December 5

In another five days most of the teachers will be on flights home even Tim Crosby. Although I wish some of them would be here until I leave, I can understand their rushing through the last few days of school in anticipation of seeing friends and family as soon as possible. It has been pretty hectic this past week at school, trying to help the music teacher with the Christmas program (which was last night). It was all her diligent working with mostly the elementary students, each grade preforming a  few songs with simple props. I would not have had the patience and sanity to pull it off, so the least I could do was help as much as possible. I was to exhibit some of the students work, but that was a bust. There was neither space for the portable room dividers brought from school at the last minute (my request of ten days ago was lost, which is not unusual for life in Ghana), nor time to put up much which few would have ever seen anyway. I am not built to function with these last minute changes and by God's grace I didn't voice much of my frustrations. If this is the worst thing I encounter this week, my life is easy. I intentionally took a lot of pictures at the dress rehearsal at school on Thursday, so didn't even take my camera along Saturday.

Christine, the music teacher, is oriental, andhas a family of several young children; she's a quiet person who wouldn't upset a sole. Before Joyce Crosby knew she (Joyce) would be leaving Ghana before Thanksgiving, she asked me to be on the Christmas program committee. I mentioned before in an earlier blog how I drew about seven large drawings of the nativity figures, and had students work on Christmas projects to display at the program. Well, the room at the hotel where the program was held was much smaller than anticipated, and less than 250 chairs could fit in the room once the stage was brought in. I was asked to see the next act was always lined up ready to go as the class before actually preformed. If there had been a "wings" to the stage or even an extra room to line up the next class perhaps it might have been easy. Parents were standing in the aisles the students were to enter through, and some parents even took the students seats when they got up to preform, so the students had no where to return to. I was glad to see the whole thing finished, and I'm sure Christine got her first good nights sleep in weeks last night. And the thing that I've come to realize is this is typical here, no one is solely at fault, and the same frustrations will accompany any activity in Africa. This is one thing I not miss.

Over the past three Sundays I've been visiting different churches, and today I went to a very large church much further away than any others that I've gone to by myself. It was about a half hour's taxi ride to get there, it wasn't really in Accra. I learned from the past I would be better to pay extra to have the taxi driver return at a set time and pay extra for my peace of mind. It worked great, and I wasn't as afraid of not having any idea were I was going. The driver, Toni, spoke fairly good English and I enjoyed the conversation on the ride to the church. On Saturday when I took a taxi to help set up for the Christmas program the taxi driver said he could take me to the Mensvic Hotel but twice took me to the wrong place. It really didn't matter much, cause after I got there all we could do was wait for two hours for the things that didn't get delivered as promised. Anyway, back to the church: the sermon was good, and I recognized most parts of the service. As with all the churches I've gone to here, there were one or two songs that lasted forever and all the people rocked and danced in place for about five minutes each time. I was the only white person in a congregation of about two hundred, but Ghana really is a friendly country, at least in the daylight!

Early Saturday I went with some friends to the art market I visited when I first got here, only this time I actually bought stuff! I'd gone to a smaller market last weekend, but this one was amazing, and I was comfortable bargaining prices down on somethings. There were beautiful baskets and primitive wood carvings, but I have to consider my limited suitcase space. So far mostly I've bought jewelry (or beads to make jewelry), fabric, or painted cards; I've enjoyed the shopping so much. There are two art bazaars next Saturday after most everyone else leaves, I may go just to look by myself. One is sponsored by a hospital, the other by a foreign school. My adventures are shaping up nicely too. On Monday, December 13 I'm going to the Abori Gardens and Boti waterfalls with two other people for a one day trip. Wednesday and Thursday I'm to join two other people at Cape Coast, the one "must see" trip to a slave castle and canope walk a couple hundred feet off the ground in a coastal forest (that's a two day trip). Saturday and maybe Sunday I'm going to a monkey sanctuary; a family from school may join me but maybe not. The Crosby's driver will drive for all of these, so my comfort level is greatly increased! I really haven't gotten out to see much, so this is a fitting end to my time here. The school gave me a nice bonus, so the travel is possible. . . a gift from God to see the country I've lived in for three months.

Well, it's Sunday night, my best time to make phone calls back to the states. This week will be so in flux I don't even have to do lesson plans. I'm hoping to see the second and fifth graders at least twice Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Thursday is only half a day, and that's party time anyway. Friday was supposed to be a teacher workday, but about half the teachers are flying home. So there's my schedule in a nutshell.
I'll write later.
Enjoy the ADvent time of preparation,
Diann