Hola! I am currently in Madrid, the capital of, and largest city in, España. I have had a lovely few days in Spain thus far, and have had no language difficulties barring one moment when I couldn't decipher someone's exceptionally thick Barcelonan accent. Of course, Barcelona TECHNICALLY is not a "Spanish-speaking" region as we tend to think of it...sure, they speak Castillian Spanish (the Spanish dialect we just call plain old Spanish), but...the main language is Catalan, which while similar to Castillian, is different. The state in which Barcelona lies, Cataluña, is very proud of its Catalan heritage and is actually a self-governing republic within the Spanish state. Not that they have signs, flags, posters, etc. to remind of that or anything...

Before Barcelona, however, I went through a GRUELING week of travel in which I covered an absolutely insane amount of territory. The last time I updated, if I remember correctly, I was in Ireland. Well, after my Irish adventures, I flew to Charleroi in Belgium. Here's the basic scoop on my travels on the continent...

-Spent first night in a Belgian train station with a crazy woman and a man from the Congo, and this after a weird episode with a crazy Arab man.
-Went to Paris. Discovered it to be as overhyped as I remembered it being, though not without its beautiful moments.
- Reims - Kevin has a new favorite cathedral
-Dijon - Pretty town, but my hostel was far removed from the center of the city and it took me forever (and a €8 taxi ride) to find it.
-Besançon - Gorgeous countryside to enjoy on a lunch break between trains
-Strasbourg - Germany and France colliding into one of the most gorgeous urban environments I've experienced, complete with a fantastic cathedral.
-Basel - Pretty little town on the Rhine; first time in the German-speaking world.
-Zurich - Expensive and a little overrated, but has a good museum.
-Liechtenstein - Paradise, barring the part where I couldn't find my hostel for 3 hours...and in the world's 5th smallest nation by land area. Its population is less than 40,000. However, the mountains were stunning, as were the girls....*whistles innocently*
-Interlaken - Getting there involved a breathtaking train ride, and I got to see the Jungfrau while eating bratwurst.
-Milano - Would have been nicer if the cathedral hadn't been covered in scaffolding.
-Venezia - On the same level with Firenze for "frackin' incredibly gorgeous Italian city"
-Bologna - Skip this one, for your own sake.
-Pompei - Fascinating history and great scenery.
-Genova - One of the most beautiful places on earth; wish I'd had more time there.
-Cannes - Also pretty, barring the part where I had to sleep on a sidewalk...
-Marseille - Way more spectacular than I expected
-Barcelona - My favorite city. Period. I love Barcelona, and if it were a woman, I'd marry her on the spot.

And now I'm in Madrid. My first few hours here have not been the best on my trip...I seem to have caught a cold, and the line I needed to take to get to my hostel on the Metro is closed for repairs, so I spent twice as long in the Metro as I needed, figuring out a new plan of action. However, now that I'm 4 doors down from my hostel, I'm in better spirits and plan on seeing a bit of Madrid tomorrow before heading south to...Morocco!

Greetings from the rain-soaked, chilly southwest of Ireland! I'm currently in Dingle (go ahead, look it up - you knoww you want to), which is in County Kerry, about an hour from Tralee and 90 minutes from Killarney. That puts me about three hours from Cork, where I started out yesterday.

My time in Europe is proving to be as adventurous, in some ways, as my African travels. OK, sure, there haven't been any bus fires or defiling of ancient burial grounds or nights spent in whorehouses, but I seem to be "blessed" with principally only encountering my fellow lunatics. It even started on the flight out from Ghana - a number of people on my Afriqiyah flight to Tripoli were in a rather dubious state of sobriety, and accordingly were as loud and obnoxious as you've always pictured drunks on a plane to be, or at least until the rather intimidating chief flight attendant came over and hushed them up, much to my delight. By the way, speaking of Libyan flight attendants, the two women taking care of my section of our plane were absolutely gorgeous. And the seats were comfy and roomy, and they have open seating, and heck, they even have GOOD in-flight meals. Afriqiyah gets my stamp of approval, no contest.

