Hey Everyone,

Sorry I havent updated you all in a while. Ive been SO busy with school work.

So Ghana was AMAZING. I had such a wonderful time.

i started off my trip with a 3 day/2 night trip with a group that i independently set up. We went to the Tafi Atome monkey village which ended up being 8 or 9 hours away which really blew. We stopped on the way to get some lunch and i got Jollof and chicken. it was pretty good. We ended up arriving at the village around 830 i believe and got some dinner which was wicked spicy. It was...interesting. We got to have the village do a drumming and dancing ceremony for us which was really exciting. I went up and danced with them it was really fun. We ended up heading to our "apartments" which were really interesting. Pretty gross too but hey, i was in Ghana.. No complaining there. We woke up bright and early to feet MONKEYS! It was amazing, they came right up to you and peeled the banana right in your hands. It was really incredible to say the least. After we got breakfast which was just rice and water. agian... interesting. I put about 3 pounds of sugar in it to make it flavorful. After that we went to the school and i had to make a speech to all the children and then ended up finding out they didnt udnerstand a word i said. Most people in Ghana speak English but they had just started learning english so it was a big fail on my part. Oh well though. We went to the Wli waterfalls after that which was amazing. the site was incredible and the pressure from the falls was unbelievable. We left and headed to Accra and on the way we stopped at lake volta which is the largest man made lake in the world. It was pretty cool.

We arrived at Accra, which is the capital of Ghana. It was an incredible place. We got to head out on the town which was cool. We went to this bar/club and i had a great time. A few people decided to leave the group which i was extremely ticked off about but thats a whole other story. We headed back to our hostel which was the Salvation Army and we had 7 beds in one room. It was an adventure to say the least. We woke up bright and early and headed to the market which was AMAZING. it was so incredibly fun! I got a lot of exciting things. After that we headed back to Takoradi on a very long bus ride. When we arrived back at the ship Kristen and I decided to go to a internet cafe which was annoynig because the cab drivers here were incredibly pushy.

 

The next day we woke up and went to the Elmina slave castle. This was really hard to go to. They put us in a cell that the whites stayed in and then a cell that the black stayed in and they were so different it was really uncomfortable. I didnt get emotional until we went into the womens quarters which they were in for 2 to 3 months at a time. There were 150 women in this one room which you would have to see to understand how terrible it was. They went to the bathroom, #1 and #2 and had their menstrual cycle happen ont he floor with no clean up. For months. all these women. HOW DISTURBING IS THAT? i was on the verge of tears. And then the guide tells us how the women only used to get up to go into the square where the governor who ran the castle would point at a women and they would be brought upstairs to be raped. It was so disturbing and terrifying to me. We had a nice lunch and then headed back to takoradi where we just decided to hang out for the rest of the day/night.

The final day we woke up and went to get some stamps and money and headed to lunch. We had our cab driver take us and he said he woiuld stay with us for the day so we were like oh okay thanks! and we went to this EXTREMELY expensive restaurant. He decided to orders omethig and didnt tell us and it was the most expensive thing on the menu. When we got the bill we were like huh? and they ended up bringing out his food in a bag and we were so shocked. We were like um excuse me you need to pay and he wouldnt. He tried telling us we had to pay for his meal and give him 60 cedis.. the exchange rate was about 1.44 so you do the math. Rediculous amounts of money when we ALSO had to pay for his like 25 dollar meal in us money. oh and did i mention we all only had 10 dolalrs each on us, just enoguh to go back to the port. After 45 minutes of arguing, our tour guide ended up just paying the guy off. You do not understand how thankful we all were for him. We just got droped off back at the port and ended up doing a little shopping and left Ghana.

 

So thats whats been goign on. Nothign to much! Miss everyone! were almost in Cape Town!!!! Update you soon!