Last Post

Okay so this is definately my last post from Ghana :) wednesday was canada day and i was finally sunny! so we had a great day sunbathing and just relaxing in general, i ecided to treat myself and finally paid to use the hotel swimming pool so it was good to swim and also i am looking brown again so prepared to all be bitterly jealous! wednesday night we went out for a meal for Ferns last night in Takoradi as she flew home on friday. Thursday was our party for our students which the teachers have known about for weeks so of course the kids were writing exams and the party couldnt happen, but we managed to squeeze in the pinatas which they loved and gave them all goody bags and clas four got to perform the plays we had been doing with them too. We also showed them a slideshow we had made from all of the pictures we had taken of them which they really liked because they dont get to see many pictures of themselves so thats always quite exciting for them :) friday morning we gave away our clothes that we didnt want to bring back to the teaches and older students, kinda gross cos they were smelly but they took them anyway lol. we did a raffle in assembly an gave out prizes like football jersies and all the art and craft stuff hat was left, saw some teachers already taking stuff off the kids that the kids had won. have to say i will definately not miss the teachers, they are pretty scummy people to be taking stuff off kids. i will mis 2 of them because they were actually decent people.
so we finally said farewell to western royal montessori school, it was a bit of an unceremonious send off but i said goodbye to the people that i wanted to.
we are now in cape coast staying at a place called hans cottage, where there are lots of crocodiles! so exciting! :):) the are scary!! heading up to accra later today to have a good night out for our final night in ghana, before my flight tomorrow evening :) thanks for all the messages u guys have left for me on here, and i shall see you soon! yayy!! love you x

probably my last post from ghana!

Hello :) i have 5 days left in ghana!!! ahhh!! so this will probably be my last blog or second last, so sorry to tell you that your lives will be very boring without my blog in it. no more laughing at my misfortunes as im sure you did :)
not a lot has happened since my last little report, went to beyin for fernsbirthday, it rained the whole time :( so didnt get much sunbathing in but the food was amazing :):) had a jacket potatoe with cheese AND bacon!!! so exciting :):):) was nice to see everyone and just have a relaxed weekend. sunday i passed out and threw up so that wasnt so nice, neither was the bumpy 2 hour ride home with a stomach ache :( fun times. looks like the tummy bug has come back to haunt me again! oh well, feeling a little better today, tried to eat some rice just now but ended up sharing it with a very pathetic looking kitten who made me feel bad by crying the whole time so i had to give him some of my food lol
anyway thats about it really :) tomorrow is canada day and the kids have the day off school for some sort of african holiday of independance so hopefully we can catch some last bits of sun. thursday is our party for the kids, we are giving out goody bags and doing a big slide show of pictures of them and smashing open pinatas :) friday i leave my placement and head for cape coast, saturday accra and sunday evening i fly home! so excited to go home now. i will miss ghana a lot and the kids the most but i am ready to go now, cant wait to see everyone and not be ill anymore! x

rain rain go away :(

not much to report really at the moment had quite a laid back few weeks the last 2 weeks, im just writing to say hi im still in ghana and also to try and beat richard in his number of blog posts :)
stayed in takoradi the last 2 weeks, teaching during the week. we had inter-house sports day which was so much fun, we dont have any space to actually run in the school so they just used the road and closed it with benches. im not sure if u are actually allowed to do that but oh well :) we did tug of war, guava and spoon race and 3 legged races and other stuff it was really cute but they take it sooooo seriously the teachers were all accusing eachother of teaching and all that fun nonsense that come with ghanaian competition :) fun fun fun!
my back wa sridiculously amazingly brown until i went and burnt it and it pelled and now my back looks like i have a horrific skin disease :( had my last day of teaching on wednesday, ill still be in the school next week but my teaching is officially done yayyy!!! definately know now that teaching is not for me but i still love the kids a lot as long as i dont have to teach them its fine.
it has rained and rained :( i know its the rainy season but still! if i wanted rain i would have stayed in england :( anyway, off to a place called beyin for ferns birthday weekend so hopefully should be good :) 10 days to go until i am home :) so excited! i will miss ghana but im really ready to come home now and eat vegetables and soup! no more carbs ever again in my entire life! love you all lots cant wait to see everyone xxxxx