Changing planes in Tripoli, sadly, was not much more exciting than changing planes anywhere else at 6 in the morning. The guard did, however, scrutinize my passport like you would not believe - he seemed halfway convinced that because of the vast difference in appearance between my passport photo and my current look, my passport must be a fraud. He spent at least 5 minutes scanning it every which way, looking at it with a magnifying glass, etc. I tried explaining that the picture had been taken when I was still in high school and had to be clean-shaven with short hair, but he just smiled, laughed, and went right on studying my passport. I did, however, clear security without too much fuss, and got to London around lunchtime.

Oh, London. My other home. Arriving back in the West was, in some ways, not as shocking as I expected. People are still people, and despite having spent 4 months in the tropical heat, I was not blown away by the cool temps - I merely smiled and enjoyed them. However, plenty of other things jumped out at me - how quiet people are in London compared to Accra, the existence of crosswalks with signals, supermarkets stocked with a million different conveniences that I'd almost forgotten about. Oh, and the prices. Dear lord. I forgot what it felt like to pay more than a buck for a meal, and my first dinner in Europe was at a pricey Indian restaurant in Islington, the Parveen. It was worth my £17, though. I spent my two days in London mostly sorting out travel details - sending my suitcase home, booking a place to stay for my first night in Ireland, etc. As for the crazy people, the New Zealander in my hostel...oy. I don't think I encountered him when he was sober at any point during the two days I spent there. Not only was he drunk with a crazily thick accent, he was quite the randy fellow - he spent an hour trying to coax the girl in the bunk above him to sleep with him. I will not go into the details of the conversation here, but suffice it to say that I was not overly amused after the initial humour of the situation wore off after five minutes.

The rest of my time in London was spent walking and thinking and processing and...smiling. I love London, especially the parks. Holland Park is my favorite, principally because it's the major central London park least likely to be clogged with tourists. Nope, you just get to see Londoners taking a break from their busy days with their family and friends, relaxing in the peaceful, green-tinged evening light as it drifts down through the trees of the park. It's glorious, absolutely glorious.

On the 14th, I flew out from London to Knock in western Ireland. Knock is easily the smallest airport that I've ever been in; I literally was to the front entrance within 5 minutes of stepping off the plane, and most of the delay was because the immigration officer had to go chase down the Irish passport stamps since very few non-Irish nationals bother flying to Knock. I took the bus into Charlestown and stepped in the realm of the Irish stereotype. I walked into a restaurant that was basically the owner's house (they serve you in the dining room or TV room), and in the TV room was a group of priests having a post-Mass chat and G&T before sitting down to their Sunday roast. Meanwhile, it was First Communion Sunday in Charlestown, evidently, and so there were a number of kids still in their dresses, etc. On top of that, it was cool and rainy. Oh, Ireland, how I love thee...

I made it to Galway for the night and spent the night at a hostel. One of my roommates invited me out for a drink, so she and I went down to one of the pubs and had a pint of Guinness and chatted for a bit, and then I called it a night. The next day, I got moving, got a bus pass, and got myself to Cork by way of Limerick. Limerick is an absolutely delightful town; a very nice place to kill a few hours walking about; the main highlights are the medieval churches and the castle, all of which are right near the River Shannon. Cork is also lovely, but...Kevin had foolishly neglected to reserve a hostel room for the night, which ended up being OK - I found a B&B whose room rate was not much more than a hostel, so I had my own room, a comfy bed, and a spectacular full Irish breakfast in the morning.

From Cork, I went to Blarney Castle yesterday to go pucker up to the Blarney stone, so now all of you back home will perhaps find me to be even more full of it than I was before, which is saying something, no doubt. Blarney Castle is lovely, if touristy; it felt a bit unpleasant to be hit with the typical tourist tacky remarks after 4 months of blissful relief from them while traveling. Favorite line: "Honey, do you see that tree over there? Is that a bonsai tree? They have those in Ireland?"

