"You either laugh or you cry!"

MIAWOEZO!!!! (Welcome!)

HELLO EVERYONE! I am soosososososo excited to be emailing you! You have NO idea! I just arrived at the internet cafe which is an hour away by tro-tro from my village. A tro-tro, for those of you who have never heard of such a vehicle, is a like a mini-van (except way older and much rustier) that drives you here and there. When you want to go somewhere by car, you stand on the road (there is only one in my village) with your finger either pointing up or pointing down, depending on which way you want to go. The tro-tro costs between $0.25 and $1.00 for the distances that I travel. Not a bad price for an hour long drive, I'd say!

But before I get into my daily routine, I will back track to the beginning of my travels. I arrived in Accra very late at night on Saturday. As soon as I stepped off the plane I knew it was HOTHOTHOT! The pilot reported it to be 29 degrees Celsius (and that was at roughly 10pm). I was stopped by the Immigration Officer but after some poor communication on my behalf and a look of "I am Canadian and have NO idea what I am doing in this country" he decided that I was of no danger to Ghana and let me through. I exchanged some money at the teller which made me feel like a huge bank robber! $150USD turned into two 4 inch stacks of money! I had never seen that many bills in my palms before and I gleefully headed off to find my arrival mates. After being mauled by people wanting to help you with your bags for tips, I finally spotted the man from the volunteer organization, CCS. He guided me to the car and off we headed to the hotel where all the others were. It was quite late by the time we arrived at the hotel (ironically called Beverly Hills but was definitely not Beverly Hills standards to say the least) so we all headed to bed after short introductions. Just as I was falling asleep, I had my first hallucination from my malaria pills! I could hear cats everywhere! Scratching and clawing at the doors! At first I didn't know that it was a hallucination because it was dark and I wouldn't be able to see the cats normally but I soon found out after I woke up my bunk make to say, "Can you hear the cats!?!?!?" Needless to say, it was quite the first impression that I made on her! In the morning we got in a taxi (that resembled a tro-tro) and headed off to Woe. Ghana is amazingly beautiful! Palm trees, HUGE leafy trees (don't know what they're called), colorful clothing, smiling people... its just so amazing! We arrived in Woe in about three hours and were greeted by the CCS family with the word, "Miawoezo" (me-a-way-zo) meaning Welcome and we reciprocated by saying, "Yoooooooooo" (thank you). I have picked up some Ewe (a-way), which is the local language here but it is difficult to learn as it has no real logic! The rest of the day was actually quite a shock and I will not lie - the first day/night was awful! I felt incredibly ill (most likely from lack of sleep and odd food), had no one familiar here to chat with, was HOTHOTHOT and hallucinating at the times that I did attempt to sleep. It was a sad sleep that night but I can assure you that since that one awful night, I have been having the time of my life! I have made excellent friends (especially Sarah, the Aussie that I room with) and have had an incredilb etime (AHHH! I have to go buy more minutes! BE RIGHT BACK!)