Winding Down

Sadly, today (Monday) was the first day of my last week in Accra, Ghana. Seeing as how this means we only have two more days teaching the kids, Carlie and I are pretty much teaching all the remainder of our lessons in a potluck sort of way. A little weather/storms + light energy + sign language + and songs = 2 hours of semi-controlled chaos.

Color changing beads for light energy lesson

Knowing I was spending my last week with these kids made me surprisingly calm when teaching. Sometimes I never know if anyone is really listening, I mean really understanding, but today I KNOW my little Richard was. When I started talking and showing photos of lightning his eyes got huge and his mouth was literally hanging open. So cute.

B.S. 4

Overall, it just felt real easy today. I just tried to have fun and enjoy the last little while. One of the girls I love, Jennifer, was wrestling with a boy in the corner near the end of the class and to break them up I started teasing them that he was trying to kiss her and she was trying to kiss him. Woo hoo that worked fast! They immediately broke up. He started laughing and the boys were harassing him while Jennifer turned bright red. It was great. Even though they are in 4th grade their ages are a little sporadic, so this trick still worked on these two, thank heavens:)

Girl Guides/Boy Scouts

After school, we headed to the girl guides/boy scouts to teach about HIV/AIDS. This was the smartest group by far...and the youngest. They were asking such detailed questions about the virus, transmission, testing, infection, treatment, etc. We were actually laughing out loud because we were expecting this group to know the least because of their age, and here they were proving themselves to be the most knowledgeable.

Happy Kids School

I found myself very interested in a discussion I had heard many times because this time it was different. We were able to discuss real life situations of how this virus affects people of Africa through customs, traditions, myths, etc. Very enjoyable.

The rest of this evening has been spent desperately trying to find Internet connection, chocolate, and entertainment. So far, I have succeeded in finding all three. We got really distracted by Grey's Anatomy a few days ago and Kate took it upon herself to try to download the next season. Only problem is our Internet is so bad it said it would only take about 308 hours to download one episode. Hmmm. While we waited, a group of us walked down to the pharmacy only to find they had a very poor chocolate selection. So...we jumped in a cab and headed to Frankies for ice cream. Check #1. On the way home we stopped by the local market, Koala, and as luck would have it, we found some pirated DVD's of Grey's outside. Check #2 (shhh). And clearly, I found Internet through a round about way. Check #3. We now have about 10 of us piled in our room to start the next season. Party!

Lastly, we also hit up the market today. I'm getting better at bargaining. Once again people tried to rip me off. Wanted 108 cedi for fabric...I gave him 25. I'll post photos of my spoils soon. Hope all is well in the states; full of Internet, chocolate and entertainment~ and remember, please do not urinate here.