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

Last week we decided to carry on celebrating easter by doing an easter egg hunt for the kids. Although most of them were a bit confused about how eggs and rabbits were really involved with easter (not that we really know either) they still seemed excited about the egg hunt. We started in the morning with nursery one and two who definitely enjoyed it the most, they were ridiculously cute! and carried on with the older classes throuhgout the day, had a very sunburnt neck! but it was nice to see them having some fun :) on the weekend we went to a travellers eco-lodge called green turtle bay which was incredible, the waves were so scary though they left me exhausted i actually got a stitch haha. They also had happy hour so it was a very funny evening, but felt pretty rubbish in the morning and had to travel on a tiny trotro back which fits 14 people but they somehow squeezed in 22 and 3 on the roof! so not such a great way to cure a hangover :S also very jealous because we left on the sunday and ont he monday the people who stayed saw baby turtle running down the beach into the sea! so sad i missed it! its now thursday, and my easter travelling begins tomorrow! very excited! off to kumasi tomorrow our bus is at 4am so it cud be interesting :) may not have much/any internet for the next month so will have loads to talk about when im back in my placement, which will be around may 8th i think :)

the children ate my art supplies!

last week went really well again, and im finally settling into teaching :) as it will be easter soon, brittany and i decided to do some easter creative art lessons, so with the older classes we bought them an egg each. class 5 were asked to decorate their eggs with felt tip and they did a pretty good job :) after we left the lesson we decided we shud probably go back and collect the eggs jsut for the day incase they got broken, we had only been gone 5 mins and when we got back, half the kids had taken their eggs to the cooks! :( so much for taking pride in your work! haha :) so we learned from that one, and much to class 6's disappointment we drained their eggs before the lesson before they could decorate them with glue and tissue paper. they kept asking to cook them but we said they couldnt :) muahahhaha!
On the weekend we went to Accra for Henry's birthday which was pretty good but i dont like accra very much, its very very busy its a bit scary, so many people grab you trying to drag you to their taxi, shop, or to get your number so they can come visit you in england lol but we got around pretty well in the end. This week is revision week and next week is exams so hoping the kids will do well or there could be a lot of caning :S brittany and i have planned an easter egg hunt for thrusday so really excited about that :) xxxxxxx

this week has gone really well teaching wise :) taught quite a few lessons this week and i think the children understood me as well! a bit! friday night, all the volunteers met at funko beach in the evening, the night was going pretty well and it was nice to catch up with everyone. One of the girls ran into the sea in her underwear and other began to follow, i wanted to go but i didnt really want to swim in the dark so i was a bit hesitant, so one of the boys who was extremely drunk picked me up and pretended he was going to drop me in the water as a joke, i was kicking and screaming and then he fell over :( sad times! so i had a very soggy uncomfortable taxi journey back to my placement! Saturday, Briittany, Mingwei, Stephen and I decided to go to the cocoa factory in sekondi, but when we got there it was closed. The smell coming out of the factory was amazing which made it even more painful that we couldnt get inside! so brittany and i decided to go to mingwei's placement to help her set up for her birthday party. It was a really cute party, and it was kind of sad as well because mingwei had to leave on sunday unexpectedly because her uni course starts earlier than expected so she had to fly back to china :( which sucks because she was really nice.
On sunday me and brittany did some more washing, which is always fun! especially when we have to wash our underwear and it always seems like as soon as we do that about every person we know turns up to say hello! Kennedy brought china (his 3 month old puppy) around to meet us as well which made me very happy :) its nice to see that some people look after animals here, a few volunteers want to go to the zoo in Acrra but i think it may be a little less animal kind than the zoos in england!
this week im starting lots of easter thing in creative art lessons, today class 4 drew eggs and decorated them and me and britany are hoping to do an easter egg hunt as well next week :)

