Adventure Day

Yesterday was a beautiful day.

I woke up, hopped on the computer because I knew our internet expired tomorrow (well, today now), and was greeted with lightning-fast internet. After posting a Facebook status about said internet (it’s the little things here), my dearest wonderful friend Anna Richter (Richter! AH!) “liked” it, meaning that she was awake… Therefore, I quickly got a hold of her to get on Skype because I wanted to see if it would work with my magical speedy internet (there are different internet settings here, I don’t really know how to explain it, but mine was on a server it had never connected to before, but I liked it!). After discovering that my webcam has a built-in microphone (which was good, because my headphones with a mic were left at school over the weekend!), Skype worked for 8 whole minutes! Which was more than I expected it to! After I gave up on trying to get the internet to work (it had gone back to its usual snails pace by now), I gave up and just called her instead. I had told a few of the City of Refuge kids that Anna and I were playing phone tag, and Abigail and DK kept telling me that I had to find them whenever Auntie Anna called. When I went to the house to go get Abigail, I called her over from across the path… Once she realized I was on the phone, she SPRINTED to me with the biggest smile on her face, took the phone out of my hands, and literally danced as she was on the phone with Anna. She was so excited to get to talk to her, it was so stinking precious!

After running out of phone credit (discovered that European calls are more expensive than American ones… Worth it!), I took a quick shower and ate some bread before sitting down to make plans with Holly!

This week, Holly and I decided that we needed to find a way to take an adventure over the weekend. I had only been around in a car and I wanted to take a trotro, a 9-passenger van that sits between 9-12 people depending on how crowded they want to make it. I’m sure that sometimes they fit more in there, but we were lucky and got pretty reasonable ones! We didn’t really have anywhere specific we wanted to go, just somewhere away from here. After getting some guidance from John and Stacy, we took off walking (though not to where John told us to go… We were stubborn!) and caught a trotro going into Accra. Mind you, we were told to go to Ashama and then to Circle and then to Makola in order to get to the market we wanted to go to… But we decided Accra would work! Even though we got ripped off a cedi on our trotro fare, it still worked out well! Turns out the trotro goes right past the Accra mall, which I have been to twice already but we knew our way around there! So we hopped off, got some pizza, ate some ice cream, and made a few quick trips to get some internet credit and some fruit! We thought about picking up some new movies, but all of them were SUPER expensive, and we had a lot of people just staring at us (I took my first deer-in-the-headlights picture with a Ghanaian man who wanted pictures with obrunis… Don’t worry mom, I’m safe!) so we headed out.

We ended up taking a taxi down to the market because we wanted to see what it was like. Stacy told us it was a local market so there wouldn’t be tons of tourists (and by that she seemed to mean we were the ONLY white people in sight), and things should be cheaper and it was big. We got there and discovered that big means huge and crazy and overwhelming… Honestly, we didn’t last very long there. We walked around, Holly picked up some fabric, we each got a few vegetables (I bartered for the first time here… Got myself a free pepper!), and took a taxi back to the mall. We probably could have got a trotro, but the taxis aren’t too expensive if you can barter a price (which I left to Holly) and are much more convenient. We picked up some juice at the mall (sweet/fruity things are a must when we go there) and hopped on a trotro back to Doryumu. Though I realize it doesn’t sound like much of a day, it was so fun to feel like we could independently make our way around part of this area and do something by ourselves.

When we got back, we were greeted by most of our older boys playing a game of football (er, soccer) on the field by our school. They were telling us to come play… What they didn’t realize was that having us on their team would probably hurt them rather than help them. But we did make our way back to the field after dropping our stuff off and met Lauren, a girl who was staying with CORM for the weekend. We were told that they boys played “nice” during the game since we were playing with them. Every time I touched the ball, the boys cheered for me… Luckily they didn’t care that I usually kicked it the wrong way. My header earned me extra cheers… These kids are the best. Even though most of the kids at the school are hard, the kids that live here have been shown so much love, and it shows through their behavior and the way they love us.

And the day just kept getting better… Our Friday night dinners usually consist of fried rice, chicken, salad (which is so exciting… cold food!), and lately avocado… I look forward to it all week. But on Friday, our cook Lydia was out of town so we weren’t able to have that meal prepared. However, turns out she got back yesterday and she was able to make it for us on Saturday instead… I was so excited! John started teasing me about how much I was eating (I didn’t eat much on Friday night and he kept giving me crap for that too), but kept putting more rice on my plate… I couldn’t complain!

After dinner, we (me, Holly, John, Stacy, and two visitors, Caitlin and Adrian) hopped into the car to make a quick trip to the Beebe house. We had swapped games with them but we wanted to trade back (side note: a volunteer is bringing Ticket to Ride, Settler’s of Catan, AND Quelf this week… I am so excited!), so we made a visit. As we arrived, the four oldest Beebe boys came running at us with water guns and we got soaked! Weston didn’t even let up once I was inside, he still squirted me in the stomach! It got us all wet, but certainly also got us all laughing! After staying there for a little while and being content because Godwin had finally stopped giving me the silent treatment (he spent a few days this week deciding he didn’t want to talk to me… But since he fell asleep in my arms after church today, I think I won him back over), we headed back to the house to play a few rounds of Bohnanza (or Beans, as we call it) before bed! In the car, I got a lot of flak for my competitive (er, aggressive?) spirit that shows up greatly in Ticket to Ride… It’s not my fault that my competitive side gets shown in board games now since I don’t have volleyball as a release! Despite my competitiveness, I still lose at pretty much every game we play here… Including football (I was definitely a bad luck charm yesterday).

After everyone headed to bed, I spent about an hour on the computer trying to download a few things and using Google voice to “text” some beautiful friends back home. Even though I didn’t get to bed until late, it was such a beautiful day that I couldn’t bring myself to call it to a close! I am so thankful that I was blessed with a day that made me smile… A day where I felt filled and pleased with what my life is here. This is been a hard week, and even today has been a hard day, where I feel like I am in a constant state of wanting and missing things that I know are so far away… But within this time was a day of such rest and laughter, and for that I am so grateful!