From Blarney, it was on to County Kerry. I'm currently in Dingle, which is the archetypal quaint Irish harbor town. It's in gorgeously green, hilly surroundings, the people are nice, and I miraculously found a hostel in town with space. Not only that, but I ended up in the same room with the extremely cute girl from my bus to Dingle, and she and I ended up going out with the other people in our room (which included two Texans from Victoria, one of whom had a friend who went to TLU!) for Irish music and a few pints. The musicians were great, the Guinness was good, and it was a fun (if stereotypical) night in Ireland. Today, it's on from Dingle to Killarney and to Cork for another night, then on to Dublin tomorrow!

Well, this is likely to be the last one of these from Ghana. However, that's really a depressing avenue of thought, so we're not going to go down it today.

The past few weeks here have been a bit less eventful than my time on the road, but definitely a lot of fun. The highlights:

1. PROM - Yes, we had what amounts to being prom for international students 2 weeks ago. Melanie, one of the Canadians here, organized the event - formal/traditional attire, catered dinner, a dancing troupe for entertainment, and then dancing the night away after dinner. As the pictures probably indicate, much fun was had. There supposedly exist pictures of me dancing, but you will not be seeing them...the best adjective to describe my dancing would probably be "spastic."

2. NEW GLASSES - So, after Alexa put the crunch on the old frames in the Nigerienne whorehouse (I never tire of using that phrase...), we went to an eyeglass shop near MaxMart to pick up some new frames at a much lower price than you'd pay in the US. The shop felt like we had stepped out of Ghana and right into Lake Jackson. After 20 minutes, I almost forgot that I was in Ghana; of course, when we stepped out from the air-conditioned boutique and nearly got knocked over by the heat and had tro-tro mates and pure water sellers yelling at us, I definitely remembered my whereabouts. We also had lunch at Nando's, the home of tasty peri-peri chicken.

3. DRUMMING FINAL - In typical fashion for the University of Ghana, our final got moved around a little bit. After waiting around for 40 minutes on Thursday for the instructor, he finally appeared, apologized and then told us the final would be the following day because his supervisor was in a meeting and couldn't come evaluate us. The next day, we surprisingly did actually have our exam. I was to the cowbell what Eric Clapton is to the guitar, or so you would have thought as often as the instructor made me go take over for whoever was playing the cowbell. Of course, just as Clapton's career nosedived with the discovery of synthesizers and adult contemporary, mine went down the chutes after I accidentally flung the stick while playing the cowbell. Oops. The final went well, though, and all of us passed the class.

4. ASSASE PA - This is the vegetarian restaurant across the street from Paloma, and we hit it up for dinner after the drumming final. While eating, we discussed what our Ghanaian occupations would be. I was nominated to be a pure water salesperson who would change accents every five minutes to confuse people, Ginnie would be a guide at Mole, Anna (our resident women's studies student and "angry feminist" for humor's sake) would run a drinking spot in the night market called "God Says Women On Top", Shay (who, shall we say, often explores the mysterious sacraments of the Church of Rastafari) would be a sketchy rastaman at Labadi Beach, and so on.

5. TERRIFIC TUESDAYS - Two-for-one pizza nights at On the Run? Heck yes! The most recent one was more eventful than usual; the Leeds guys, Jenna, Anna, Shay, and I were eating our pizza when an acquaintance (i.e. sketchy, creepy Ghanaian student who had taken a liking to Anna) came and joined us. Real quotes from our unwanted guest's mouth: "So, Anna, are you a virgin? Because I can only marry a virgin...", "Does it bother you all that I am a Marxist?" and so on. It was rather surreal. He kept giving Anna the business, though, so she ended up telling him off and leaving.

6. MEG'S BIRTHDAY - One last birthday party at Lizzie's; it was a nice, full-circle sort of experience. My semester began with a trip to Lizzie's, and they played the first hip-life song that I specifically remember hearing. The cycle of Ghanaian life.

