Ive been quite busy with classes and my internship at the hospital lately.  Yesterday as i was walking back from the hospital the sky got super dark, and it started pouring and there was thunder and lightning!!  You can imagine i got completely soaked, i literally looked like i just stepped out of the shower!  As im currently typing this up in my room, the sky went dark and thunder started. I said "its going to start raining i know it" and just now it started POURING.  I really think the thunder here is much louder than back home, it feels like the earth is shaking!  Well, its been several weeks since we've had running water for more than an hour per day at a time (if that)....ive gotten used to taking bucket showers every night and washing my dishes with water from a bucket.  The interesting thing however is that when it rains, the water turns back on for a little while...however never longer than an hour or so.  I just went to check if it was back on since its pouring outside, and whatdya know, it is!!! Hoorah!

Anyway,  I have my first midterm exam tomorrow morning, which im a little nervous about since i have no clue what the tests are like here.  Today i went to the hospital and there were a lot of babies in the ward, but not very many older children.  I saw a little girl who was probably only a little over a year old and had huge white spots on her forehead, cheek, and nose.  From a distance i wasn't sure what it was and i first thought they were bandages. As i got closer to her, i saw her arm and back were bandaged up and then realized that she had been severely burned.  This was a really heartbreaking thing to witness.  When i read her charts it said that she had pulled a pot down from the counter when her mom was cooking and whatever was inside spilled on her.  Its so sad how something like that could have been prevented if the mother had been more cautious but now she will have to live with these scars for the rest of her life.  The most common things i have seen since i started out here are jaundice in newborn babies and children who have convulsions and seizures.  In the clinic today one of the doctors let me use the otoscope to look inside this little girl's ear.  She had an ear infection with a lot of fluid insider her ear.  This was really cool and exciting for me to see, however im sure not very cool for her!  This friday i will go in to the maternity ward to speak to some mothers about breastfeeding which i will write my paper on for my independent study project.  I cant think of anything else new so i think thats it for today!

Yesterday was a really long hectic day but very productive i think! I went to the hospital at 8am and had the best day since i started by far. There werent very many children/babies in the ward and a lot of the ones there, the doctor discharged..so it was a pretty slow day.  When I got done going around to the patients with the doctor, i hung out with about 5 little girls in the play room.  A couple of them i knew from the day before since i had met them.  My favorite little girl was named Edina who was about 5 or 6 id say, and she hung out with me the whole time.  She'd run in and out of the room and run up to me with her arms out so id scoop her up. She loved this. Then she came in really quick and ran up to me saying "Take me to America!". I cracked up laughing and went in to the ward and said to her mum and auntie "You told her to say that didnt you!" They all laughed and said yes.  I told them if i could, i would in a heartbeat! She was like a little sister to me and i was sad to say goodbye because she had been discharged by the Dr. so i knew i wouldnt see her again, but happy that she got to go home!  Another little girl was only about 1 1/2 years old and at first she was a bit hesitant of me, but after her mum left her in there and she got comfortable with me, she too had her arms out wanting me to hold her.  We walked around the room looking at all the pictures of disney characters on the wall and she loved this.  I definitely think all the mothers were really happy that they had some free time away from their kids.  I got so caught up with all the little kids that i didnt even notice that the doctors had left to go do the clinic.  When i walked over there, they said they didnt want to take me away from the kids so they left me to stay with them.

I left the hospital and went to Ridge Hospital in Accra where I am going to try to intern in pediatrics one day a week.  The process of getting there took a bit of time. I had to catch a tro tro by myself, but with the help of this nice man at the bus stop, I ended up getting  the last seat on one! I had directions of how to get to this hospital by my advisor. When i got off at the Ridge bus stop, her directions had said to walk straight for 5 minutes and then turn right and walk until you see the hospital. Well, i walked for about 1 minute and there was the option to turn right or cross the street and keep going straight.  I decided to take a chance and go right. With the help of a man walking this way i found the hospital. This just goes to show you how bad people are here with giving you directions!! Good thing i didnt keep walking straight for 5 minutes or i would have been completely lost in Accra! I got to the hospital and of course the director wasn't there so i dropped my papers off and will go back on Thursday.  When i got back out on to the street, i had no clue where i was so i just started walking, all i knew was i needed to get to circle where the post office was so i could get my moms package.  I asked another man and he pointed to a taxi saying it was going to circle. I ran up to it and got in. It was a shared taxi, which they told us not to do, but at this point i didn't know what else to do...plus its way cheaper!

I got dropped off at circle in the middle of this HUGE market.  Ive never been here and was once again completely lost. So, i just started walking hoping i would eventually get to where i needed to be. I walked through this crazy market with people yelling to me and grabbing me. Lets just say this wasn't fun at all. I had one young guy ride up next to me on his bike and ask me where i was going. He said he could show me to the post office if i just went with him to his house to drop his bike off. I said NO WAY! and kept walking.  Eventually with the help of several people on the way, i got to the post office.  Luckily my experience getting my package wasn't as bad as i thought after hearing stories about it. I did have to pay about 17USD to get it, but it could have been a lot worse considering i got a lot of stuff!   I went back in to the huge market place to catch a tro tro and there were so many i had no idea which ones were heading to Medina.  I asked some people and got in cue for one.  This entire trip showed me that there are really a lot of nice and helpful ghanaians who genuinely want to help you find your way.  This tro tro ride back to school was the craziest, scariest ride ive had since ive been here.  This young man driving it was swerving in and out of traffic, cutting people off, nearly hitting other cars.  My explanation doesnt even begin to describe it.  The traffic was horrible and in one intersection there were litteraly cars going every which way blocking traffic so no one could move, and everyone was honking and yelling at each other.  There needs to be some road rules here, thats the problem.  Thank goodness i made it back to school safely after an hour+ of this madness.

