Classes have officially begun!

First week of classes! I'm taking three sociology and a drumming class. I initially was taking a social work class also but the way they do it here is they clump subjects into groups and you cant take classes from more than one subject per group or else your exams will definitely conflict and social work and sociology are in the same group. If you don't take the final (which they won't reschedule for you EVER) then you fail and I am not failing anything.

So I have Groups, Organizations, and the Individual, Poverty and Rural Development, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, and Obruni drumming. I only have class on Mondays and Wednesdays which is great! Some people are so busy but I just don't want that this semester.

On Monday, Jenna and I made mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese and Tell got some chicken from the night market (right outside our dorm) and we had a great feast!! On Tuesday, I just sat outside all afternoon after class and read my book- so relaxing. We also found out that North American Airlines as of February 19th has cancelled all flights to Africa so our flight, booked for June 10th, isn't happening and we're being refunded. Cool. Awesome. Not an inconvenience. Whatever, we'll deal but that was an interesting discovery. Wednesday, went to the Reggae beach party at Labadi beach. We didn't want to pay the $3 to get in so we went through a different, super nice hotel and paid the guard $1 to take us in. Some man came up and started chasing us and yelling say that we had to pay to get into the program and that we couldn't walk on the beach and I think I took out all of my anger I have been holding in towards all the people who've tried to rip us off or harass/hit on us or make an extra dollar off of us and pretty much flipped out on him and told him we weren't paying him, no way. Then he went and got a security guard and I told him that we weren't paying him either, then these two random guys on the beach came over to see what was up (so Ghanaian of them- making sure everything was ok) and then the four of them ended up like fighting right in front of us. Finally everyone left so we just went into the party. Then, on the ride home our taxi driver got pulled over for having an "overload violation" cause he allowed 5 of us to get in, so we had to get two different taxis, ours drove like a maniac and almost crashed like 2 times. Ha. No big. What a fiasco!! Not going there ever again! On Thursday, I didn't have class so I just hung out all day. Went to swim at the Erata Hotel with Duncan and Jenna, we met Michelle and her Ghanaian friend Senyo there. We went out to dinner with this boy named Gustav who was Dave's (the boy from Elon who was here in the Fall) roommate. He brought also two friends, both named Michael, one Ghanaian one German, both of who knew Dave and we had a great dinner together!

Yesterday (Friday) Jenna and I went with Danielle (a contact here through Mrs. Angus) to the eastern region, three hours away, to sit in on a farmer's meeting and training to teach the palm farmers how to become organically certified and fair trade. If the farmers are approved, Danielle's non-profit (Fearless Planet) will buy the palm fruit and use it to make organic, fair trade palm oil which is sold to many companies, such as Dr. Braumers and even Clif Bar is interested in buying. We went to the site where they boil down the palm fruit, which was a bit of a mess considering the fact that the Ghanaians have no concept of hygiene- like to not stir the boiling fruit with a stick or like how you have to fence in the fruit because goats and chickens will run in it and eat it. Also, they fed the farmers so me and Jenna decided to check it out- BAD CHOICE. We got banku with ground nut soup (usually yum) but this soup was full of like fish scales and we got meat instead of fish (HORRIBLE CHOICE) because it looked like stomach or something disgusting and coral reef like- I took like a mini-bite because I'm so fear factor but then I thought I was going to hurl. We felt so rude not eating it so Jenna stood up and knocked it off (half on purpose/half accident) and I pretended to save it and be sad when it fell and then we solved that problem. On the way back, we told Danielle we would babysit for her anytime and she invited us to dinner. YES! Her partner Daniel is Italian and a great chef and made us a great meal of spaghetti with capers and tomato sauce and fresh salad and it was awesome. Her son, Ryan, is so cute and smart and it was good to meet him and talk to him too. I think he liked us. After our great dinner they were so nice and dropped us off at Champ's Sports Bar, which is pretty much all Obrunis and it was karaoke night and our friends met us there and we just hung out. Jenna and I were going to sing but it was like 1 am and we still hadn't been called so that was enough of that.

I think today we're going to the beach. Sorry for not posting about this exciting week earlier- I was trying to get into the swing of things. I mean I guess I actually am here to take classes so I should try to go. The adventure continues, I can tell you that much.