 2 hour dance recital on Friday :-O
Then we get to go to Tamale and the Cape Coast before our month of independent study I'll be conducting on rural women's access to water; and hopefully will be doing pottery during this time as well.

Think this should be all- aside from learning that nearly every word in Twi has about 3 other meanings based upon inaudible differences in tonation, it seems.