Intermixed with these events have been numerous chats with friends, lots of laughing, meals at the night market, an exam, plenty of studying, and so on. I take my last exam tomorrow; from there, I'll be finishing up my souvenir shopping for friends and family, and then Thursday...I fly out. I change planes in Tripoli and arrive in London on May 12th to beging my month of Eurotravel. It seems so odd to be done already...

Alrighty, part three of the huge photo update! These are all of friends of mine at our "prom" a few weeks ago to celebrate the end of classes. Thanks to Ginnie Seger for the pictures; that's why she's in half of them. Of course, that also means I actually got to TAKE most of these pictures, for the first time since March...

1. My roomie, Shay, and Ginnie.
2. Ginnie and Joy letting their inner tiger out.
3. Me with Ginnie and Jessee.
4. Joy and I. I almost put up the whole 3-picture sequence of "Me ready, but Joy not" followed by "Ginnie cutting me out of the picture, but Joy looking nice" and ending with "Finally both of us ready and in the picture, but Esben putting his head into the shot at the last minute," but I thought that would be overkill.
5. Sam and Ginnie. Sam is with the Leeds University programme (as he'd have me spell it) and is one of my neighbors.
6. Jessee, Ginnie, and Sam...no comment.
7. Jessee in smooth ladies' man mode with the sache of pure water.
8. Ginnie and Amy. Amy is another Leeds programme student.
9. Lara (also Leeds) behind the wheel of the International Programmes Office bus; she's not subtle about it when she's ready to leave...

And now, part two of the massive photo update - there will be two such posts today. Much like my big post-Kumasi and birthday posting, this one will come in two waves. First up, trip pictures from Mole and Togo, Benin, and Niger! Photos courtesy of Ginnie Seger and Jenna Gatzke.

1. A nice little prelude to the Mole trip; this is the full eclipse of the sun as seen around 9:15 from the parking lot outside my hostel in Legon.
2. An elephant at Mole National Park...as DK, our guide, would say: "Thank you, elephant, you are kind."
3. Me with bathing elephants in the background.
4. If you've ever been curious as to how an elephant gets down into a watering hole...here you go.
5. The mud-and-stick mosque in Larabanga; it dates to 1421 and is the oldest standing building in Ghana (probably).
6. No, this is not a shot from the whorehouse in Niger; this is our friend, Charlie, waking up at the Hotel la Galion in Lome. He was passing through Togo at the same time as us, and we ended up at the same hotel.
7. Jenna on our first moto-taxi. These things are FUN, and easily the best way to get around a West African city.
8. Ginnie in the Serpent Temple in Ouidah. The python had gotten a little TOO friendly with Ginnie and was trying to crawl into her shirt. Suffice it to say that Ginnie did NOT appreciate the snake's advances.
9. The house of the serpents in the Temple.
10. A Beninese gas station; you just pull up, say how many liters you want, and they whip out a bottle and funnel and fill 'er up.
11. The beach end of the Route des Esclaves in Ouidah.
12. The Point of No Return, Ouidah.
13. Yes, we were that out of it - it was early. The beginning of our trek through Pendjari.
14. Baboon at Pendjari. They got really close to us, which is a bit alarming given the size of their teeth...
15. A hippo at Pendjari.
16. Chillin' on top of the safari wagon with Alexa and Ginnie.
17. The lower pool at the waterfall just outside the park at Pendjari.
18. The main pool and waterfall.
19. The Beninese hill country just outside Pendjari.
20. A Sahelian village in Benin.
21. Cattle in Benin.
22. Our outdoor bedroom at Alfa Koure in Benin; we slept right beneath the tree after dragging out mattresses outside.
23. Boats on the Niger River just after crossing the border; the opposite shore is Benin.
24. Emerging from the Hotel Moustache, Niamey.
25. The group of us at Zanzibar, a restaurant run by an Aussie expat in Niamey.
26. The giraffes I didn't get to see in Niger...bah.
27. What my friends do in their spare time...

