June 19,

I finally went to the orphanage!! Yay :) The first few times were awful it took me almost a week to acclimate to the custom and culture of how the nannies treat the children. Now... I love it! There are eight kids all under the age of 1 and 1/2. Most of them are beginning walkers and teethers...so much fun! I've first and foremost learned to get used to crying and stinky diapers. We use use cloth diapers and because I am the new one I get to clean all the diapers! No matter how poor I am I will never, ever buy cloth diapers. It is a good work experience, but never. The kids each have their own cute unique personalities! We have two twin girls who always wake up first and are really adventurous. They like to climb a lot! And then we have a sweet girl named Amina and she has the cutest smile oh my goodness... And then Rayon who is a clown and giggles in his sleep. Then we have two premature babies who are 6 weeks old now and adorable, both boys. They both had to go to the hospital last week and are on meds, I don't know what for but I'm hoping they get better! And then we have a baby who is 3 months old his name is Jusef and he is so lazy it's unbelievable and then another boy who crawls everywhere and I swear I'm going to lose him one of these times... Any who that is the orphanage situation! I usually have a morning shift from 7:30 to 1! This entire week as a whole has not been very eventful, more just laid back and relaxing. Not a bad thing if you ask me. :) Tomorrow I leave for Mole National Park which I am very excited about! On Saturday I went proselyting with the missionaries ALL day, it as super fun but around eight we stopped at a house and the lady offered us dinner. (In Ghana it is realy rude to not accept food.) So... of course we said yes, but as soon as she left the Elders kind of started freaking out and saying oh no... Apparently this lady had a famous dish she always made for them and it was one of the worst meals they had eaten in Ghana and for their entire mission! I started freaking out! She brought the dinner out and we ate it on the front lawn while her family ate inside. To say it was uniquely flavored would be an understatement. The only way I can describe this food would be raw bread dough with lime or some kind of strong citrus and then you rip that dough and dip it in a spinach -greens- soup-... The problem is the dough part was so nasty we had to swallow it whole and it felt like slugs going down our throats! To get us to all eat it, I made it a competition so to make things worse we were wll eating it really fast... Let's just say when I got home I was really, really sick! Most the food here is delicious, word of advise though, never eat tsert! Monday night we had the Ghana vs. USA game!! Town was crazy!! Every single street vendor was selling Ghana apparel which made things difficult as I was trying to find something US... I got on TV though! A guy was wrapped in a Ghana flag and a News broadcaster was taping him and asking him questions about the game and I went behind him and smiled into the camera! Yeah... Ghana has made me pretty rebellious ;) Anyhow, the game went well... Obviously we won... We watched the game with a lot of other Ghanaians in the front room. Fred our coordinator was there and a few times when the US was doing well the Ghanaian would say something in Dagbani and in English Fred would say, "No, this is just a game the Americans are our friends!" Ha oh man... Unfortunately a rain storm came in the last eight minutes right after the Ghana goal so we didn't get to see the ending as our entire power went out. I think that lessened the blow because it took a few minutes after the game was finished for us to even know we had won and they had lost! Great times. The rain here is crazy! We are starting to move into the rainy season so things are cooling down a bit which is great! But, with rain comes puddles which produces more mosquitos! Fun days... :) Although I realize I am in Africa I can't grasp the concept I am actually IN Africa... this still seems like a hardworking vacation for me in a cultural city that's not that far from home! Ha.. I wonder when it will sink in? Well I am excited for the weekend!! Tomorrow the girls school is having a cultural dance for us and we have to wear Ghanaian clothes so I really need to go shopping!
Love, Emily