First Week

So sorry that it has taken me this long to say anything. Ghana is incredible. It is beautiful and overwhelming and HOT and welcoming and foreign and different, it is both everything and nothing that I was expecting. I feel so blessed to be here.

I can only say that this first week has been one of the most eye-opening experiences I have ever had. I am not usually very quiet, but we are all close to silent driving or walking around everywhere, soaking up everything around us...it's all been so wonderful and new. So many colors and fabrics and foods and people...I'm actually enjoying feeling out of my element at times.

After an airport mishap and lonely hotel room my first night in london, I arrived in Accra, late, late at night, but that first step off the plane and drinking in that warm humid air was magic. I arrived at the apartments we are staying in and collapsed on my bed, not even meeting my new roommates yet. The next week was completely full of meeting new people on the trip( who are fantastic, and from all over) in a million orientation activities. Our director is a beautiful woman who looks and asks like Tyra Banks. She has her stuff together. She dresses like an African Princess, with clothes made with the beautiful local fabrics tailored for her. We all secretly want to be her.

Orientation was exhausting, up at seven everyday, then a walk to the academic center for workshops on Twi, the local language, cultural assimilation meetings, sessions on health, safety, lectures by famous professors from the University of Ghana on religions of Ghana, the history of accra by the former mayor of the city and a whole city tour! We've had wonderful food, yummy fresh fruit juices and great dishes, chicken, yams, plantains, papayas, fufu!, fish, yummy stews of beans, onions, Red Red...Mmmmm. Restaurants take about 3 hours here, but everything here is more relaxed...We have danced our way around the city so far, there is a huge Reggae festival every Wednesday night on the beach, so we all went and ran in the ocean, and danced until we had a thick layer of bug spray, sand, sweat, the typical stickiness of our everydays. We have danced until 2 in the morning at least half the time we have been here, and its liberating, fantastic, and a perfect way to get to know other Ghanaians. They approach you and are so friendly, asking about you...I have made a lot of friends, both ghanaian and other international students, and its wonderful because i keep running into them around the city. Everyday feels more and more comfortable. We've had a fantastic African dance lesson the other day, and when you can shake your butt in front of other people like that, it cant help but put us in the right mindset.

What else? We spent all day at the beach yesterday, playing soccer with the locals, eating fresh fruit, swimming for hours in the warm ATLANTIC ocean. We had kids climbing all over us, it was so so wonderful.

I am going to be starting volunteering tomorrow with WISE, West African AIDS Foundation, and the Osu CHildrens home orphanage. I am taking an African Dance and Drumming Class at Ashesi University every Wednesday, with all Ghanaian students. I am also taking Human Right in Africa at the University of Ghana! I am taking Health and Society at NYU’s campus, about health care on a global scale, and also Topics in Non-Western Art, with a wonderful professor where we get to shadow Ghanaian artists, who we get to choose, and visit their studios and profile them, and create our own art with them as well. I am really looking forward to this week.

I am thinking of all of you, as I embark on this crazy adventure. Let me know about what you want to hear from me, there is so much going on, I am sure I have left out something important! Update ME on the wonderful things YOU are doing too. I will be better at posting I promise. ALL my love.