Twas a HOT HOT day

This morning Petra and I woke up and still felt a little queezy, but we are definitely feeling better than yesterday. We have been eating better today, so that is a good sign.

A lady came by our house this morning at 7am and said she had heard about our classes, and wanted to register. Hurray! She said she will be coming tomorrow, so that is great news! We remembered to give her water when she came in too, so that’s a double bonus for us.

There was an especially large amount of lizards outside this morning, so I took a few pictures of them. They are usually so hard to catch in pictures, so I figured I would take the opportunity when I had it. They don’t freak me out anymore; I equate them to squirrels in Ontario. They are normal, always around, they are afraid of humans, they are super quick, and they love to climb trees. They even have a head, 4 legs and a tail; just much less furry and a little more creepy looking.

Look at this little Guy

We went to the market today to see some of our student. Belinda had to get groceries, so we walked to town with her. Believe it or not, I am really starting to know my way around. Asamankese isn’t too hard to manoeuvre, but the market can be intimidating and very busy; especially on Mondays and Wednesdays when everyone is out selling. We are starting to become much more familiar with it though, and I can find where Cynthia keeps her fruit, where Anita sells her tomatoes, where the butcher is to avoid that, and you can ALWAYS smell where the fish are being sold. Yuck.

We sat with Anita at her stand for a while this morning. She wasn’t selling tomatoes today though; she was collecting money from people who buy tomatoes from her to sell. Anita does a lot of wholesaling. She is a POWERhouse. She is amazing, and knows so much. I am really excited to start teaching her business. She spoke English pretty much the entire time that we were there, and not only to us, so it was great to see her practicing! Tomorrow she will go to other markets to buy tomatoes, and then come back for literacy class at 3pm. She is a busy lady!

Anita and I

Cynthia was gone in the morning, so we went back to Auntie Jo’s for lunch. Yaa was supposed to be watching over her store, and we came back to find her fast asleep in her chair. Mouth wide open and everything. It was hilarious...definitely took some pictures of that!

Yaa was really tired

We went to a little shop down the road from Auntie Jo’s to get some Coca-Cola. It is cheaper to buy them in crates, rather than one at a time. So we bought a case of 24...haha...Yaa carried it back to the house ON HER HEAD! They were the glass bottles in the plastic crate!!! She is insane! I am jealous that they can do that, but I’m thinking it is probably more painful then they make it look.

Talent right there!

On our way back from buying the Coke, a guy in a taxi pulled over and asked me to marry him. I said, “ohh sorry, no thanks.” ... I am having a really hard time with telling them I am already married for some reason...so I keep walking down the road. He pulls the cab farther up and pulls to the side in front of me again... “please, I want to start being your friend, obroni”

Oh great. No getting outa this one.

So I told him I had no phone, and he seemed very distraught at the fact that he wouldn’t be able to contact me and then proceeded to ask where I lived so that he could come and call on me. I told him I lived waaay down the road. Mistake. He told me to get in the cab and he would take me there. I was already standing in front of Auntie Jo’s house at that point. So I made some excuse that I had to go help unload the Coke and sort of trailed off the conversation and walked away...awkward...I need to learn how to handle these situations better. Whoops. Haha.

We went back to the market to see if we could find Cynthia, but she was still at the pawpaw farm. We met up with Anita some more, and met some of the other ladies that work at her stand as well. One lady came up to me, picked her nose, (yes, I am having a hayday with the whole nose picking thing here), and then asked me if my nose was real. She said it was beautiful and that “at Canada, some girls put machines on their noses to change the shape.” I told her that that was called plastic surgery and was only for rich people, and yes, this was the nose that I was born with. Apparently I have a beautiful nose? Haha...

Many of the women come up to us and rub our arms too, saying that we have very smooth skin. I actually think there’s is more smooth!

OH. BELINDA got us cake. YUM. I think she may have overheard us talking about how badly we wanted it, because she just very subtly handed us a little cake to split, and said that she can bake us cake if we wanted. JUST the best. I don’t think we have been this excited the whole trip! MMmm.