4 February 2010
I spent all day dropping classes. It really took all day. I had to go to each department separately and some places told me I needed to pick up forms from buildings across campus before talking to them. Gah. It’s easy to spend a lot of time doing very little here. In most cases, it’s not really a big deal though. When the music department told me I needed to walk across campus to get a piece of paper they easily could have kept in their own office, I figured I’d add one more casual stroll in the lovely balmy weather. So I wandered my way across campus. No point in rushing. It’s not like I had anything else to do today.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Dawn of the Apocalypse
3 February 2010
We had a semi-productive morning rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast this morning. Whoa.
I went to choir today. I think it’ll be a really great course. We’ll be learning songs in English and Twi, and OH MY GRACIOUS THERE ARE SO MANY GUYS. And they sing beautifully. And many of them are basses. Beautiful basses. Like, there are more men than women. I don’t know how to deal with how excited I am about this. For those of you who don’t know, Goucher usually has to hire tenors and basses for chorus. And they’re all over the place here. And did I mention they sound amazing?
So obviously they don’t have me singing tenor. In fact, I went to sit in the alto section and my voice professor came over to me and asked, “Are you sure you sing alto?” I told him that’s what I generally sing, but that I could sing something else. He told me that I was definitely a soprano and told me to go sit there, further adding to my voice identity crisis. I love my fellow sopranos!
Only problem: In addition to our Wednesday afternoon class, we meet at 7:30am on Fridays. Yuck. Ghanains get up so early. Also, funny thing: I meet with my 3 credit classes about 1-2 hours a week. I meet with my 1 credit classes 3-5 hours a week. Go figure.
Doing something at rehearsal + guys in choir = Grab your towels folks, the end is near.
We had a semi-productive morning rehearsal for Beauty and the Beast this morning. Whoa.
I went to choir today. I think it’ll be a really great course. We’ll be learning songs in English and Twi, and OH MY GRACIOUS THERE ARE SO MANY GUYS. And they sing beautifully. And many of them are basses. Beautiful basses. Like, there are more men than women. I don’t know how to deal with how excited I am about this. For those of you who don’t know, Goucher usually has to hire tenors and basses for chorus. And they’re all over the place here. And did I mention they sound amazing?
So obviously they don’t have me singing tenor. In fact, I went to sit in the alto section and my voice professor came over to me and asked, “Are you sure you sing alto?” I told him that’s what I generally sing, but that I could sing something else. He told me that I was definitely a soprano and told me to go sit there, further adding to my voice identity crisis. I love my fellow sopranos!
Only problem: In addition to our Wednesday afternoon class, we meet at 7:30am on Fridays. Yuck. Ghanains get up so early. Also, funny thing: I meet with my 3 credit classes about 1-2 hours a week. I meet with my 1 credit classes 3-5 hours a week. Go figure.
Doing something at rehearsal + guys in choir = Grab your towels folks, the end is near.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
T.I.G.
2 February 2010
I had my first voice lesson today! It was really exciting to sing some classical material again. Right now, I am working on Where’er You Walk, by Handel. I really enjoyed my lesson, but not surprisingly, it was a little strange. It was held in the same classroom as my Music in Southern Africa class, which can hold 50 or so students. There were a few people in the classroom when I got there, and they just stayed and hung out during my lesson. Sometimes they sang along. Sometimes they came in early when they did so. And in the back of my head, I knew this was amusing and odd, but it didn’t really faze me. I’m sure back home I’d be really annoyed and distracted if someone did that, (and Richard would never have it) but here I just rolled with it. It’d be really useful if I could carry that tolerance back to the States, but there are many things that I feel I just accept because I am in Ghana. As we and even the Ghanaians say, "TIG." This is Ghana. Prepare yourself for anything. Anything.
I had my first voice lesson today! It was really exciting to sing some classical material again. Right now, I am working on Where’er You Walk, by Handel. I really enjoyed my lesson, but not surprisingly, it was a little strange. It was held in the same classroom as my Music in Southern Africa class, which can hold 50 or so students. There were a few people in the classroom when I got there, and they just stayed and hung out during my lesson. Sometimes they sang along. Sometimes they came in early when they did so. And in the back of my head, I knew this was amusing and odd, but it didn’t really faze me. I’m sure back home I’d be really annoyed and distracted if someone did that, (and Richard would never have it) but here I just rolled with it. It’d be really useful if I could carry that tolerance back to the States, but there are many things that I feel I just accept because I am in Ghana. As we and even the Ghanaians say, "TIG." This is Ghana. Prepare yourself for anything. Anything.