i finally got sick :(

last week was pretty eventful! wednesday we took our kids to play against nazareth school in a football match, the kids played really well and drew 1-1 but i ended up in a huge row with one of the teachers at the end of the game because he told all the kids that they were crap and didnt even try which was a complete lie. so i interrupted him and told all the kids that the other boys trained everyday and we only are allowed to train once a week and we still didnt let them beat us so i was really proud of them, so the teacher then told everyone they wernt allowed food or water as punishment and i completely flipped out and started yelling at him and pretty much told the kids to ignore him because he was being ridiculous, he hasnt spoken to me since :) not really othered i care more about the children here than i do about evil teachers. Friday we went to senya beraku to see stephen and jacks placement which was beautiful, cos they get to live on the beach! we had to share 2 beds with 11 people which wasnt fun and i was exhausted by saturday morning :( saturday we all went to accra and stayed at the salvation army hostle. it was a pretty messy night as we got into a karaoke bar that was all free drinks once u paid the entry fee so i decided to get my moneys worth and sang i will survive to the whole bar :S how embarassing! so sunday morning we were all even more tired! monday at school was a bi odd because my lessons werent happening because of a school quiz so i didnt really know what to do with myself. tuesday was my worst day so far, i finally was sick! i only have 4 weeks left and i had avoided it for so long!! but i think a 24 hr bug is better than what some of the other volunteers have suffered, like malaria, dissentry and i think one girl had cholera :S so ive gotten away pretty lucky! still feeling a bit weird today but two of the kids brought me get well sooncards which cheered me up, its nice to know they like me :) hopefully will feel better by tomorrow!

This week has gone by soooo fast! we finally finished the paintings on monday excpet half of the second hopscotch because it decided to rain :(
wednesday we went to nazareth school to do some football competitions and give out jerseys to some of the older students as the big ones drowned all the kids in our school as they only go up to about 12 years old. friday was exhausting but really good fun, brittany had organised a world cup for the older classes and i got my own little team who were of course england :) it was so exciting when we scored and they kept doing weird little dances and high fiving eachother which was really cute, one kid (elijah and one of my favourites) even took a flying leap into me me so i could swing him round which scared me but luckily i wasnt knocked to the ground! we made the semi finals but brittanys canada team beat us, but they were beaten by teacher daniels brazil team in the finals even though canada clearly won, teacher daniel decided to be a bit of a asshole about the whole thing, whatever the kids still won and got prizes so they were happy :) i helped class 5 paint their papier mche animals they made last week so now they just have to paint the faces :)
saturday we got up at 6am to finally finish the hopscotch and then headed to hideout lodge to tan :) obviously it rained AGAIN dam rainy season :( so my tan is starting to fail!! but we had a very good night, i probably drank far too much but it was fun :) the ridiculous amount of mosquito bites i have received from saturday night is probably far worse than any hangover :(
mondays i dont do much teaching so did some reading today which was nice, now on my 14th book! yes i know im a geek! anyway, better go home to a vegetable-less dinner im hungry now! byee xxx

back in my placement

the last few weeks being back have been really good :) thoroughly enjoying not living out of a smelly rucksack and having a family again! its weird cos i hardly speak to some of them cos of the language barrier but my two host brothers are really fun to be around and i think i actually idol worship mrs dadzie, shes so cute and old :) we had to give her painkillers for her leg the other day and she walked off with the whole bottle, a little worried she cant read english well enough and may over dose :S but so far shes seemed pretty normal haha
last weekend i went to elmina with brittany and katie, which is quite near cape coast to see the other slave fort. the tour was really good but quite sad hearing about what went on their. elmina was beautiful and the beach was pretty nice, but you cant actually walk on it as there is poo everywhere hidden in the sand! (HUMAN POO!!) why??? anyway, so after elmina we headed to brenu beach which was absolutely deserted so we had a great morning catching up on our tans and being pestered by a dog that kept digging holes next to my towel and flinging the sand all over me! a school trip turned up and we got mega perved on so decided to leave shortly after that!
i did a papier mache lesson with the kids on friday which was extremely messy and stressful! but they turned out pretty good :) this weekend has been spent painting the playground, its going really well so far, just hoping the rain stays away so we can do the final touches tomorrow! will show u the photos when im done :) i was going to put up some pics of the art stuff ive done with the kids but i brought the wrong cord for the camera :( im silly.
hopefully this week will be as busy and teachful as the last! :) hello to everyone :) xxxx

Easter Travels

Okay, get comfy because this is going to be a long one, sorry!

