Pretentious

How I felt tonight. It hit me a bit...How could I expect to come to Ghana, to Africa, and immediately enjoy the culture, all the people, all the differences? How could I expect to enjoy being the minority.  I remembered back to my ISEP application and how we had to explain how this experience would benefit us in the future.  I wrote that I'm interested in Teach for America/Teach for Arkansas (an option I am still knocking around), a program that places college graduates in underprivileged schools for two year terms, and that learning what being a minority felt like would be beneficial. Which it will. But I don't like it. Not right now.

I grew up hearing my parents' stories from their time in the Peace Corps.  Not all of them were good; they had bad experiences too. But you can never realize or even fully imagine what emotions were dealt with in order to get to those good stories, those memories that, looking back, are reason enough to go return to their villages.

I'll be perfectly honest.  I'm terrified. Afraid of going into the market without our student guides, just with other obrunis (white people), of bargaining, being blunt and firm about what I want, not drinking enough water, walking by myself, the prospect of not being able to stay in the library late because it's about a 10 minute walk back to campus and lighting isn't great.  Ideally, most, if not all, of these are the result of first week jitters.

In other news:
I have my Ghanaian name! Abena. :) There is a male and female name associated with each day of the week.  Whichever day you were born on tells you your name.  March 23, 1993 was a Tuesday. Thus, I am Abena. Below are the names. Who are you??

                         Male               Female
Sunday            Kwesi              Akosua
Monday           Kwadwo          Adwoa
Tuesday           Kwabena         Abena    
Wednesday     Kwaku             Akua
Thursday         Yaw                 Yaa
Friday              Kofi                 Afua
Saturday          Kwame            Amma


Our ISEP group also survived our first tro tro ride today. Tro tros are about the size of mini/church vans with four or five rows of seats with four sitting on each.  They are the cheapest and best ways to get around Accra.  They drive different routes, like buses, so you have to watch for the hand signal and listen for the mate who is calling out the up coming stops. Organized chaos at it's finest!