Much needed update

My dear dedicated readers,

I apologize for slacking on my blog writing these past few weeks. I'm sure you have seen the pictures from the Eastern region two weekends ago. It was our last CIEE program trip and it was great. The botanical garden and cocoa farm were brief, but beautiful; however my favorite part of the trip was definitely the waterfall/hike. Unfortunately they forgot to mention to us that the hike was going to be something we would have difficulty doing in sandals. Most people did not have proper footwear, but we all survived.

Last weekend I spent around Accra. I splurged and went out to dinner twice (the food here is literally killing people which I'll get to later). The Italian restaurant we went to was great and was some of the best pizza I've ever had! This week was the last full week of classes for me. I still have a few next week, but we get this Friday and Monday off for Easter. Pretty soon I'm going to have to hit the books for the first time here...I'm a little nervous about having all of my grades be decided by a final, but I'm sure it will all work out. There's really only one class besides Twi that will be difficult, and that's mostly because I have to learn all of Ghana's political history. The foreign students are definitely at a disadvantage in this class because it's a lot of stuff the Ghanaian students probably learned in grade school. Last Sunday our program organized Olympics for us. They took us to a beautiful beach and we played soccer, volleyball, tug-of-war, and scrabble for those not so athletically inclined. I was assigned to the red team and we ended up winning the Olympics, so that was fun.

The past few days have been rough for a lot of kids in our program. On Tuesday my friend was taken to the hospital because she had been throwing up about every half hour for the whole night. A few of us visited her and sat with her in the hospital for the past few days, which was an experience in and of itself.

First of all, there is no privacy in hospitals. She was kept in the "Emergency Room" (a small room with two beds) for about 4 or 5 hours until she was finally admitted and put in a room. All the while my friend and I were fighting for her to get her labs back, have her fluid bags changed, and get the basic care she needed. During this time a woman came into our room carrying a convulsing toddler. We were asked to stand outside until they tended to him. After this happened the nurse asked me if I could go get my friend's lab results from the lab since she got the call that they were ready. She was obviously too busy doing her word find to get them herself. I'm not kidding about the word find either. So my friend and I went and got the lab results, tried to make sense of them, but couldn't, so we gave them to the nurse. She told me to put them on her desk and give her a few minutes because of the emergency with the little boy. That would of been fine had she actually been helping the little boy. She wasn't. She just sat down in a chair and watched them tend to him while my friend's lab results (that we had been waiting for 5 hours for) sat on her desk. I wanted to scream. Yesterday I went back and we waited all day for a doctor to see her (which never ended up happening). She had given samples to be tested that morning and never got the results...after a full day. She was feeling a lot better and had kept over three meals down. In my not so expert opinion she probably could have been released after they got the results. She ended up having to stay another night and is coming home today. I'm still not sure what they think it was. I'm guessing either Cholera, a parasite or food poisoning. There has been at least one other person in our program who has gotten Cholera. He actually had malaria simultaneously. What a trooper. Additionally there have been probably at least 15-20 cases of malaria. Three unfortunate people have actually gotten it twice. I don't know what I'm doing right, but I have definitely been fortunate so far.

This weekend I'll probably hang out around the hostel and maybe even start organizing my notes to prepare for the month of finals that lies ahead. I'll try to keep you posted if anything new or exciting happens, but right now I'm just anticipating a whole lot of studying!

That's all for now. Thanks for reading!