one month til swearing in!

we are more than 1/2 way there! Training is going well, this past week we went on a field trip. I was part of the WATSAN group that went south to the eastern region. We traveled though Kumasi, and went to the site of a current volunteer, Alexis. We thought we would just be crashing on her floor for the week, but it ended up she arranged for us to stay at this super sweet bungalow bed and breakfast the next town over. It was run by an Italian woman and her Ghanaian husband and they let us stay their for the week for free! So our field trip was great. We got to visit the clinic in her town, a hospital that worked on herbal medicines for patients with HIV/AIDS, and played in a football match against the local team. While we lost the football game, even with the help of a few local guys, we did successfully teach a lesson and give a skit about malaria during half time. People were really interested and had alot of questions for us!!
The second morning of out trip we went on a hike to a nearby waterfall. The village is trying to develop it as an ecotourism site, and we got jump off the rocks to go swimming in the river. Each day for lunch we made sandwiches, pb, tuna or egg salad and for dinner Alexis counterparts family cooked for all of us! We also got to teach an HIV lesson to the local JSS or middle school students. Allison and I had JJS2, similar to our 8th grade. We were happy to see that many of our opponents from the football game were in our class haha!
So it was great to get home after our travels. Been back in Forokrum with my family there. We have had time to work on our small community projects, had more language practice, and gone ot techiman to present projects about the culture to our group. Today we have some small meetings to plan for the week and tomarrow is the big football match agianst the trainers.
Thanks so much for all the letters and emails! Its good to hear from you all. Thanks Mom and Robin for awsome packages--- 2 in one day, best day of training so far!!!

picture... this one took 10 min to come up haha!

A picture from the batcaves.

Batcaves...

Life as a PCT is going well. Im enjoying my time with my homestay family and training. Right now we are working on small projects in the community. I am going to do some prenatal nutrition education at the clinic, working with the nurses there. This week we also planned and carried out health education classes in the local primany and middle school. Joe, Mike and I were given the youngest class we worked with- 4th grade. we were hoping to use a translator since their english isnt too good at that level, but there wasnt anyone there to translate so we did our best. We talked about how to stay healthy by washing ur hands and when we sould wash our hands. They all got to practice, we gave them candy and then we learned a fun song... If you wash your hands with soap clap ur hands *to the tune of if ur happy and u know it*. It was fun and they enjoyed it! Next week we are also going back to teach a lesson on HIV/AIDS.



This past weekend we went on a trip to the batcaves in a near by town. It was great but they forgot to mention the 5 hour hike that went along with the excursion. Kinda reminded me of my weekend with adele on the appalation trail! it was super hot and er ended up basically crawling through the bat caves and coming out covered in mud. To get out of the cave we had the scale a 15 foot wall, basically climbing up the vines. When i got home that night, my homestay mother was so concerned with how dirty I was that she called over the family and the neighbors to look at me and sent me to bathe right away! Ghanaians are very clean, they think its stange when we dont like to bathe at least twice a day haha!



On Saturday we are leaving for our fieldtrip. I am giong with a group of 8 trainees to the eastern region. We will be staying with a current volunteer there and working on some projects but havent been told too much yet. Well... thats about it for now... THanks to everyone who has sent me letters, keep them coming its a big deal in training to get mail!!!

yams, bore holes and latrines!

well, life is giong well in Ghana. I have now been living with my host family for abour 2 weeks abd things are going great. Yams are big in ghana and are used at about every meal. They also have casava and garen eggs. We spend most of the week in our village, outside of techiman. The rest of my sector, health and WATSAN water and saniation, also live in the village, the other sectors are at other villages near Techiman. Each day we have sector time and we have language in small groups. I am learning Twi and have three other people in my group. We meet for four hours mon, tue, wed and saturday. During sector time we are learning about how to get invovled in our comunity and how to help them asses their own needs. We are also learning a ton about latirnes and boreholes. I never new there were so many types of latrines!! Today we took a tour around our village and saw many latrines, including the so called public latrines.

Thursdays and fridays we go to Techiman to meet for more general sessions. Its great to see the rest of the group and use the internet! WEe are also a big fan of fan ice, this chocolate milk/ ice ceam thing u can buy in a pouch!!

Thats it for now, ill try to post this bf the computer crashes again!!

1This is my second try at this, the power keeps going off where I am. So I am moved in with my host family. The family consists of my "mother" and "father", their son who is 21, their daughter and her two daughters ages 9 months and 10 years, and another son who has a wife and a 3 year old son. They are really nice, very accommodating. So yesterday morning the 16 volunteers in my village went to visit with the chief. The day was pretty intrense with a lot of people staring at me in my house, but the afternoon the older children in the village took a group of us on a walk to the mountains nearby. We went into a bat cave and climbed up some rocks for a gorgeous view of the town. Today we were back in Techiman for our meeting with our big group, which is now down to 45. I found out that the town I will be living is is called Azura, in the Nkwanta Distrct of the Volta region. It is in one of the most remote parts of the country, less than 5 km from the border of Togo. Im excited about my project, I will be working with women and children a lot with health projects, HIV/AIDS education, guinea worm education and water sanitation. Im pretty excited about it, the village hs about 1000 people in it. I wond have regular access to email and my phone service will be sketchy. The biggest nearby town is about 50 km away, and they have intermittent internet, mainly at the world vision office there. I will be moving in the first week of December.