Not My Classiest Day
1 February 2010
I went to Music in Southern Africa again today. The professor showed up with 15 minutes left to the end of class. This didn’t seem to bother him or the other students. He started setting up the projector. This didn’t go very well, so we sat there doing nothing still. After about ten minutes of no success, he wrote a website up on the board and told us how to find two articles that we were to read for homework. And said we’d have a quiz on them next week. Someone came in to help with the projector and about ten minutes later they had it up and working. Though he had already given us instructions, our professor really wanted to go to the website and show us exactly where we needed to go. And we did some more waiting. But the internet wasn’t to keen on working that day, as is often the case on campus, and he could not pull up the site. For some reason though, he was able to get the Wikipedia site to load and he looked up similar articles there and gave us an overview of what we’d be reading. By the time he finished, he had kept us all but 15 minutes of an extra class period. This is the only class I absolutely cannot drop. Ugh.
My Conflict in Society professor did show at all today. What a bummer. I had hoped to elaborate my tree drawing/ conflict model.
I went to Music in Southern Africa again today. The professor showed up with 15 minutes left to the end of class. This didn’t seem to bother him or the other students. He started setting up the projector. This didn’t go very well, so we sat there doing nothing still. After about ten minutes of no success, he wrote a website up on the board and told us how to find two articles that we were to read for homework. And said we’d have a quiz on them next week. Someone came in to help with the projector and about ten minutes later they had it up and working. Though he had already given us instructions, our professor really wanted to go to the website and show us exactly where we needed to go. And we did some more waiting. But the internet wasn’t to keen on working that day, as is often the case on campus, and he could not pull up the site. For some reason though, he was able to get the Wikipedia site to load and he looked up similar articles there and gave us an overview of what we’d be reading. By the time he finished, he had kept us all but 15 minutes of an extra class period. This is the only class I absolutely cannot drop. Ugh.
My Conflict in Society professor did show at all today. What a bummer. I had hoped to elaborate my tree drawing/ conflict model.
Separating Light and Dark Laundry? No Problem.
30 January 2010
I finally made the attempt to do laundry today. Here’s how it worked. And didn’t work. I used two buckets. Elsa and I went halfsies on buckets because they are terribly useful to have, as we’ve found and you can’t be Ghanaian if you don’t have two buckets and two cell phones.
I’m digressing, but you've got to hear about the cell phones, so I’ll get back to laundry in just a sec. It’s true. Most Ghanaians who have phones have two of them. Everyone I ask about this will just say, “In case one of them is off,” as if that made complete sense. I have recently found though, that apparently certain networks work better in different places. Since pay as you go phones are the norm here, it’s not outrageous to simply have one phone with Tigo wireless (which is what I have) and one with MTN. Tangent over.
People do laundry in a number of places, but I decided on our balcony-porch thing. I filled the two buckets with water using the showers and lugged them out to the porch. This gave me a soapy bucket and a rinse bucket. My first look into the buckets was disheartening. I hadn’t so much as dipped a sock in the water, but it was cloudy and brown-ish. This makes me feel super about the showers I’m taking here. I looked away and went to grab my sheets, because I would need them to dry in time for sleeping.
This was probably an intimidating way to start my task. I had never used bar soap to wash clothes before and I feel that the large surface area I had to clean added significantly to my confusion. The buckets are large wastebasket sized. The soap, buckets, water and sheets got into a bit of a tiff and tidal waves of epic proportion ensued. Eep. I warned Elsa that I had done horrid things with the room and that I would clean it up once I felt I was done with my mess making.
Then came drying. My friend Emily lent me some cord to string across my room. (I’ll try to post some pictures on Facebook.) This may seem like a really classy way to decorate a room, but what you may not realize is that if you don’t wring the heck out of the sheets, you will create new bodies of water in your living space. I’m all about puddle jumping of course, but there’s something less satisfying about potentially falling on unforgiving tile. So I did a lot of wringing, which in my opinion is a pretty satisfying task when done well. It leaves a healthy burn in the arms that assures me I will leave Ghana totally jacked. Score.
