Another Monday, another update here at Malaria Mondays! It's been a week of settling-down here in Legon; classes are all starting up in earnest, so I've been developing a bit of a routine. Mondays I have no class, so I usually spend the day resting and doing some basic housekeeping - getting needed supplies, email and blog updates, taking care of any academic business that needs to get squared away, etc. Tuesday mornings I have drumming from 9:30-10:30, and I plan to volunteer at an orphanage a few towns away from 11:00-14:00 or so, and then Twi class is 17:30-19:00. I usually just hang out on Tuesday evenings, but there's always the occasional trip into Accra for dinner. My Wednesday and Thursday schedules are both in flux right now; I'm changing up my classes a bit, and those are the affected days. I'm free as of Thursday evening at 19:00; Thursday night has become Jazz Thursday, as a number of us have developed a major fondness for a jazz club near the airport that has live music on Thursdays. Friday also has a special designator - Beach Friday! Some of us have taken to going to the beach every Friday afternoon to take in some sun and splash around in the cool waters of the Gulf of Guinea.

The weekend here, just like it is back home, is pretty random. I've travelled about every weekend so far, and that doesn't look to be changing anytime soon. This past weekend, my travel crew (Justin, Jenna, Ginnie, and Jesse...my "K" name throws off the groove in our little circle of adventurers) went back to Volta region, this time down the coast to Keta. It was...an adventure, to be sure; we nearly ended up in Togo at one point because of some severe communication barriers between us (who speak no Ewe) and the tro-tro operator (whose English vocabulary was about as limited as our Ewe). We also decided that we could all five fit in two really small beds if we pushed them together; suffice it to say that was disastrous, and I slept on the floor. The tile was not quite as uncomfortable as I thought it would be, truth be told. Oh well; we only paid about $2 apiece for the night, so I can't really complain given the price. On our way back yesterday, we got stuck in a tro-tro with 30 other people. 35 people in a tro-tro that could maybe comfortably seat 22. It was a very long drive back to Accra...

Last night was the Super Bowl, and a bunch of decided to be stereotypically American and go to the one place in town showing the game. It was a fun night; completely and totally American, but still fun. On the way back (at 3:30 AM; kick-off was at 23:00!!!), we had a little adventure; our taxi was pulled over by the police, one of whom was brandishing an AK-47. The three officers were going to arrest our driver for running a red light, but the driver came back over to the taxi, made us pay our fare (plus an extra 5,000 cedis), and evidently bribed the police into letting him go. Welcome to West Africa, I suppose. You always hear stories about widespread corruption in the government and law enforcement, but I hadn't experienced it in Ghana up to this point. Ghana has a very clean record in terms of governmental corruption, especially compared to some of the nearby nations, like Nigeria. Nonetheless, it exists here, and it was still a bit surprising to see a police bribe actually take place.

So, that's been my life for the past week. This weekend, the ISEP group is going to Kumasi, capital of the Ashanti region and 2nd-largest city in Ghana. I'll update next Monday with pictures and (knowing me) plenty of stories about the crazy/quirky things that happen to us on our trip. Apologies for the lack of a real entry last week; we experienced a few days of technical difficulties, followed by a lack of opportunity to upload photos, so I decided to wait until this week. Scroll down to the previous entry for a few pictures - nothing too spectacular this time around, but good memories, at least!