Kumase

Hi friends!

I have officially been in Africa for a month, and it is definitely passing more quickly than I expected. I feel like there's so much more I want to do, but I don't know if I'm going to be able to fit it all in. Go on a safari, visit other countries, play with a monkey, swim through some waterfalls...I need to start accomplishing more things.

This weekend our entire ISEP group traveled to Kumase, which is about a five-hour drive into the Central Region of Ghana. The city houses the largest market in West Africa, but we only spent about an hour in it, which was fine with me, because it was pretty hectic and overcrowded. Although, we did meet a lot of adorable little kids who wanted to play with us. While we were there we visited a Kente cloth-weaving village. As soon as our bus pulled up about fifty men trying to sell us kente cloth surrounded us. Kente is this really beautiful hand woven cloth that the people in the villages make on this huge contraption; it takes about 3 days to make a strip that's 6 inches wide and 5 feet long (I got to try weaving it!). The village was a bigt overwhelming, but I'm beginning to really enjoy bargaining (smiling is the key). One of my friends like to say things like, "my dear friend, be a good Christian and give ma good price", and it's almost always successful - they love it! We also hit up a woodcarving village,and people were buying drums for 30 cedi that would be worth hundreds of dollars in the states.

We also visited the palace of the great Ashanti chief (basically Ghana's royalty). I twas pretty much a colonial house turned into a museum filled with old furniture and creepy life-sized statues painted to look like past chiefs sitting on thrones. I found it less than riveting, but that was probably due to the six/hour bus ride I had just endured on very little sleep.

On the way back to Accra i FINALLY saw some monkeys. Unfortunately, it was extremely short lived; they were just chilling in the tops of trees as we drove through parts of the rain forest. Still, it was an exciting moment.

My plans for summer are finally beginning to shape up. More traveling. My American friends and I are planning a coast-to-coast road trip through the US. I should be good - I'm really glad I've found some spontaneous travelers.

I hope you are all well. I've finally started receiving some letters. Two weeks for mail travel feels like an eternity. But it's so great when they finally arrive. I think I might begin to make a few phone calls to some of you at home so be ready for three minute calls from an extremely long series of numbers.

Still no malaria for me - success! Gramps-so far I haven't found a spear, buy I'm still looking :)

Love and miss you all!