So, it's been a while...

It has been a while, I realized. Time is flying here. The days are long (they start around 6:30 with the sunrise, include a nap between 5:40 and 6:40 before dinner while the sunsets, and then continue until usually eleven or twelve at night), but the weeks have become incredibly short. The past few weeks have been really occupied with Spring Break. Naturally, college students are all trying to figure out what they are doing for that week of respite in the middle of the semester. While most students are deciding between Florida or the Outer Banks, or which European countries to hit, we've all been discussing the plights of African air travel, safaris, elephants and sleeping on roofs under the stars.

Our group (consisting of Nisha, Kaivan, Liza and myself) has planned four complete spring breaks, and three of them have fallen through, all in a pretty big way. We've finally pulled one together in an impressive three days. We have reservations, bus tickets and ... well, that's all we've got, but we think that's all we need. We're headed to Burkina Faso to stay at Camp Nazinga. Google it. It looks cool, and I promise another Animals post afterward.

In other news, I've started volunteering at a nursery school (or creche) for the kiddos of women who sell goods in the street. This is a charity organization that provides really really reduced and cheap (but still not necessarily affordable, unfortunately) childcare/nursery school for women who might not otherwise be able to swing it. This is important not only for the child to be taken care of during the day, but because in order to gain entrance into a primary school in Ghana, you have to had been enrolled in a nursery school. We go and just kind of help manage kids - lots of crying ones - for about two hours before they start school. Today Nisha and I went and played/comforted/took care of kids for about an hour and a half and then helped feed them breakfast before their lesson. It's a lot of fun, but also a lot to take in - there are probably about at least 70 kids and less than 10 adults - I don't know how accurate my numbers are, but there are a lot of little people, and not so many big ones. It's definitely an adventure.

We literally leave for Burkina Faso in about 13 hours (supposedly...these buses are notorious for being wayyy late. Like, four hours late) and I have a class at 7:30 in the morning before that, in about 8 hours. The week of midterms and  spring break planning has finally caught up with me. As much as I would love to blog real time about our animal adventure (that's all we really want to do...see animals), we're not going to have access to internet (or phones) while we're at the camp (in our Bungalows...isn't that cool?!), but I'll be sure to post a full update upon my return.

Comments, requests and general hellos are always welcome!