Makin' Banana Pancakes, Pretending It's the Weekend, Yeah.

I am in the most glorious mood this morning. Seriously, hitting the two-months-left mark has really been a turning point for me. Now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel I feel like I can begin to enjoy myself a hundred percent. And it's still far enough away that I don't feel rushed about getting everything that I wanted done or seeing everything all at once. But it feels close enough that I'm less homesick than before.

So this morning I made banana pancakes for my roommate and the Tufts girls. They were delicious, especially with Denise's Maine maple syrup (which she originally brought to give as a gift if she got invited to someone's house... but we realized that people outside of New England tend not to appreciate REAL maple syrup the way we do.)

But wait, let's go back to Wednesday. So first of all, I got my absentee ballot! It was a way exciting moment, as I am the last to recieve mine. I feel all patriotic and political now with my tiny pencil and bright white giant envelope. And to add to my political fervor, we realized on Wednesday night that the last presidential debate would be on! And since ISH FINALLY fixed our satelite, we have BBC again! So around 9 PM our time we found out about the debates and decided to go to sleep and wake back up at midnight so we could watch them in the TV room. I had a presentation for my NGO's class the next morning at 7:30 AM so I needed my beauty sleep.

So most of us woke up at midnight to watch it, only to realize that it was on at 9 PM EST, not 8 PM. So that means 1 AM our time. Which, with a 7:30 class, was notttt going to happen. So I went back to bed and Denise and Lauren stayed up to report back to the group.

So this NGO presentation went off WAY better than I thought it was going to. The group meetings had been kind of stagnating and I kept feeling like we weren't getting anything done. But in the end, I am REALLY proud of our NGO. Here's the short version:

We created a National NGO called GREEN Ghana that is trying to change the way the environment is valued in Ghana. We want to educate the community about the benefits of keeping your environment clean, how and what to recycle, and what things you can do with what recycled materials. We also want to advocate for a federal recycling program and a nation-wide infrastructure that will make recycling possible on a large-scale level. And finally we want to go into communities and do a neighborhood-wide clean up, teaching people how and why they should properly dispose of their waste and giving them the skills to make marketable products out of waste materials (like pencil cases out of water bags and food wrappers that would normally be littering the street). That's the gist of it, but it's way more complicated than that. I'm really pumped that we pulled it all together and made into what could be a large-scale cohesive non-profit. Now we just have to write a grant proposal for our "starter project" which will be University-wide clean up.

Anyway,a new food joint has opened up at Nightmarket (the market next to my dorm where I eat a lot of my meals). It's called Assase Pa and it's vegan. That may not sound that weird to you but in Ghana, being vegan is almost impossible. Both Kym and Denise are vegetarians at home and they have to considerably bend the rules to eat anything here. So vegan is way out of place. But DELICIOUS. I ate there twice yesterday.

Then, last night Rosie and I went to go see Lysistrata - put on by the UGhana Theatre Dept. And... it was... well...

It was approximately as good as the version I worked on two years ago. For anyone that saw it. It was funny, however, to see it with Rosie when she was SCANDALIZED by the brashness of the sexual dialogue / action. There was a lot of "EHHH!"'s coming from the audience at a few scenes that some of you may know. But the weird thing is, the show was in an outdoor ampitheater behind Commonwealth (Home of the Vandals and the All-Boys House on Campus. Otherwise known as Slytherin.) and the Commonwealth boys have NO respect for theater. Whatsoever. They were hanging out their windows in the back (so they were kind of off to the sides of the stage) yelling inappropriate words and body parts and making tons of noise - to the point where you couldn't hear the actors on stage! As Michelle from Full House would say - How rude! It was way distracting for me, nevermind the actors on stage! Ugh.. kids. No respect these days.

Then I came home to find what amounts to the closest thing to an American college dorm party in our TV room. That's right - six tufts girls playing the BBC news drinking game. Take a sip when they mention a major world leader, Down your glass if they mention Russia, cheers every time you hear the words "Obama" or "McCain". There were more rules, but I don't remember them, I came in pretty late in the game. But it was a fun get-together that culminated in the taking out of my braids, a mini photo shoot of my poufy frizzed out hair (Prof. Trelawny style, and a quick jaunt in the courtyard during an unexpected downpour. 'Twas fabulous.

So today I plan on reading a my Fast Company magazine and starting Catch-22 and napping and generally enjoying life and staying out of the blistering sun. I swear, I know I said it was hot before... but I meant it was hot in the sense that for September it was hot. Meaning it was like 85. Today is like, 100. LEGIT. I sweat by walking to the bathroom at 8 in the morning. This is entirely unpleasant weather.