jane's engagement

no, my mom's biggest fear of me finding a native and getting married here is not coming true. today i went to another jane's engagement party! it's vera's bestfriend/calls her sister. (everyone here calls close friends "my sister my brother" it's nice). it was in this brand new house in Accra. the groom and bride's side all gathers together and there is an MC who introduces all the relatives. the groom's family presents the dowry. back in the day they used to offer goats and apparently a bottle of schapps? (im not sure why it's the preferred alcohol.) more modern gifts which we saw today consist mostly of money but there was also a huge suitcase full of.. underwear and clothing for the bride! next week we are attending the actual wedding ceremony at a church three towns away called TuTu. WOW! i'm excited.

school
so some noteworthy names of students i teach are... Blessed (he's a cool 7th grader/hardworking student so he gets the job of ringing the bell between subjects.) Comfort is a tall 8th grader who can't stop talking and raising her hand and cleaning the board and doing teacher pet things. kind of overwhelming. instead of "teacher teacher" which is what the kids called me in Taiwan. they all call me Madam Jane. so it's this really loud repititive call of "Madam Madam" pretty funny. Regena is popular too (but you pronounce it like RA-GI-NA and it make me laugh the first time. yeah i'm sad). you also pronounce Racheal like RA-HELL. Prince (the Mentor winner- ghana's american idol) is a pretty popular name too. i have an 8th grader who's really smooth with the girls and likes to hold my hand. well, lots of the boys like to do that. by the way, i havn't had as many marriage proposals as people have warned from normal aged men. most of them are from boys in my class who are around 14. right now liz and i are writing the questions for the final exam. school ends in about two weeks. so i just typed up all these subject/verb agreement and passive/active voice questions. i hope they get good scores!! we are goign to start review soon. yes, the computer labs at school work... When there isn't a black out. which happened the other day. all the kids are kinda antsy cause summer vacation is almost here for them! i'm antsy too because my sister is going to arrive august 4th!! woohoo!

excursions
a couple weekends ago we visited botanical gardens! yes, only like 45 minutes away. there were some amazing trees and species of plants (dad would have been Really jealous... my favorite was this humongous tree called Ficus Elasticoidus. the inside was all open and you could have totally created a swiss family robsinson house in it). while we were there these people were filming a children's documentary. since they were white we talked to them. (basically anytime we have the opportunity to see/meet a foreigner we do!) they were filming this Barney-like character called Shockamooney (an elephant character from India) who travels the world. so if you see this in Blockbuster.. check it out!

last weekend liz and i took a tro tro (it's the crazy vans that they squeeze 15-22 people into to get around from towns or to the city) to visit vera's mom's house in a far off village. we passed this bridge that crosses the Volta River at a town called Kpong (say PONG) very cool. Vera's mom lives really far out in this cute little village. in front of her house is a lawn full of mango trees and plantain trees. baby lambs and ducks and hens walk around you while you cook in the outdoor kitchen. you had to brush your teeth with a cup of water outside but it was fine. even their outhouse was so clean and didn't stink! it was just a dream to be walking around meeting the village children and relaxing there. akropong seems so urban in comparison, almost wish i had picked an even smaller/more local setting.

a past volunteer named lindsay that stayed with vera in 2003 and 2004 came back to visit for a night. she was here for work. she works for an NGO called Bridge for Africa (visit the website and buy something cool from them! they are legit and awesome!). her job is basically to get in contact with local craft businesses and set up a relationship to ship their products to the US for people to buy hand-made genuine african crafts. we went with her to a nearby town to check out a bead-making family. we saw how beads were crushed from different colored glass and then burned in a kiln to make beautiful necklaces and bracelets and all different types of things. i really wanted to stay longer and be an apprentice bead-maker. then we went with them to the market to buy some of their products (psst some friends will be recieving some nice african beaded jewelry this xmas!)

money
so we buy water from mama aku across the street in plastic bags of 500ml. there are like 30 bags in a bunch and total it costs 7,000 cedis (which is like 75 cents). a ride on the tro tro to Accra for two hours is 10,000 cd (little over a dollar). right now the hour i'm using for the internet cafe is pretty cheap about 7,000 cd (some more frou frou places charge 12,000 cd). the teachers at akuffo tom school get paid pittance. i think 420,000 a month (what is that? like 50 dollars?) it might seem comparable. but it isn't. they still have rent and babies and real bills. yeah basically.. the exchange rate rocks for me!!!

cooking
liz and i have started to cook full meals since last week! vera is taking night classes in Accra for hotel management (one day we will return and stay at some amazing resort she'll run). so we are on our own for dinner. which it's turning out to be no problem because she recently purchased a gas stove (we pitched in for the cylinder of gas). it's like i'm on little house on the praire cause we are so grateful for a stove! no more fanning the charcoal for half an hour!

chinese
wo hao jiu mei you yong zhong wen. bao qian wo de tai wan han ri ben peng you!
i notice chinese everday! mama aku's daughter's name is a-mei (yes like the taiwan pop star) and i call her mei mei for short. lots of products randomly are from china and have only chinese written on them.. or arabic... or italian. for instance our toilet rolls have the brand huo ri (like live days). and the chocolate we sell during break at school say "cha ke li...hao bang!" (chocolate how great!) and then there is this candy makeup we sell and it says "xiao yang ren" (small lamb person? but the lamb character has san-dian swei on the side). i don't really understand it. my mom is going to send me a chinese dictionary! thank god! i don't want to forget everything i learned last year!

sorry no pictures! the upload function didn't work on here. GRR. i will try soon! i have many many more! they won't fit on my flash drive!