Friday (note that this is the fourth post this week...applause is appreciated!)

So, let me tell you about my Friday, from start to finish.

6:00 Wake up

6:30 Leave, take a taxi (bartered down, of course) to University of Ghana, Legon for my 7:30 AM class

8:05 The professor shows up and says we won’t be having lecture today. The rest of the classes starting in two weeks will be seminar style, with a group of students presenting a topic each week. The groups will be posted on the notice board later that afternoon; he would have had them up earlier, but he can’t get a complete class list from the registrar’s office, because some software crashed. The groups will be 15-20 person in size (this follows, because it is at LEAST a 400 person lecture), have to write at least a three page paper TOGETHER, present it seminar style and field questions on the topic for a grade. Also, all of this presented information is exam-able at the end of the term. We get graded on participation in the group work as well; we’re to find our group by writing our number on the notice board next to our name and then calling everyone else. They did say it would be a different style of education; they were right.

8:30 Lecture is released, and I go mail letters and find the examination time for the class (7 AM the day before I fly out)

10:30 Gym to run with Nisha

1 pm At WISE (Women’s Initiative for Self-Empowerment) for a case conference that occurs every week with a psychiatrist from Military Hospital 37 named Erica Dixon. We hear cases from each counselor and discuss them, courses of action and potential issues. There’s also a lot of laughter and frank discussion of sex as it relates to the cases. Never before have I been in a room with so many women who could be my mother talking and laughing uproariously about sex. Great experience, I tell you what.

3 pm Fan Ice at Fan Plaza (right next door to WISE) with Lizzie and Nisha (there is a Lizzie, Liza and Elizabeth/Liz [the last one is me] and Lizzie and I ALWAYS wind up next to each other, usually introducing ourselves to confused looks) – we had a vanilla Fan Ice, a Fan Yogo, and a tropical fruit drink that was super sugary and definitely supbar. Better luck next time.

3:45 pm Sitting at a table at Tawala Beach overlooking the ocean, having a drink (Fanta’s in a glass bottle – so good!), and almost doing homework. We talk for a while before reading for class and then napping. Shaggy was playing from the “bar”, that also has an incredibly and obviously slanted pool table, yet it’s never really free. We sat there, looking at the ocean, and really seriously wondering how we got there – sitting on the West Coast of Africa, reading about Pan-Africanism and African philosophy and legitimately living in Ghana. Thank you, Study Abroad.

6 pm Nap before dinner

7 pm Dinner at Tante Marie’s, on the upper deck because of another group below (in our usual spot). They served rice, pasta, salad, chicken kebabs, some sort of maise and palm oil paste (great though), boiled/seasoned vegetables and keiley-weilly (Kelly welly, I don’t really know the spelling) which are seasoned/fried plantain cubes, with mixed fruit for dessert.

9 pm Reading Kurt Vonnegut and hanging out with Nisha and Kaivan in our room, listening to some music

10:15 pm Going to Osu with Nisha to meet a Ghanaian student at a sushi place/bar/club place called Monsoon. They played (amongst some other songs: Mambo No. 5, No Satisfaction, I Gotta Feeling, I’m Blue (yeah, Eiffel 65?), YMCA and some Ghanaian hit songs. It was an interesting, eclectic mix.

12:30 am We got tired and went home, bartering for a taxi again, after two different cabbies deliberately tried to way overcharge me – I got them down though (taxi fares are not fixed here. There’s kind of an understanding of how much one should be, but it can really vary depending on distance, time of day, traffic and the amount of people. By now I know how I can bargain with the drivers, when to just say “keep moving, I’ll get the next one” and when to quit and take the price. It’s a lot of fun, actually – I’m enjoying myself) and we went home.

1 am Sleep?

So that’s a day – oddly enough, Friday’s are really busy – start early and end late (usually) – every now and then when I’ve had a great day, I’ll post one of these, just for a little insight.