O so much........except school......

Hello everyone!
so i'm not gonna lie, i just read my friend teresa's blog (she's in india) and she's TOTALLY inspired me to write more interesting blogs..... hehe, so if this is bad, you can blame her! jk j <3
So the weekend before classes "started", a group of us decided to go to HoHoe, up in the Volta (East) region. I left with a bunch of people without really much planning bc I had been attempting to register for classes. We got on a tro-tro (minibus- the easiest/cheapest public transport around here- you stand at the stop and wait for someone to drive by and call out their window the location they're going, then yell back at them, and they slow down enough for you to get a foot in, and keep going! if the sliding door closes all the way w/o holding onto it, you're in a good one!) to the SDC station, where we would get a real chartered bus there- too bad we went to the WRONG SDC staction, but the nice men who worked there took the 7 of us in one of their own large charter buses to the right one - we werent quite sure what was going on, but Ghanaians really take care of you!
So the bus we were on played CONSTANT/LOUD/CHRISTIAN music - one song's lyrics were "move it to the left for jesus, move it to the right for the lord.... shake your booty for jesus, shake the booty jesus gave you for the lord" - NO JOKE, and when some of us (11 of us from the group at the time) started laughing, we got some serious evil glares from Ghanaians who apparently believe that shaking the booty jesus gave you is sacred. go us. we also stopped for food on the 4 hr ride. let me rephrase- we pulled off to this rest-stop size place and women/girls SWARMED the bus with everything from (sweet) bread to water to crab kabobs to meat pies to plantain chips.... anything that they normally sell on the streets of accra, but it was CRAZY how much they swarmed, so I guess SDC stops there on a regular basis.... so while i'm on the topic of people selling things into buses/tro-tros etc, its EVERYWHERE here- you can buy any kind of food/water, jewlery, gum, childrens' toys, etc- without even leaving the car- they're not too pushy, which is nice, but Accra traffic is INSANE during rush hour and i always wonder if they do better w/ cars on the streets or in markets....
so we got to Hohoe and we all got into a hotel for the night, but had no food, so again, some random nice guy from the hostel brought us down the street to a good food vendor (selling regular food that you can get anywhere here- rice, (regular, fried, or jollof) fish, chicken, spaghetti, and salad and some FANMILK, which is this DELICIOUS vanilla ice cream or frozen strawberry yogurt or frozen chocolate milk- i LOVE ghanaian hospitality!
so the next morning, i trooped along with just 3 friends and all i knew at the time was we were going to the caves that were suggested in our guide book - it was AMAZING. we got off the tro-tro in a village, in front of the "tourism office" which was a single building with only a desk and a few papers on it - it was closed, but we asked around and someone fetched the guy who was working in the fields. so we decided to walk around the village, or i should say down the one street- it was so nice! people were really friendly, but didnt really speak much english (they speak ewe there) but the funniest part was that while you passed, the children would jump up and down for your attention and yell/chant O-BRU-NI, which is weird bc obruni, or white person/foreigner is a TWI word, not EWE, but it was super cute and the adults always smiled when the kids did it....
so we stayed at the guest house and our guides took us up to the caves -very cool hike, i think we saw burkina faso from a distance! each of teh 6 caves was generally small, but served a different purpose when the people lived there; the bats were a bit freaky in some, but the walls of some of the caves were climbable so the larger ones were really fun to explore! we also got to see a really cool small waterfall and go into it a bit, while eating COCO fruit which is now officially one of my favorites, even though you cant eat it- if you do, you get that awful bitter taste (duh, its coco) but it was SO sweet!) we got back REALLY dirty, hungry and exhausted. our host asked us what we wanted for dinner, and when we said spaghetti, i figured we'd get pasta with some tomato and canned beef, but they had more in mind than that - it was AMAZING and while his wife was preparing it over coals (2-3 hrs they spent on that!) he taught us some ghanaian board game. it was kinda like sorry/trouble, but i laughed the entire time because the pictures in each of the 4 corners were of...... you guessed it, JESUS! hehe, oh ghana....
