HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETRA!

Today is Petra’s birthday. She is 22 on the 22^nd! So everyone back home should be thinking of her and sending lots of lovely birthday wishes her way! She hates birthdays, and doesn’t like when people do things for them apparently, so naturally, I HAD to do something!

Happy Birthday Petra!!

I got up early before she had woken up and blew up a couple of balloons. I made her a nice birthday card with the limited markers, pens, and highlighters that I have and stuck those both on the chair that she sits on every day at the table. Yup. We have silently claimed certain chairs.

Then, I made these little poster things that said cute birthday messages on them, and scattered them all over the house on the wall with balloons too.

Belinda made her pancakes for breakfast, and Auntie Joe gave her Ghanaian chocolate and biscuits.

Hopefully all of this will help her enjoy her birthday even though she is away from her family and her boyfriend.

Yesterday we had class, and again our attendance was high. The women are showing up more and more on time every time that we hold class which is nice to see, and we can see progress already which is great! I stuck with level 1 again, and Petra with level 2. It is nice to see a good range of experience and ability with English among the women; I am finding that those who know a little bit more are fantastic for helping out the women who know hardly any at all.

I had a bit of a culture shock day, yesterday. I missed home quite a bit, but it was nice to have Petra around to talk things out and just process our thoughts together. Every once in a while you just have these moments where you miss the familiarity of home, the people you left behind, and just wish for an easy English conversation that doesn’t require you to speak much slower than usual, or speak in simpler terms for understanding.

But, with these few hard days, come many that I just love being here. So that definitely makes up for it! Just have to keep remembering why I am here, and looking at the lovely faces of the women who are so appreciative of us coming to Asamankese to get to know them.

We are at day 25. A quarter of the way in. It’s funny, because there are days when it feels like our time is just flying by, and there are other days where it seems like we just arrived. There is so much more that I feel we need to do here before we leave and I know that the days are go by more and more quickly as time goes on.

This morning was nice and cool. With the rainy season coming, I think the weather is slowly starting to change. Now, don’t get me wrong, it is still hot. When I say cool, I mean it’s 25 with a breeze. But I was even able to wear pants in the morning without sweating through them! That was exciting.

We walked to town today to see Cynthia. She wasn’t feeling well yesterday but she was back to work today which was good news. She had lots of new pawpaws from the farm, ready to wash and sell. When we got there, she was eating lunch; a rice and beans mixture that she was clumping up into balls with her fingers and eating them with her hands. As good as that mixture may taste with a fork or a spoon; it was hard for me to stomach watching her eat it with her hands. Might be something I will have to get used to though, because a favourite food of many Ghanaians is fou fou and that is eaten with your hands as well.

We saw Jacklyn in town today as well and she took us around and we looked at a couple fabric stores; the African fabric and patterns here are beautiful! I always stare at them as I walk by, so today we decided to look at a couple of the shops just to get some ideas for the ones we might like.

OH. A good laugh for the day...the sense of style (other than that traditional African wear) is pretty funny around here. Today, keeping in mind that it was pushing 30 degrees in the afternoon, a man was wearing one of those Argyle sweater vests that are supposed to be more formal and worn over collared dress shirts, as a tank top. Haha! It was knitted and thick and looked like you would just sweat right through it...but don’t worry, if it has no sleeves, why wouldn’t you wear it in the summer time right?

We had class again today, and there were 23 women!! We are getting more and more each time we have class which is exciting. I know I say this a lot, but the last time when Melissa ran this program there were so few women, so it makes us more excited than you can understand when we have more women than we have desks!!!

Level 1

If I have ever mentioned having a thunderstorm before, multiply that by 100 and you will have the thunderstorm we had while we were in class. It was POURRING! It was thundering and lightning, and it was so loud that we had to stop teaching for a while; you couldn’t hear anything. It was such a hot afternoon so the rain brought lots of humidity with it, but it smelled fantastic!

There was a woman out on the porch of the school, drying her corn, and all the other women rushed out to help her put it back into bags when it started raining. It just goes to show how helpful everyone here is. They are always willing to lend a hand.

A couple of the women bring their kids to class with them, so it’s fun to see the same smiling kids every week. It definitely can be distracting to the other women in the class but I think it is something that they are used to, and I will have to get used to the fact that having a child cry during class, or having a woman breastfeed her child in the middle of class is completely acceptable.

This little guy comes to class everyday

I think Belinda and Auntie Joe plan to give Petra cake tonight for her birthday, so that is exciting. Auntie Joe was in Accra all day today with her son, Samson, so when she returns she wants to celebrate with us.

Oh. You know the saying in Canada, “beggars can’t be choosers?” Today Kujo used that expression, but they say it like this: “a beggar can’t make a choice.” That was a new one, and kind of funny. Auntie Julie talked about the whiteboard marker that had dried out and said, “it has finished.” (Just a few Ghanaian sayings for you).