Well, at long last here are some Mali photos. I'll add some photos from Mole and from Togo, Benin, and Niger sometime before I leave Ghana...which, sadly, only leaves me 6 days in which to do so! But, fear not - I'll keep updating here straight on until my return to the US in mid-June, and I plan to buy a new camera with some extra dinero I lucked into when I get to Ireland, so the photographic fun and excitement doesn't have to stop! Thanks to Jessee Fleenor, friend and travel companion, for these photos.

1. Sunrise over the Sahel as seen from the top of the roof we slept on during our first night in Dogon country.
2. Moses' village that we stayed in the first day.
3. The ancient cliff dwellings of the Dogon and the pygmies as seen from a modern Dogon village.
4. The view from the cliff dwellings; this nice little cleft was a pleasant, shady hangout for both weary Americans AND goats. And yes, this was THE cliff, if you know what I mean...
5. A close-up of the dwellings; the smaller, cylindrical ones are the pygmie huts, and the larger, boxier ones are Dogon.
6. The view around dusk from another cliff; we had hiked up during the late afternoon to a clifftop Dogon village to spend the night. The view was incredible, and you can see the village's communal garden from the cliff - we had walked through it earlier.
7. Carolyn on the edge of the Dogon world; morning on the cliff where we'd spent the night on a mudhut roof.
8. The village in which we'd stayed; the style of hut and wall construction seen here is typically Dogon and can be seen throughout Dogon country.
9. The road to Timbuktu took us past some pretty impressive rock formations, this being one of them.
10. Three extremely hot, dirty, and tired American backpackers crossing the Niger River to get to Timbuktu.
11. Kevin, the Desert Warrior and Shiek of the Burning Sands. Notice how my facial expression matches that of Pedro, the camel. My gritted teeth show my determination not to get thrown off the camel or get racked again on the camel saddle. I succeeded in the former goal, but not the latter...but so it goes in the Sahara.
12. Mohammed, one of our Touareg hosts, leading us out to his Saharan encampment.
13. Yes, we really made it - TIMBUKTU.

Well, so this update is yet another in the "Kevin goes on for too long about his trips" series of travel fun and adventure, though the trip was only a few days long, so I can't ramble THAT much about it, eh?

Back before the Togo/Benin/Niger trip, I went up to northern Ghana with Ginnie and Meg to go to Mole National Park, which is basically the one huge, big-ticket attraction north of Kintampo in Ghana. Sure, there are sacred crocodiles in Paga, a mud mosque in Larabanga, and hippos at Wechiau, but Mole trumps them all. It's easily the cheapest safari in Africa - I honestly don't think I shelled out more than $15 for the guide, the hotel room, and entry fee combined. Plus, the animals are RIGHT THERE. You get to walk around the park with a guide for a few hours in the morning and see lots of antelope (mostly kobh and bushbuck), warthogs, crocodiles, birds, baboons, brown monkeys, green monkeys, and...elephants. But we're not to that part of the trip yet.

Oh no, we had to get up north first, and that was a bit of a challenge. We had decided to take the STC bus up to Tamale, but of course the tickets were all sold out the day before we planned to leave. We decided to catch a bus to Kumasi and try to find transport from there to Tamale. Well, departure morning arrived and we barely made it to the STC station on time because of the traffic. You haven't lived until you've been stuck in traffic in a taxi blaring '80s synth-pop. Between the music and the palm trees, I felt like I was trapped in an episode of Miami Vice. We got to the station only to discover that our bus had been delayed...and by delayed, I mean had apparently vanished off the face of the earth. So we waited. And then waited some more. We waited for 2 and a half hours in the station when they finally announced that...the original bus would not be coming, that they had arranged an alternate bus, and that the alternate bus didn't have AC, so we were entitled to a partial refund. We collected our money and got aboard the non-climatized bus. Surprisingly enough, the trip went fairly smoothly, but our 3 hour delay in leaving meant we had missed the last bus to Kumasi. We went to grab some dinner and sort the matter out, and while we were debating our course of action, who should arrive but three of our friends on their way back from Mole! We had a good chat with them and were assured that, despite any and all transportation difficulties that might occur, Mole was worth it. We decided to, rather than waste a night in Kumasi, bite the bullet and find an overnight tro-tro to Tamale.

