July 7,

Last week was a riot! :) Just kidding, but it was quite enjoyable. The largest entertainment days were Tuesday and Friday. On Tuesday we went to the Paga Crocodile Ponds, (in Paga, Ghana). On the way we stopped in Bolgatanga which is a city I had never even heard of... It is a city set on a hill and there are humongous rocks everywhere!! Although they are only on the hill, it is a mystery how they got there, the local village believes God is in rocks and animals and so he put the large rocks there to bless them and to reside with them... They have a shrine from hundreds of years ago that we had the opportunity to visit with one slight drawback. In order to go into the actual shrine -you had to go topless- um yeah. Experiencing the culture in Ghana!! All ya'll knowing me know I could never, thus a group of us who didn't want to walk around with a ton of Africans, (while being completely topless), got to learn how to make Shea butter and went rock climbing on holy rocks! Woot woot :) After that tour we drove to the croc ponds. In order to lure the crocodiles out of the pond they had live chickens they shook to squeal and chirp, it made me a little nervous...Regardless, I sat on a 94 year old crocodile and was not eaten alive! What. A. Blessing. :) Next up we drove to Burkina Faso and crossed the border! Since none of us had a visa to actually be in Burkina Faso a Ghana Military Guard had to walk us there and back with a gun. Very interesting...Tuesday was packed full of things to do, lastly we went to the Paga Slave Camps and had a tour around the living areas where the slaves lived. I don't have a lot of pictures from it because I felt a picture couldn't really capture what had happened there. On the bus ride home we hit a rain storm...Our bus has a sunroof...I sit directly under the sun roof...I'm sure you all can imagine the fun ride home I had. It was an extremely wet ride home. :) Friday as you all know was July Fourth! Not all the volunteers here in Volunteering Solutions Ghana are American, and thus all the Americans felt it was our duty to make the entire day a festival they would remember. Sadly for me, festivities involve a lot alcohol in most cultures. On the upside without drinking I still managed to learn how to play beer pong and some kind of cup flipping game! For dinner we ate PB&J sandwiches and deviled eggs! (We also attempted Onion Rings...but we aren't going to discuss the final result :/ ). We were going to also do coke and mentos instead of fireworks but from a pretest on Wednesday we learned that Ghanaian coke and mentos only rise about three inches high! Haha kind of a disappointment. I fell ill Friday and didn't start feeling better until Saturday evening. Luckily, I am now back to my great healthy self! Sunday was amazing, I love church here! I was asked to teach Relief Society Lesson by the Branch President after Gospel Doctrine so I had about five minutes to prep a lesson, phew! Luckily the sisters here are really nice and didn't judge my teaching straight out of the manual. For the rest of the day I just hung out with the new volunteers, it's a party. :) Ha I hope all is going well for everyone else this fine summer, and I love you all!

Love, Emily