I don't miss snow but I miss my friends

It feels weird to be going to the beach in December but I’m going to Busua, Butre, and Akwidaa for several days. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we are leaving at 5 am to hop on a tro-tro and go to Madina. From Madina we have to find someone who is going to Kaneshie. From Kaneshie we have to take a bus to Takoradi. From Takoradi we have to take a tro-tro to Agona Junction. From Agona Junction we take a tro-tro to Busua. From Busua, we have to walk along this footpath with our big backpacks, along these cliffs that look out over the ocean, about a mile to Butre. You can’t get to Butre, this tiny beachside village, by car so you have to do it by foot.

I’m trying to get us to this place called that is a grouping of tree houses that are built around several ancient trees and you can sleep in one of them for like 5 cedi’s a night (like $3.50). These girls I met about a month ago told me about it. Each tree house is connected by rope bridges. We’re going to stay there for a couple nights and then we might try and go on to Akwidaa for a few days because there’s this place called Green Turtle Lodge and its on this gorgeous beach and you sleep in straw huts and can see the mama turtles nesting at night.

We had a really fun party for the kids yesterday. It was Corrie’s last day so we had a going away party and we decided to teach them all these games that we grew up playing. We formed teams and I was the captain of the blue team. Despite being naturally unathletic, I’m surprisingly competitive. Sometimes at night we sit on our porch and play Bullshit and I can’t help but cheat. Crystal is always calling Bullshit on me so I don’t have a choice but to cheat. I’m always pulling hidden cards out of my pant leg or bra at the end of the game but I still don’t win. Anyway, I’ve been here longer than the other volunteers so I know which kids are fastest and I purposely chose Kwame Adu and Abom and Abigail. We found these big flour sacks and had a sack race which was hilarious. We played a bunch of other games and we stopped keeping score but I’m pretty confident my team won if you added it all up. Then, just to satisfy my obsession which watching little children waddle, I lined up all the little 3 and 4 year olds and made them have a race. It was the cutest thing ever. Prince was just wearing these gold sneakers, pajama bottoms, and a girls knitted sweater that was open down the front. He was getting so serious about the race and it just funny to see him in all girls clothes and trying to look tough.

It was the most fun I’ve seen all the kids have so far. At the end of it, each kid got a coca-cola bottle and a lollipop and the little ones didn’t know how to drink out of the bottle. Prince, the one who was dressed in girls clothing and the one who is in the video below, was just walking around clinking drinks with everybody.

It ended up being one of those days in which I forget about the flies that are landing on my open cuts and biting the healing flesh and about the fact that everyone here cooks with a red oil that makes me really sick so I’m always a little sick, or the fact that men just come up and tug on my hair because its yellow, or the fact that there are termites eating my bed and everyday I wake up with a new pile of sawdust under it. Instead, I was just really happy to be sitting there watching these two hawks (or vultures maybe... I hope they were vultures) and there was this really cool orange sunset and I was drinking coke with some of the cutest little kids ever.

Side note: I hate that you guys are also having fun without me. Sometimes when I’m in a bad mood and I’m feeling sick and my bites are itching really bad I lay awake and make a mental list of things I miss. Some examples of things I miss are:
- cheese in all its forms (cream cheese, nacho cheese, grilled cheese, etc)
- laying on the couch on Sundays eating buffalo chicken dip and drinking White Russians and pretending to care about football with the boys
- Christine in her bathrobe watching Two and a Half Men and I also fantasize about her homemade salads
- seeing Danielle with her glasses on and also when she makes me french onion soup
- sitting in parks with Liz and eating bread and cheese together
- having blondie cigars with Chloe at the cigar bar (PS Chloe I have some Nigerian music I think you’d like!)
- late night a capella sessions with Shea
- falling asleep to the sound of Mike talking to his XBOX Live friends on his headset
- smashing bottles in the “Smashzone” with Joel and Brad
- going to breakfast at PF Changs with the Paperboy
- sitting on Anne’s back porch and holding her dogs tightly in my lap
- drinking Bud heavy’s at Kim’s little red house
- I miss my mom and dad and my brother and last but not least, my grandma, Trouble.

