Lazy Sunday

When you’re in school, some things never change. We’ve returned from an epic Spring Break, and are currently indulging this day as a lazy Sunday. It’s pretty dreary out, and as the rainy season approaches, we think there are going to be more and more overcast, cloudy dim days to come. So Nisha and I are sitting in our pajamas tackling a fairly large amount of homework, reading and studying punctuated by Bananagrams and Fan Ice runs (and blog writing). For those of you unfamiliar, Bananagrams is a word game similar to scrabble with a free-form twist. It’s a blast to play, and great for rounds between readings. It’s also good for playing for hours and hours on end, as we’ve discovered in the past week (and yesterday). As for the Fan Ice runs – these are just fun. So, Fan Ice, if you’ve forgotten, is a delicious ice cream like substance that is packaged in a small bag that you tear open and kind of suck/push/drink out of. In addition to the vanilla ice cream, they have Fan Choco, which is frozen chocolate milk and a fantastic addition to any breakfast. The Fan Ice vendors (they push little ice box carts with Fan Ice inside, and pastries and muffins on top) have what amounts to a bicycle horn that they blow as they walk or ride around. From our room, we can hear when they get close…and we sometimes feel the urge to go buy Fan Ice, which turns into a nice little snack and cute little jaunt around our street hunting the guy with the ice cream. It’s a good time. Presently, I’m between readings, eating a Fan Choco and preparing to continue working.

A few things, first though. Spring Break. In order to really give you all the details and amazing things that happened, I’m going to write a blog for each day, and hopefully post them one or two days apart. There isn’t really any other way to capture or explain what happened, so I hope you don’t mind bearing with me as I continue to make posts. I’ll hopefully have the first one up today, and if I get them all written later this evening, I can post one a day for the next week. Sound good?

Also, this weekend we happened to meet a great group of kids from NYU. The CAS Scholars Program brought a group of sophomores to Ghana for the week. They flew in, did a whirlwind tour of Accra and Cape Coast and flew back out last night. Nisha, Kaivan and I got to hang out with them, share our experiences and hear their reactions. It was interesting to hear what they had to say, because their experience was very different from ours – they were driven around in a bus, stayed in the nicest hotel in Ghana and rarely got to venture out on their own; such is the nature of a one week visit. I wonder how they are going to process everything that they saw and learned once they get back to new York, or if it’s just going to be a mash-up of the lectures, market and food they had. Interacting with this group really made me appreciate the experience of living for an extended period of time in a different country – I’m not a tourist – this is my home. Although I’m glad the Scholars got to see Ghana, I really hope the trip piqued the interest of at least one or two of them that they will come here to study for a summer or semester, because it really is a life-changing, invaluable experience.

Alas, it’s time to keep working. I’ll post at least the first day of our journey today, if possible, and then the rest will be short in following. Feel free, as always, to drop me a line, comment or email – facebook messages are hard to access most of the time, so email is your best bet for a speedy reply. Enjoy the day!