Today is another national holiday, Kwame Nkrumah's birthday (the first president of Ghana), meaning no classes! I could reaaaaally get used to all these holidays!!  I finally got to sleep in. When i went downstairs to make breakfast, there was this little Ghanaian boy who immediately started following me...he was like my little shadow. He followed me everywhere, to the water tank, to the kitchen, up to my room, the bathroom.  His name is Kofi and he's one of the cleaning ladies son.  One of the girls in our dorm told me that he does that...he will pick one person for the day to follow around. It was really cute. I think today is going to be a relaxing day, we were going to go to the beach but it rained last night so don't want to risk getting rained on!

Weekend trip to Ankasa Nature Reserve

first night (Tacoradi)

The muddy dirt road our taxi got stuck in !

A transparent leaf ( you can see me walking through it!)

STC Bus Station

On the way to Tacoradi...

The Frenchman's Quarters

Dried Coconuts

Walk to where we stayed.

Cocoa Plants

The village kids chasing after us

Slept on this bridge during the 4 hour gap between our 2 hikes

By far the largest spider ive ever seen!

Elephant Skull

Inside our room

waiting at the tro tro station Sunday Morn

I will back up starting on Friday...me and 3 of my friends, Kelsey, Julia and Annie decided to travel to the Western Region to Ankasa Nature Reserve located near the Ghana-Cote d'Ivoire border.  We had it all planned out how we were getting there and as you can guess, barely any part of our trip went according to plans! We arrived at the STC bus station around 2 and were told that the 1230 bus to Tacoradi hadn't arrived yet, so we could buy tickets for it.  We waited, and when the bus finally came, we stood in line, or "cue" as they call it here.  I can say that forming a line in Ghana doesn't mean anything, instead you've just got to cut and force your way in front of people.  So many people ended up doing this to us that we couldn't fit on this bus. So...we waited a half hour and another one came at 330. By this time there was so much traffic within Accra that we ended up sitting in it for over a good hour atleast.  Now, our plan was to take the bus to Tacoradi (the farthest possible stop) and then catch a tro tro from Tacoradi to Elubo (the border town) and catch a taxi to take us to the reserve.  The estimated bus time from Accra to Tacoradi is 4 hours, which if all went as planned, would have put us in Tacoradi when it was dark.  Then the tro tro ride to Elubo is 3 hours, which would mean we'd be traveling at night, and speaking to a couple of ghanaian friends we made at the bus station, they said just get a hotel, dont travel because its very likely you can get robbed out on the dark roads.  The bus ride ended up taking 6 WHOLE HOURS! We got a hotel room, with the help of a really nice ghanaian man who's been living in the US the past 8 years. He was really concerned about making sure we got to a hotel safely.  Saturday morning we woke up at 4 am, left the hotel at 430 and searched for the tro tro station.  It was still really dark at this time and we had only the slightest idea of where the station was located.  We walked back and forth and eventually with the help of a nice street vendor, we found the station and headed to Elubo.  We were immediately swarmed with taxi drivers the second we stepped out of the tro tro in elubo, and eventually took a taxi for what we later found out to be almost double what it should have been! Oh well, its difficult when you dont know the area and you are clearly a foreigner.  The drive to Ankasa was definitely an adventure...it was a dirt road going in to the forest, there were a lot of pot holes (definitely not smooth at all!), and it had just rained so the road was all muddy. We ended up getting stuck in the mud, and when the driver stepped on the gas, mud drenched his entire car...lol.  Finally we made it in to the main gate and spoke with one of the men working there. We explained to him how we wanted to stay in the camp in the park that we read about in our guide book.  He said that they got rid of that some years ago..we asked if there was any possible way to stay in the forest and he said its not recommended as there are no security guards nearby you. We were pretty upset about this but got over it and stayed in this little place out in the forest near a village called the Frenchman's Quarters.  It is difficult to describe, it wasn't a hotel, more like a little bungalow.  We did 2 hikes throughout the day with a tour guide and it was absolutely beautiful! Our place we stayed in was about a 20 minute walk from the entrance to the park, so we had to walk through a village.  There is a big difference between the people who live in the city and those who live out in the rural areas.  In the rural areas, they are much more friendly towards you and welcoming. As we were walking along a swarm of about 10+ kids came running out to us shouting "obruni, obruni!!!". They were so excited to see us and ended up chasing us all the way to the end of the road and waving goodbye until we were out of sight.  It was adorable.  At night time, the Frenchman as he is called, made us a dinner and we sat around playing games outside.  It was so peaceful being out in nature away from big cities and the chaos that comes with them.  We went to bed somewhat early since we were waking up at 430am to take a taxi to catch a tro tro back to Tacoradi.  As we laid in our room we could hear all the noises of different animals and insects outside.  It was really peaceful and something im not used to!  However, i got the worst nights sleep of my life.  We just shared one room to save some money and all 4 of us girls crammed in to one bed the size of a full mattress and it was realllllly tight!!  I hardly slept and woke up so sore this morning!  Today we traveled back to Accra and had much better luck.  We made it home by 2pm!