15 Things to Love About Ghana (some more than others)

1. Rice. Fried rice. Jollof rice. White rice. Brown rice. Rice with chicken. Rice with fish. Rice with plantain. Rice with beans (waachye). Rice with vegetables. I think you get the idea.
2. While we're on the subject of food: oranges. Served with only a thin layer of peel removed and sliced open at the top. Consumed by sqeezing and sucking the juice out. I highly recommend them.
3. Going to a state school. It sprawls, has 30,000 kids, and a seventy percent constitutes an A. Right now I have no classes Mondays or Wednesdays. Only one Thurs and Friday. The rest on Tues. I've only had two assigments to date.
4. Weighing babies. My top priority at the hospital. I sometimes feel like I'm on an Anne Gedes photo shoot. Anyway, this is no laying of babes on a metal scale. Instead a tension scale hangs from a wooden crossbeam. Babies are placed into "weighing pants," a sack with two holes for the legs to poke out and a strap. The strap is placed hung on the hook of the tension scale, and I read the weight while the little tikes swing around below...
5. Trotro rides.
6. Batik. I've now had 3 dresses and two skirts made. (which means I only have to do my laundry once every 2 weeks!)
7. Fanchoco. Frozen chocolate milk that, like everything else, comes in a bag. Sold all over campus by guys on bikes.
8. Travel. Spending my weekends beaching or hiking the rainforest covered mountains.
9. Drinking on week nights. Classes are useless, and no one's home on the weekends so why not?
10. Wildlife. Our street is home to chickens, goats, dogs, cats, lizards and who knows what else. I once saw a herd of cattle at the end of our road.
11. The minimum thirty minute walk to campus that is hopefully keeping all that rice off my thighs.
12. Horn honking. Drivers here make new yorkers look tame. As far as I've been able to ascertain a horn honk might mean any of the following: white person!, get out of the way, i'm in your way, i have a horn so im gonna use it, need a ride? too bad, car's full!, you're white and therefore must need a ride, do you want to get married?, its too quiet, i see people, move faster, oh yea, white person!!
13. Public restrooms. Hahah. What public restroom? Oh, you mean that cement block over there. And if you do actually find a toilet, dont count on it being clean, having toilet paper, or flushing.
14. Consistent water supply. Our house has a tank. The same cannot be said for the electricity.
15. Readily available fast food. Fried doughballs, peanut butter balls, fried yams, meat pies, fanchoco (and other fan products), oranges, bananas, fried rice, kabobs, water, bread, crackers, cookies, waachye, gum, you name it. Its all being sold from someone's head at your nearest large intersection, trotro or taxi station, or market.