The water got really gross really quickly. I ended up going through about ten buckets of water before getting fed up with the waste and the feeling that I wasn’t getting anything clean, plus running out of drying room. I decided it was time for a break. I cleaned up, as promised, and went to the Creamy Inn with some friends, who like me, were craving some ice cream.
The Creamy Inn is part of a fill-up (gas) station mart, which also has two for one pizza night on Tuesday at the Pizza Inn area. (There is also a Chicken Inn). What they do not have on the menu, apparently, is ice cream. Here is my theory: Ice cream is a big tourist joke to Ghanaians. They have it on half of the menus here, but they never actually have it in stock. We’ll ask for it and they’ll look at us like we’re crazy for thinking they’d have such a thing. They did actually sell it in cartons here, though, so we got one and split it among the group.
I would like to go to bed now, but my sheets are still wet. I feel that they and my other clothes are gathering massive amounts of dust now, and that nothing really got clean. Looking at my once white computer further confirms this thought. It turns browner every day. That’s pretty much the case with all of my stuff. Not me though! I’m still about as pasty as ever.
I finally made the attempt to do laundry today. Here’s how it worked. And didn’t work. I used two buckets. Elsa and I went halfsies on buckets because they are terribly useful to have, as we’ve found and you can’t be Ghanaian if you don’t have two buckets and two cell phones.
I’m digressing, but you've got to hear about the cell phones, so I’ll get back to laundry in just a sec. It’s true. Most Ghanaians who have phones have two of them. Everyone I ask about this will just say, “In case one of them is off,” as if that made complete sense. I have recently found though, that apparently certain networks work better in different places. Since pay as you go phones are the norm here, it’s not outrageous to simply have one phone with Tigo wireless (which is what I have) and one with MTN. Tangent over.
People do laundry in a number of places, but I decided on our balcony-porch thing. I filled the two buckets with water using the showers and lugged them out to the porch. This gave me a soapy bucket and a rinse bucket. My first look into the buckets was disheartening. I hadn’t so much as dipped a sock in the water, but it was cloudy and brown-ish. This makes me feel super about the showers I’m taking here. I looked away and went to grab my sheets, because I would need them to dry in time for sleeping.
This was probably an intimidating way to start my task. I had never used bar soap to wash clothes before and I feel that the large surface area I had to clean added significantly to my confusion. The buckets are large wastebasket sized. The soap, buckets, water and sheets got into a bit of a tiff and tidal waves of epic proportion ensued. Eep. I warned Elsa that I had done horrid things with the room and that I would clean it up once I felt I was done with my mess making.
Then came drying. My friend Emily lent me some cord to string across my room. (I’ll try to post some pictures on Facebook.) This may seem like a really classy way to decorate a room, but what you may not realize is that if you don’t wring the heck out of the sheets, you will create new bodies of water in your living space. I’m all about puddle jumping of course, but there’s something less satisfying about potentially falling on unforgiving tile. So I did a lot of wringing, which in my opinion is a pretty satisfying task when done well. It leaves a healthy burn in the arms that assures me I will leave Ghana totally jacked. Score.
The water got really gross really quickly. I ended up going through about ten buckets of water before getting fed up with the waste and the feeling that I wasn’t getting anything clean, plus running out of drying room. I decided it was time for a break. I cleaned up, as promised, and went to the Creamy Inn with some friends, who like me, were craving some ice cream.
The Creamy Inn is part of a fill-up (gas) station mart, which also has two for one pizza night on Tuesday at the Pizza Inn area. (There is also a Chicken Inn). What they do not have on the menu, apparently, is ice cream. Here is my theory: Ice cream is a big tourist joke to Ghanaians. They have it on half of the menus here, but they never actually have it in stock. We’ll ask for it and they’ll look at us like we’re crazy for thinking they’d have such a thing. They did actually sell it in cartons here, though, so we got one and split it among the group.
I would like to go to bed now, but my sheets are still wet. I feel that they and my other clothes are gathering massive amounts of dust now, and that nothing really got clean. Looking at my once white computer further confirms this thought. It turns browner every day. That’s pretty much the case with all of my stuff. Not me though! I’m still about as pasty as ever.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Slowing Down-- Hey, when in Ghana...