i watched football :O

Last Tuesday Julia (a woman who works for latitude) and her husband, and henry came to visit me and Brittany at the school to see how everything was going. We told them about the fact we were hardly teaching and they said they would speak to the headmaster about it which is good. (however it has been a week and very little has changed!) on the bright side, we started football club this week and it went really well :) we took class 5 and class 6 who are about 10-12 years old and walked with them to the local community field, which is beautifully placed next to a picturesque rubbish dump with vultures circling overhead haha the kids really seemed to enjoy getting a chance to run around and even two of the teachers decided to play as well. I of course was terrible but enjoyed watching Brittany beat the teachers :) On Saturday afternoon we all went to meet Julia and henry at raybow hotel and then for dinner at acroma plaza. After the meal, Julia and henry left and we decided to go to a beach bar, which was really good fun until 3 of the girls decided to leave and about a minute after they left we heard a really horrible scream and it freaked everyone out. It turned out it was just one of the girls had seen a frog! But even so, we were all a bit edgy after that so we left soon after. Sunday was really good, Kennedy (one of our host familys friends) took me Brittany and mingwei to a football match at sekondi stadium. I was surprised how nice the stadium was! We watched kotoko (Ghanaian team) play a team from morocco. Kotoko won 3-1 and i was laughing throughout the whole match at how much Ghanaians go mad at ANYTHING that happens in a football match. They score, they god mad. Someone falls over, they go mad. Someone is substituted, they go mad. It was really funny, but then at the end of the game when they had officially won, everyone just left, no one cheered or celebrated, it was really weird! Health wise i am fine (touch wood) although my feet have been swamped with mosquito bites and its very difficult to resist the urge to scratch them L im on my 4th book already, and we have a bit of a book swapping club going on now J also mum, i remembered the name of the dan brown book we couldn’t remember, i saw it in the airport, its called deception point. Sad news – the kitten died L fern and Margaret buried him at their local beach, im glad he never lived at our placement because they seemed really upset so im glad i never got too attached to him.
Hope everyone is well, missing you all! And thanks for all the comments ive been getting its good to hear from everyone xxx

long weekend

have found a hotel with wireless internet :) so using brittany's laptop which is so much easier than the computers at the internet cafes!

had a long weekend from thursday until monday (today) so did a lot this weekend which was good :) school finished on wednesday, so thursday we came to africa beach hotel to sit around and do nothing which is always fun :). friday we went up to busa again as a farewell to rosanna who decided to go back home, which sucks because she was really nice but i suppose if you arnt happy then why stay just for the sake of it? friday night we went back to takoradi and me brittany, margaret and fern got ready for the independance day party at last hour beach near the harbour in takoradi, it was a pretty good party and lots of the volunteers managed to make it from their placements so it was really nice to see everyone :)
tom offered me a snack he had bought called killy willy??? which is fried plantain covered in cinamon, which although sounds nice, tasted horrible, but everyone else seemed to like it? maybe im weird.
Saturday we began our trip to butre to go to a hostle known as hideout lodge. couldnt be named better. after a 30 min trip in a trotro (local mini bus full of street sellers who have bowls of fruit and dried fish with them) we then got another trotro 40 mins down dirt roads with massive potholes until we finally got there! this place was incredible, the beach was completely empty, there were hammoks and i got an egg sandwich and chips for lunch :D (by the way laura, seriously craving eggs benedict this week!!) the boys decided to sleep in a tree house, but the girls opted for a dorm that was sturdily fastened to the ground :)
sunday morning we went on a "crocodile safari" which was really just a slowly decaying canoe ride down a river that smelt like sulphur :) we saw a tiny bit of an alligator through a bush and one kingfisher, but i suppose its all still an experience :)
sunday home we got back and spent 2 hours helping sammy (our host brother) to number and stamp school books.
A funny cultural difference story for you :) out here when you say call me to someone you say "flash me" which didnt go down to well after a taxi driver gave me his number and then asked me to flash him! haha :)
missing everyone back home, but having a really good time :) love you xxxx

hello :)

found some more internet! exciting times! feeling a little competitive with richard now seeing as he has a ridiculous amount of posts and they are very funny and i only have two :( soon he will travel and discover the pain of internet cafes :)