I never want to spend a night on a tro-tro again. Saying we were uncomfortable would be akin to saying that Janis Joplin was merely a heroin enthusiast (thank you, PJ O'Rourke, for that line). The trip started off with some fireworks, too - the tro-tro mate decided that the most effective way to put luggage into the back of the tro-tro would be to pin my legs between two suitcases so that I couldn't even move them. Methinks not. I moved one of the suitcases with my leg so that I could, oh, actually MOVE MY LEGS, and the tro-tro mate started yelling in Twi and (here's the kicker) grabbed my legs, moved them for me, and moved the suitcase back up. I am, as I have said before, a reasonably laid back person - I like to take things as they come. But, for future reference, please do not grab my legs and move them so you can pin them in place with a suitcase, especially when I already have no legroom to speak of and my knees are pressed against the seat in front of me. You will get yelled at. While loud, it wasn't over the top as my Beninese Easter Sunday Showdown was, but it got the job done. Kevin got his 1.5 inches of leg wiggle room. Even with not having my legs pinned, it was incredibly uncomfortable. The man next to me fell asleep on my shoulder for a while, which was mildly awkward, and then I apparently fell asleep on Ginnie's. We were all one happy, sleep family there in the back of the tro-tro...

Around 5:00, we got to Tamale and after a bit of asking around, found our way to a place to crash for a few hours. If you're ever in Tamale, spare yourself and don't stay at the Central Guiesthouse. Our room, which they assured us had a fan and running water, had neither of those things in operation. However, at that point the three of us were too tired to complain (we had even fallen asleep in the lobby while waiting for the manager to come), and we crashed for a couple of hours until the heat became unbearable in the room. It probably didn't help that there was one bed with three of us on it, either, and I probably don't want to know what the hotel manager thought we were up to with our checking into a room at sunrise.

We got moving again around 10:30, got bus tickets on the bus service to Mole, and went and had lunch at a nearby restaurant. And then, the Wrath of Kevin, part 2...we went to board our bus to Mole, and the mate was being an absolute jerk to...all of the white people. To Ghanaians getting on the bus he was a perfect gentleman, but not to anybody with lighter skin. After he had been point-blank rude to us, and the other two white travelers, I snapped. Again, this was not really that much in terms of verbal fireworks, but I did raise my voice when he issued instructions to us contradictory to what the bus driver was saying. I don't much care for being yelled at simply because I'm white.

That leads me to, on a brief aside, mention that I hate the term "reverse racism." There is no such thing. Racism is racism, and it doesn't matter who you direct it toward. A white person who looks negatively on blacks because they're black is a racist. A black person who looks negatively on whites because they're white is a racist...and so on down through all the possible "race a hates race b" permutations. It's that simple. Yes, there are plenty of mitigating factors, especially ones of an economic nature, that have to be taken into account when one considers the "why" aspect of racism, but that doesn't change the fact that it is racism. OK, rant over.

So, after our fun little experience getting on the bus, we took off for Mole and made pretty good time. Also, at one point, my seatmates included...a chicken. The woman next to me had a plastic bag on her lap, which started clucking at me, and then WHAM! - a chicken's head popped through the plastic. We got to the Mole Motel without further incident, such as contracting bird flu, and checked into our room. On our way into the park, we ran into 6 or 7 fellow ISH residents who had just done Mole, and upon arriving at Mole, we ended up having dinner with several more who happened to be there. Obviously, early April is THE time for going to Mole. We had a pretty comfortable room and slept like rocks, and got up bright and early to go out on our park walk. Our guide, DK, was hilarious and informative about the animals we were seeing, and we saw plenty of them. The walk ended at the two main watering holes, and the elephants were out in force - we saw almost 20 of them! It's incredible to see such massive animals in their natural environment, interacting with each other and their surroundings.