29 January 2010
Alright, nothing exciting happened today. Think I may not do a post for EVERY day at this point. Sorry to anyone who thought I’d have spine-chilling, life-threatening adventures every 24 hours while in Ghana.
Alright, nothing exciting happened today. Think I may not do a post for EVERY day at this point. Sorry to anyone who thought I’d have spine-chilling, life-threatening adventures every 24 hours while in Ghana.
The Ghanaian Good Cheer Mandate
28 January 2010
Sure enough, rehearsal this morning started its usual hour late. I have no words.
Later today, I had a class in the Home Science department called Housing Design, which I’m super excited about, because building things is awesome. That was canceled though. I will be excited to give more updates in this area when possible.
I decided to get a kebab at a stall on the way back from my not class. It was quite tasty, consisting of beef and onion. They actually do eat kebabs right off the skewer here, which I think is fantastic, because that is what I like to do at home anyway and I get weird looks. But that’s not why I’m telling this story. As I was making my way through my snack, a man called me over to talk and said something in Twi that I did not understand. He laughed at me, as Ghanaians are wont to do and finally explained that “When someone says [whatever he said], it means you have to give me some of that.” I replied with, “No, sorry, I don’t share kebabs with people I don’t know.” He said, “Okay, maybe another time.” And I just let him go on thinking that.
Today was the Nigeria vs. Ghana football game. There are Nigerians and Ghanaians living in our hostel, and they have a tendency to not get along very well apparently. From what I can understand, Nigeria is disliked by a number of countries and is known for being unfriendly, though I have no particular experience with this. Every time a goal was scored, a roar erupted form throughout the building. That’s all I was witness to, but I have no doubt that this roar was heard throughout the country. Ghanaians get PSYCHED about their football, which is exciting for everyone involved. There are three TVs in ISH (our hostel), and people crowded around all of them.
And then we won. Students ran through the halls, blowing plastic horns, waving flags, yelling, etc. Someone ran into the courtyard with champagne for whoever got to him first. A crowd then ran out of the building and into the parking lot. We went onto the balcony to get a view. A number of people got into cars and started racing around the parking lot, doing turns, with some people hanging out of the windows. On the sidewalks, people cheered and yelled. A couple cars ran into other parked cars at times, at which point the owner of the parked car would walk out to the lot amiably enough, check out the damage and move his car. There was no chance any Ghanaian was going to be unhappy this evening.
Sure enough, rehearsal this morning started its usual hour late. I have no words.
Later today, I had a class in the Home Science department called Housing Design, which I’m super excited about, because building things is awesome. That was canceled though. I will be excited to give more updates in this area when possible.
I decided to get a kebab at a stall on the way back from my not class. It was quite tasty, consisting of beef and onion. They actually do eat kebabs right off the skewer here, which I think is fantastic, because that is what I like to do at home anyway and I get weird looks. But that’s not why I’m telling this story. As I was making my way through my snack, a man called me over to talk and said something in Twi that I did not understand. He laughed at me, as Ghanaians are wont to do and finally explained that “When someone says [whatever he said], it means you have to give me some of that.” I replied with, “No, sorry, I don’t share kebabs with people I don’t know.” He said, “Okay, maybe another time.” And I just let him go on thinking that.
Today was the Nigeria vs. Ghana football game. There are Nigerians and Ghanaians living in our hostel, and they have a tendency to not get along very well apparently. From what I can understand, Nigeria is disliked by a number of countries and is known for being unfriendly, though I have no particular experience with this. Every time a goal was scored, a roar erupted form throughout the building. That’s all I was witness to, but I have no doubt that this roar was heard throughout the country. Ghanaians get PSYCHED about their football, which is exciting for everyone involved. There are three TVs in ISH (our hostel), and people crowded around all of them.
And then we won. Students ran through the halls, blowing plastic horns, waving flags, yelling, etc. Someone ran into the courtyard with champagne for whoever got to him first. A crowd then ran out of the building and into the parking lot. We went onto the balcony to get a view. A number of people got into cars and started racing around the parking lot, doing turns, with some people hanging out of the windows. On the sidewalks, people cheered and yelled. A couple cars ran into other parked cars at times, at which point the owner of the parked car would walk out to the lot amiably enough, check out the damage and move his car. There was no chance any Ghanaian was going to be unhappy this evening.
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