AAAAAAACKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!

(Warning, extreme length ahead. Please read this post in parts, if at all. )

It has been so long since I've arrived!!
Two weeks and five days is like three months in Canada World Youth time, so I'll do my very best to make up for my lack of blogging. My reason, or excuse I suppose, is the lack of computer technology I have available to me... But I will make time nonetheless. To be honest, I wanted to be settled out of limbo before I started tackling the blog, so here I am!

My counterpart and host family ROCK. It took forever to find us a place to stay though, and we only moved in on Sunday (hence the limbo). Jessica (my host mom) is an English teacher and her boyfriend Corey teaches people to be pilots. They're great. Young, stick to home cooked meals, and like my music taste! I couldn't ask for more. (Plus, they have nice smelling hand soap. I really don't ask for much.) I will post photos and videos very soon!

Sharon, my counterpart, is like my better half and mother rolled all into one. We've shared a bed since the beginning, so personal space is an unheard of concept. She's from a small village but went to boarding school in the capital city for most of her school life, like a lot of the Ghanaians. She's crazy independent, headstrong, and basically tuts lovingly around reminding me to do this and that. She also has some of the most beautiful black eyes I've ever witnessed... which gently leads us into my next topic:

The gorgeously exotic Ghanaians.

If I thought it was difficult coming to school in Canada where I was self-conscious about being a scrawny, awkward, pale female, this trip has basically caused me a miniature meltdown. The Ghanaian girls include Mary, Lokita, Priscilla, Chris and Sharon. Three of those five girls have beautifully braided hair down to their waists that put the rarity of their names to shame. Not to mention every one of them have warm cocoa skin, angular, delicate faces, full, wide-set mouths and the kind of hips that would make fun of my hips in middle school, and pick my hips last for soccer, and throw food at my hips while.. you get the point. I show up each day with hair that looks like an angry luffa resting on my head and pain in my heart that I will never be a black woman.

But it is a reality I must face.

Even one of the Ghanaian boys pointed it out.. "The women here are... shapeless."
In my defensive mind I retorted, "FLAT IS A SHAPE!!"

It's all good fun though. The group is a such a wonderful throng of kids, and I fit right in despite being two weeks late. I could tell you hilarious stories about each one of them, but without photos I feel it would begin to get somewhat dry. I will tell you though that we have wittily named ourselves Team Ghanada.

Lastly I wanted to go through my schedule and end with a few amusing cultural differences I've come across to close each blog post.

Mondays: EADs (Education Activity Day)
Basically, the entire group is paired off with a person of the other culture, given a topic, and told to plan events and lessons around it. Eric (my partner) and I were given Environment. Our presentation isn't until November but we have a few ideas up our sleeves including having a speaker come in to explain how to make a compost, the reasoning behind Moncton's Wet and Dry garbage system, and an outing to plant trees!

Tuesdays & Thursdays: Volunteer at the YWCA (Like the YMCA specifically for women, sort of) from 9-4. I do a variety of things from office work to watching kids.

Wednesdays: Same times, but I work at the Canadian Mental Health Association from 9-12 and then at YouthQUEST from 1-6. CMHA is probably the most professional place I work at. We do things like design invitations and slide shows, and put together presentation packages for specific age groups. YouthQUEST (my personal fav) can be described as follows by a fellow group member who also works there:

"YouthQUEST is awesome; it’s a resource centre for at-risk youth. They can come in, play video games, eat food, use computers, shower, laundry, get counseling, find jobs, take GED classes, and a wide variety of other things. It reminds me of a combination of JobStart and after-school care. Everyone there was very respectful, although it’s visible how these youth are troubled. My job is mostly to engage them, make sure they’re doing alright, or just talk to them." (By Miles/Dallas/Miami)

Fridays:
Work on our committees (I'm part of the Entertainment committee), plan events, and volunteer at whatever place we haven't helped the heck out of yet! Sometimes it's the YMCA, the St. George Church or the Caring Kitchen.

Saturdays and Sundays:
Chill OUT. Spend time with my host family! We haven't spent a weekend together yet and Jess' entire family is coming down for Thanksgiving starting tomorrow, so for the moment, chilling out is still a distant, far off dream that may one day be fulfilled.


Amusing Cultural Differences:

-The Ghanaians have no concept of a "nice day". This is a Canadian term meaning, GO OUTSIDE BECAUSE YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO EVER AGAIN ONCE THE SEASONS CHANGE. When Sharon and I temporarily lived with my other host mom named Colleen with Zoe and Chris (two other members of our group), Zoe and I often nudged at the girls to come for walks with us while we still could. Now that opportunity has drifted away, but poor Sharon is still clinging on to those sandals of hers. I don't have the heart to tell her she'd be better off trying to get her shoes to tap dance before they'd be useful here again.

-Sharon cracked an egg with a knife yesterday, and added sugar and milk to her K.D. to make some sort of breakfast porridge. She also hates hot dogs. She says they taste like plastic, which they kind of do. Silly Canadians, forgetting to taste food!

-Ghanaians say good luck when you sneeze instead of bless you :)

Fun, fun stuff!
I will write much more frequently about day to day events, promise!

Yayyy!