Bucket showers, Earthquakes, No Electricity/Water

Hello all

I sincerely apologize \I have bot been able to post as frequently as I had intended. The electricity and water have been out over the past 4 days so I have been pretty much out of contact with the outside world. I have been doing reading homework on my seemingly 1800's antique wood desk by candle light. I feel like I traveled back in time a few hundred years but to be honest its actually pretty interesting not having all the comforts we take for granted back home.

Living in poverty

The standard of living is not at all what we are used to back home. There are positives and negatives about living in a poverty stricken nation such as Ghana - likely similar across Africa. The plus factors are: I can eat an entire meal for $1 and beer is only 60 cents. Nobody is pretentious and everybody is so nice and willing to help their neighbor at any cost. The culture here has a strong emphasis on the family and the importance of friends. Anytime anybody needs help even for the slightest of things (ex. if I am lost and can't find a class) the local Ghanaians will stop whatever they are doing and walk me to my destination. Just yesterday, I couldn't find a place to get dinner so I asked a local where to go and he said follow me - he took me about 20 minutes away to his favorite market and offered to buy my dinner. This is the mentality of every local African I have met. They bend over backwards to help you.

While there are positives to living in Ghana (which do greatly outweigh the negatives) here are some of the negative aspects of living in a poverty stricken area.

Over the past 4 days I have taken showers out of a bucket in the pitch black of night. This was the first time I felt real homesick. Since is about 105 degrees here with humidity I am never fully clean and all I wanted to do was wash off only to come back to the dorms to find out the water is still out and power off. I am coming to apreciate all the small things we take for granted in the US.

Experiences over the past week.

A group of friends and I took a tro-tro