so after dinner, our guide from the hike brought us around the village a bit more, so we saw some kids playing drums/singing outside of the church, so we decided to watch them, and our guide ended up teaching us all how to drum a bit together! woot first drumming lessons! i really hope to take some here at school, but it was good to get a bit of an intro....
so the next day we went to Wli (pronounced Vlee or Vee-lee), for some serious waterfall action- we were super excited that we could go up to the upper falls (we heard they were closed for the season) and although it was a SUPER steep/muddy/bugs/green hike, we finally got to the falls and were blown away -literally! the water and resulting wind were SO powerful that we put our stuff more than 10m away from the edge of the water and it STILL got really wet! we went in some, but it felt like we were in a HUGE storm the entire time- even more wind than when i went in a boat to niagra falls in the US! yikes!!! the lower falls were much more calm and the wading area much larger, but they were both SUPER cool - and i promise, pictures WILL come eventually!/soon!
by the time were were ready to back to hohoe/accra, it was getting dark, and we werent too worried about time bc we had like 7 hrs to get to hohoe, but the taxi we got into was not a good one- a guy at wli had tried to help us get into a good one, but the one we were in started bucking/stopping in the middle of nowhere, and not only did he not answer our questions about what was wrong (in english OR french), he proceeded to turn OFF his headlights and look out the window BEHIND us as we rolled back down the hill! it was funny for a bit bc like, oh well, welcome to ghana, right? but then we started getting totally sketched out bc he was NOT a happy ghanaian. we finally got to a small village where we had spent some time before, and after rolling backwards down ANOTHER hill (the car couldnt/wouldnt move forward), we decided to get out and get into a new one- but as we did so, the guy's engine miraculously started "working" again and we had to throw our stuff out of the trunk ASAP before he sped off, trying to bring our stuff with him! yikes! by the time we got into another 3 arguments with drivers about getting back to hohoe, we finally got into a tro-tro and had a safe/less eventful trip back.
we got on the SDC bus again, and we think that bc its 4 am, we might get a break from the (christian) music but NO! the engine starts up and the video comes on: "nigeria, praise the lord!" no joke. praise session. the entire 4-8am trip. oh ghana......
that sunday and the sunday before, a group of us went to an orphanage to help out there - ok, so thats what we thought it was, but turns out its just an old govt building where a bunch of kids (and families? dunno) sleep, and every saturday, a reverend and his wife come, bring them to a library and on sundays, feed all of them. there's probably about 50 or more of them, and some of them live there, but some of them just know about what happens every weekend, so come from quite far away to play somewhere safe and get some food. we dont do much with the kids but they all love us - literally, the first time we came, they all RAN screaming at us to hold our hands and hug us. i feel really weird that we dont really do anything except play with them, but the kids def remembered us from week to week so it was really nice.... and this last week, the reverend asked me to bust out the first aid kit for anyone who needed it! not that i have any training at all, but i AM capable of cleaning wounds, putting neosporin/bandaids on, and telling kids that they're gonna be ok, which is what they really wanted- some of them just showed me a scar and told me to patch it up, but then i realized that their skin was so dirty that i cleaned it up anyway and told them they were gonna be fine.... :( / :)
o ya, so i'm here for schooool right? well, last week i was supposed to go to all 12 classes that i'm registered for, but the REASON im registered for 2X as many as im going to take is that the finals schedule hasnt come out yet, and i was gonna go to the first week of classes to see which ones i wanted to take. however, for mon and tues, the profs were on STRIKE (they hadnt been paid in 5 months), and between wed and thurs, i was lucky enough to have 2 classes actually happen, and another prof actually DID show up to tell us to come back next week..... i say i was lucky bc i dont know anyone else who had more than one class actually happen!
I also went to a meeting last night for hall sports, and i'm hopefully going to play volleyball and/or basketball here - they're SUPER intense about them, and have a LOT of hall pride but i cant tell how good the players are so we'll see what happens with that.... but i DID get up to run with all the volta ladies (with vision and style!) at 5:30AM this morning- no joke, 5:30!!!!!
so we'll see what happens this week! i'm def still behind on these updates, but i'll be back soon, i promise! (esp if classes keep not happening....!)