I'm sure you might be wondering how the "study" part of this study abroad experience has been. Well, it's been pretty minimal. For starters, my professor who showed up an hour late for almost every Psychology of Religion class, had copied and pasted our course literature from Wikipedia, and taught sexists lessons, has pretty much stopped coming to class. We found out that he was actually just the TA and we have no idea who the real prof is. I've learned absolutely nothing in what could have been a really good class.
My Medical Sociology class that was super interesting, though really only glossed over some very broad topics, has finished. The prof is traveling to Europe and Brazil so our last lecture was on March 30. I now have over one month to study for that exam on Friday the 13th of May, which covers only 8 class lectures.
My Medical Sociology class that was super interesting, though really only glossed over some very broad topics, has finished. The prof is traveling to Europe and Brazil so our last lecture was on March 30. I now have over one month to study for that exam on Friday the 13th of May, which covers only 8 class lectures.
Deviant Behavior has been going pretty well. I actually started doing the reading for this class in my spare time and it made me feel like a student again. A lot of it is review of what I've learned in past Sociology classes, but I really like the professor for this class so that's a plus.
As for Twi and Dance, they're kind of both jokes as well. Although, Twi can be fun because if I pick up any phrases in class and use them out in the real world people laugh and seem to have a softer side towards me. Dance is fun to do something somewhat active and creative, but being in a class of over 100 students makes learning the technique pretty challenging and fruitless.
Over the weekend of April 1st, I went with Kelsey, Genna, and Stephen to the Volta region of Ghana. I have to say that transportation and travel were among the most interesting parts of this trip. Getting there took 5 hours of travel (3 different trotros after the first one broke down, and walking for over an hour). This weekend also consisted of about only one substantial meal and many small snacks. We stayed one night at the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, which is part of the Tafi Atome village. This is considered eco-tourism, where some of the profits from the tourism goes towards feeding and keeping up the monkeys’ habitat, and also towards the village. In the morning we got to feed bananas to the little monks and some were even brave enough to have the monkeys climb on them (I was a little skittish and usually just dropped the banana and ran when the monkeys got close enough to me).
As for Twi and Dance, they're kind of both jokes as well. Although, Twi can be fun because if I pick up any phrases in class and use them out in the real world people laugh and seem to have a softer side towards me. Dance is fun to do something somewhat active and creative, but being in a class of over 100 students makes learning the technique pretty challenging and fruitless.
Over the weekend of April 1st, I went with Kelsey, Genna, and Stephen to the Volta region of Ghana. I have to say that transportation and travel were among the most interesting parts of this trip. Getting there took 5 hours of travel (3 different trotros after the first one broke down, and walking for over an hour). This weekend also consisted of about only one substantial meal and many small snacks. We stayed one night at the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, which is part of the Tafi Atome village. This is considered eco-tourism, where some of the profits from the tourism goes towards feeding and keeping up the monkeys’ habitat, and also towards the village. In the morning we got to feed bananas to the little monks and some were even brave enough to have the monkeys climb on them (I was a little skittish and usually just dropped the banana and ran when the monkeys got close enough to me).
On Saturday we made our way to the Waterfall Lodge at the base of the mountain where the Wli falls are located. By this time we had actually ran into some other CIEE kids we knew who had a similar itinerary to ours that weekend. After figuring out the rooms (good thing we called ahead, even though we ended up allowing two German students to squat in one of our reserved rooms), we went to the visitors center and paid our fees to climb the mountain. We decided to hike to the upper falls, which was about 2 ½ hours. The last two hours were on the steepest “trail” I’ve ever seen. Even some experienced hikers in our group said it was the hardest thing they’ve ever done. I can safely say it was the most challenging physical activity I have ever done. And it felt SO good to accomplish it. Our guide rushed us up the mountain, so when we got to the top at the Waterfalls we tipped him and said we would head down on our own. We stayed at the falls for a while and swam and had a snack. then when it looked like it might rain we decided to descend the steep trail once again. The views were beautiful all along the way and it helped to stop and look around when I was struggling so much. Going down was just as difficult as coming up because you had to concentrate so hard on where to place each foot. We decided to check out the lower falls when we got back down, which were just as beautiful as the upper falls but not quite as rewarding, having struggled so much to get to see the upper falls. We were sweaty, dirty and exhausted, so we went back to the lodge, did a little stretching and showered and had a delicious meal outside as a thunderstorm came in and passed out around 9pm.
We made it back to campus by 1:30pm on Sunday after taking a cramped bus that was showing videos of almost scary charismatic Christian services, and reggae music videos. I know that at least I was just a little grumpy to be back in the city after being in the beautiful Volta region. It all went by too fast.
Now in the past week, I have registered for fall classes at Clark, started volunteering with street children at a daycare/pre-school (I stopped interning at Tot-to-Teen a few weeks ago), helped out with arts & crafts at an orphanage, and discovered an amazing non-profit project that helps street children go to school and get regular meals in the slums of Jamestown. I also saw more of Ghana’s beautiful nature and waterfalls on our CIEE trip to the Eastern region.
I think I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’ll definitely need to devote an entire blog entry to the children of Ghana that have touched my heart so deeply in just a few days.
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