Today has been a pretty mellow day. We got up around 10 and had rice water(boiled rice with milk and sugar) and bread for breakfast, then headed to the beach. The weather was perfect today, it might have been the hottest day since I've been here! We walked along the beach and found some big, flat rocks near the water's edge and explored around there. There were crabs and tiny little sea anenomes, and Robert thought a bright colored rock was some crazy critter but turned out it wasn't. Afterwards, we went to check out the hotel the team is gonna stay in(which is really cute!)and came home to watch germany kill argentina 4-0!
Our main activity here is going to the Service Primary School, which is K-8. We made a presentation on the first day to give the teachers all the materials, and stayed until school got out around 3:00. I worked with K1, 4-5 year olds. They are so adorable! All the kids at the school were so excited to see Dwayne and I, but a little nervous and shy too. They'd all just surround us and grin silently and get excited every time we talked to one of them. In the class I helped the teacher grade workbooks and walked around the room helping the kids right numbers and letters. Some of them seemed a little intimidated by me, but by the end of the day they got used to me and all walked us to the car when we had to leave.
The other two days we went to the school were a lot of fun too! I worked with older kids both times, and helped them with spelling and drawing. They love it when I try to speak their native language, fanti, but it's embarrasing for me because I always butcher the words and the whole class giggles. But it's good entertainment for them, I guess. After class yesterday one of the teachers had his student show us how to drum. It was so fun! They use drums to signal when breaktime starts and finishes, something I wish the U.S. would do to replace those annoying bells...He told us next week he's teaching how to make traditional African art to all the students so I'll get to bring home some genuine African artwork.
We've also been to the main market a few times. It's CRAZY over there! There are so many different things being sold. Fried fish(which creates not the pleasantest of smells...), beautiful bolts of fabric, oranges, mangoes, plantains, and all kinds of grains. It's so packed over there, even on the weekdays! People all know how to navigate around one another and I almost got lost in the crowd. It's also interesting cause people here always stare at me, but most of them are really friendly once you talk to them. Robert's been telling me and Dwayne a lot about the economy here, and apparently there are tons of American oil companies coming in, which is affecting the Ghaneans poorly. It seems like everywhere you look, there are houses being built, and not small ones. They're enormous with crazy architecture.
The town's pretty quiet today; we're all suffering from Ghana's unfair loss yesterday. But hopefully by the time the rest of the team gets here, people will all cheer up! People here literally live and breathe soccer so it's been so fun to watch the world cup here, I just wish Ghana was still in it.
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