After the walk, we headed back into Larabanga, the town just outside Mole. We stayed at a guesthouse in town and got to see the oldest standing building in Ghana, a mosque built in 1421. We slept on the roof of the guesthouse and heard drumming from a celebration in honor of the new imam for the mosque, who had just been installed that morning. I got up mondo early to catch the bus back to Tamale; I had a group project that needed to be done, but the girls wanted to go on to Wechiau and the hippo sanctuary. I got into Tamale around 8:00 (the bus left at 4:15) and spent a long, fairly hot day in Tamale since the next bus didn't leave until 14:00, and it ended up being delayed and left around 16:45 - yay for STC efficiency...

I'm not a big fan of overnight buses, either. I was at least more comfortable, and they plied us with Nigerian movies. I got to watch parts one AND two of "Behind Closed Doors," which involves wife-swapping, pregnancy, jealousy, a miraculous healing, murder, and an extremely religious mother - keep in mind that all of this is within the confines of a single family in the movie. We also saw previews for a movie called "Black Bra" that dealt, no joke, with an on-campus group of militant feminists who ran around wreaking havoc on the male population in ski masks and black undergarments.

So at least I was entertained for the bus ride. We got to Accra around 7:00, I was back at ISH in an hour, and I slept. And slept. And then slept some more. It was a good trip; tons of fun and I was traveling with two great people. I think that does it, for now, in the "lengthy trip monologue" department; keep an eye peeled for more updates this week!

Alrighty, so today's little slice of life from Ghana - A Ghanaian-English dictionary! Here are some Twi phrases that I use on a regular basis (spelled as close to phonetic accuracy as I can manage), plus some Ghanaian-isms that have worked their way into my vocabulary. This way, when I come up to you and say "obruni, ete sen?!?!" when I get back, you'll know to say "boko!"

TWI

ete sen - How are you; the stock greeting in Ghana since there is no word for hello in Twi
eye - good
boko - cool (the hip response to "ete sen")
papaapa - very (so "eye papaapa" would be "very good")
Wo begye sen Osu? - How much is your fare for Osu (usefu;l for taxi negotiations)
Me paakye, te so - I'm sorry, please lower (the fare)...note: "ky" is pronounced like the English "ch"
Mepe kwedu - I like bananas
Me yam me ya - My stomach hurts (I don't typically have to use this, but it's good to know)
Draeba, fa nifa/benkum/ko wanimtee - Driver, take a right/left/go straight
Wo te hine? - Where do you stay/live?
Wo firi hine? - Where are you from?
Mempe fufuo - I don't like fufu
Ma me sika - Give me money (more often said to me than said by me...)
obruni - white person
obibini - black person
obruni, bra! - White man, come here! (Usually used after the obruni tries the "walking away when bargaining to get a better price" stunt)
Nyame - God
Megye Nyame di - I believe in God (literally I take God and eat/swallow; an interesting way of understanding what it means to believe in something!)

English Ghanaianisms

small-small - very small (used constantly by Ghanaians and now me)
As in: "Please draeba, my money is small-small...te so"

I go and come - I'll be right back
As in: "Please sir, I go and come in five minutes"

the (object) it is finished - We're out of (object)
As in: "Please, no Fanta - it is finished"

I give you good price - Denotation: I'll give you a fair price. Connotation: This object is either a piece of crap so I'll sell it cheap, or it's reasonable quality and I'm going to take you to the cleaner's.
As in: "Obruni, bra! I give you good price for the necklace!"

HISSSSSSS - Hey, you! (West African societies tend to hiss to get people's attention...please do NOT be offended if I slip and do this when I want to say something to you and your back is turned!!!)

That's it for now with those...there are plenty of others, but you'll likely get to discover them on your own.