I've uploaded pictures to facebook so hopefully you can see them. I don't really have the time to upload many to this blog so just check my facebook. I think anyone can see them.

Right now I'm at the Accra mall which is WIERD. We went to a Chinese restaurant and Christmas music was playing and its like 100 degrees out. Feels wierd.

So this week I was pretty busy. I've been trying to get Kwame and William back into their schools. I met with the headmistress at Kwames school who insisted that I write her a formal apology letter before she'll forgive me. I'm not really sure what I'm apologizing for but I wrote a letter to her anyway saying that I'm sorry. Then, I got dressed up and went over to Word of Faith to ask them to let William back into school. They explained their side of the story which actually makes some sense. William was boarding there and since he was being bullied, he kept running away. This was a liability for the school so they brought him back to the orphanage. I explained that he was being bullied and they said "Yes, kids will be kids." So I'm not really sure what to say to that. Anyway, I have another meeting with Pastor John on Friday to discuss it so hopefully they'll take him back as long as he promises to stop running away.

Since I've been doing this thing for William I think he started to get a crush on me which has been slightly awkward. He shows up at our house at all hours and sits on the porch and waits for me to come out. He's 18 and now that I'm getting to know him some more, I think he might have other issues. The other day I told him he was going to have to leave the porch because he was just staring at me while I was trying to get work done and he stared for awhile longer and then left. A little while later he gave me all these torn up pieces of paper and on each one he'd drawn a heart with blood dripping out of it into some sort of goblet and on the heart he wrote "Pierced Heart." So I'm taking it that he's pissed at me. Lastnight the other volunteers went ot the bar and I stayed home since I was sick from the food I ate at lunch. When they came out the gate he was standing in the bushes and when they called his name he turned around and faced a wall and wouldn't turn back around. They told him he'd have to go home and when they went to close the gate he stuck his foot in the way so it wouldn't close all the way. I think that when I talk to Word of Faith I'm going to have to talk to them about some kind of counseling because he definitely needs some more help.

I have bug bites and spider bites that got infected on my legs and they are disgusting! This random lady came up to Crystal, Azar, and I the other day and opened up this little glass bottle of white powder and started dabbing the powder on all our sores. Amazingly, it healed after like one day. I had spent weeks pouring Neosporin on them and nothing was happening. I'm definitely finding this white powder and putting it on from now on.

The past few weeks have been sort of frustrating with the schools here and the hospitals here and the way things work here in general. Its hard to hold a little 3 year old that is boiling with a fever and wait 6 hours at the clinic for her to be seen and then they diagnose her wrong anyway. I was really starting to feel like nothing works and I'm useless. I keep just trying to remind myself that if everything here worked, I wouldn't need to be here.

I really want to say THANK YOU to everyone who threw extra cash into my bank account recently. The extra money will buy meat for the Christmas meal at the orphanage. If I have money left over I'd like to use it to buy treats for the Christmas party too. So now I'll tell you about the meat. I have to buy a goat and have it killed. This has been eating at me for weeks. At least its your dime and not mine that is killing this goat.

The next project that we're going to work on is trying to put a toilet in at the orphanage. This should be interesting since I barely ever remember to flush toilets nevermind ever install one. This should take me..ehh, 6 months. I'm learning as I go.

We have two new kids. Moses and Ezekiel. I'm really psyched about Moses since that's my dads name too. He's 13 and has never been to school. His brother, Ezekiel is probably 8 or 9 and he's cute except that he picked a scab off my knee when I wasn't looking and it really hurt. They were brought in a few days ago because their mother is mentally ill and was planning to poison all her kids and the older sister found out and took them away and brought them to the orphanage. Neither boy has been to school so I'm going to be spending a lot of time with them over the next month to get them ready for school since they start right after the new year.

I miss miss miss everyone and hope everyone is having fun getting ready for christmas. I think of everyone a lot and I am really hating that I'm missing out on stuff. When I get back I don't want to know about all the fun stuff everyone is doing so don't even tell me.

I love and miss you all. Thanks for all the birthday wishes, too.
xoxoxo