Friday 10th april - we woke up at 3 am and made our way to the STC station to catch our 4am bus, which of course didnt leave until 5.30am, our bus to kumasi took 5 hours and was a bit of a bumpy ride but we finally got there and booked in to a place recommended called guest line lodge. I still wonder why anyone would recomend that place, the floor was growing mould, the toilet leaked onto the floor when u flushed it and the shower water smelt funky :S so we quickly chnaged accomodation the next day to something still grotty but slightly less hazardous to health. In kumasi we went to a "cinema" which turned out to be a room with a tv in it, and also went to kejetia market which was absolutely insane but good fun until i got lost in the raw meat and fish section which smelt very offensive :( a few of us also went clubbing on our first night which was pretty fun too :) On easter sunday all our travel plans changed, we were supposed to be heading to bolgatanga which is at the very north of the country but i got a call from another guy in our group saying they had been armed robbed on the road to bolgatanga. none of them were hurt but some locals were which is sad, so we decided it was best to just avoid that area, there was no point taking the risk.
we made our way to beomen-feima monkey sanctuary next and fed monkeys, then next got to bouyem to a 3 hour hike into bat caves where a bat flew into my face and cut me! have to say i handled the situation very well and fled screaming from the caves with my hands over my face haha so brave :) after that was kintampo falls which were beautiful and we got there early enough to be the only ones there as well so nice and peaceful too :)
A four hour trotro ride to tamale was next, which i sat half on some mans lap, my butt went completely numb and i got to watch brittany and katie sitting comfortably infront of me in the front seats for the entire journey, have to say i was pretty jealous, not that sitting on a strangers lap who is soaking you with his sweat isnt lovely. We stayed the night in Tamale and got the bus to mole national park the next day. At mole i saw elephants and baboons and antelope on the walking safari which was amazing, the elephants were the most exciting part of the walk, i was a bit nervous because they were so huge but really glad i got to see them in the wild :) the baboons were pretty cool, until i saw one attack a local woman who made the mistake of eating outside :S after mole we took motorbike rides into the village nearby called larabanga and stayed at the salia brothers guesthouse, which had no fans so we had to sleep on the roof which was pretty cool, but also a bit scary when i fell over someones leg and did a very graceful forward roll over everyone sleeping, thankfully not off the side of the roof! lots of trotros and buses on our way to our next destination which always tires you out but eventually we reached yeji. What to say about yeji? other than that if i ever am there again i know im in hell. possibly the worst place i have ever been in my life, FLIES EVERYWHERE all over you! and we couldnt leave because we were taking a ferry from yeji all the way down lake volta to akosombo, a day and a half trip (or so we thought) so we waited for the ferry which was to arrive at 8pm, it arrived at 2 am, i was trying to sleep on the floor covered in flies and pretty much at the end of what i could take but eventually the ferry arrived and i watched as evryone getting on didnt wait for everyone getting off so again there was a huge riot, then a fork lift truck decided to make it way through the crowd which didnt really help the situation. eventually i got on to the boat and pretty much dont think its worth talking about my time on the ferry. a day and a half turned into 60 hours of transporting yams, cattle, and arguing with scary ghanaian women. A soldier tried to take my mattress and i started the most ridiculous argument with them, over the most disgusting, thin dirty mattress you will ever see, but i hadnt had one yet and my hips were bruised from sleeping on the benches and i was so excited to have a mattress and then they took it away from me :( i eventually told them they could have their stupid mattress and proceeded to burst into tears, very embarrassing but oh well i was so tired from all the travelling it was going to come out eventually, obviously over something important like a mattress! lol. after we finally escaped the ferry i stayed at henrys in accra and then at brittanys friend johannahs house for a few days where we were very well looked after and got a lot of rest :) we went to see a film in a real cinema this time! and went to the craft market too. Next was cape coast to the canopy walk and the slave castle. Finally got back to my placement last night (3rd may) and am so happy i am back! i think i start teaching again sometme this week or next not sure. But although travelling here is tough and takes a while, i had so much fun, laughed a lot and ate so many omlette sandwiches i have lost count! but still happy to be back in my bed and not living out of a bag anymore :) sorry this account isnt mega detailed, but i can tel u all properly when i get home. love you all lots, thanks for all my posts i read them all and its nice toknow you guys are reading this blog xxxx