Getting back after such an amazing weekend was a bit depressing and i am still having air conditioning withdrawal symptoms! The day we left the hotel a kitten fell off the roof and one of the volunteers found it and couldn’t find the mother so has decided to raise it herself. It was so young it couldn’t even open its eyes but got news today that its eyes opened today so its all very exciting, this poor cat has about 17 parents now who all want to hold it and feed it. We are slowly getting into a routine at the school, i have asked the head master to take nursery off my timetable as it is impossible to teach kids that don’t speak English, i promise i tried! But i only can say about 3 sentences in fante before i run out of things to say. Starting up the art club has also proved to be a lot more difficult than expected, as the school bus refuses to take home those who stay later and parents will complain so i have asked if i can teach all creative art classes and let the kids use the materials i brought with me in the lessons. We are hoping to start a football team as well and possibly play some teams from other volunteers school but being organised isn’t really a priority in Ghana so im not sure if it will happen but it would be really cool if it did. I have a long weekend this weekend as there are no lessons on Thursday or Friday and possibly even Monday as it is Ghanaian independence day Friday 6th march, i think there is a beach party thing on Friday so that should be good and the navy guys have promised to bring us chocolate from the vending machines on their ships so i have a very important reason to go really :)

i finally got internet!

okay so firstly i should apologise for not posting anything on here for the last 3 weeks! but in my defense the internet here is ridiculous. it takes about 45 mins to load up a page :S but im at a hotel this weekend and the internet here is really good so i will try to fill you in as fast as i can :)

so i got through the security gate at heathrow and realised i have never been in an airport completely by myself before which was a bit scary but i managed to navigate my wway to the boarding gate and found a few of the other volunteers and finally got to meet everyone properly.. there are 17 off us in total, 11 girls, 6 boys.

we arrived in acccra after a 7 hr plane journey and as soon as i got out the door someone had already grabbed my bbag to "help" me get it on the bus and then demanded money from me, which i didnt have so i ended up giving him my sudoku book :(

we stayed at our reps henry's house for the first week and spent most of the week on a teaching course at valley view university, which was extremely long and boring bbut it is ccool to say i have been to uni in ghana :)

henry's wife emily cooked us lunch and dinner everyday ffor a week for 17 of us and the food was pretty goo. LOTTS of rice lol but we get some pretty good fruit its all really fresh.

the ride to takoradi where myy placement is took about 5 hours and we dropped people off along thee way. my placcememnt is pretty good, its opposite the school so i dont have to walk far at all in the mornings, and our host mum makes us chicken and chips for dinner occasionally which i always look forward too :) the watter works about 20% of the time so there is a lot of showering from a bucket which really is no where near as bad as i thought it would be, its just annoying when u judge how muchc water u need wrong and dontt have enough to get the shammpoo out of your hair lol

the school is insane, im not sure if they actually have proper lessons? but the kids are really cute, the nursery children all call us "obruni" which means white person and one girl actually cries when she sees sus cos she cant unerstand our skin colour at all haha it is strange being a minority lol

me and brittany decided to wash our clothes the otther day and this woman showed us how to do it properly and warned us our fingers would be sore, shee didnt say that they would be friction bburnt and bleeding! mine wernt too bad but brittanys looked really painful, really appreciating washing machines right now!

this weekend i am stayying at a hotel on busa beach which has air conditioning which is very exciting :) we met some guys from the navy who spend money ridiculously, and they decided to buy a roomm for the night jsut so they cud use the jet skiis even tho they have to be bback on the ship at midnight, but it worked out well for me and 2 other girls bebcause it ment we got a ffree room for the night :)

i hope that kind of sums up the last 3 weeks a little bit, i will try to find a bettter internet cafe but i cant promise anything! hope everyone is england is well :) xxxxxx

Learning to Blog

Hello - this won't be very interesting im just trying to work out how to us this thing! Off to Ghana in 6 days! ahh!