Saturday at Awuku's

Today was a free day for us, so Hannah, Amy, and I made plans to go to Awuku's house for lunch and cook with his wife, Lily. We chopped up a TON of spinach for this spinach soup dip thingy that was delicious. It had crab, cow, spinach, fish, and other yummy things in it. We had it over white rice. We also made delicious fried plantains :) mmhmmm. It was awesome.

I left the kitchen a few times to play with Awuku's niece and nephew and just to talk with Awuku. They live in a really nice home, but it is small. They are in the process of building a house right now that is much bigger. They should be able to move in next year, so Lily said that I can stay with them next time I come :) yay!

Then Amy and Hannah decided to get their hair done! It was wild. It took about 3.5 hours for both of them to get their hair done and it looked good afterwords. I just sat around and talked well they got it done, and then Awuku took Amy and I out to get desserts for everyone. Oh my word, these desserts were so good. I got tirimesu and it was soooooo goooooood. I can't even. Amy and Hannah got a cheesecake which was also tasty. 

Overall, we had a fantastic day :) and it was awesome watching everyone back at the hotel totally freak out when they saw Amy and Hannah with their hair done. Good stuff!

Visiting the Homes

So for my internship their were two parts. In the morning I did home visits. During these visits i was with a group of 4 and we went to a child's home and asked the caregivers a bunch of questions that helped us to get to know the life of the child better and gain a better understanding of who the child is. It was an eye-opening and often heartbreaking experience. A lot of these kids have nothing...most don't even live with their family. They live with an aunt or family friend and during the dady they go around and sell things to raise money for the family. Some families really cared about the kids, but did not know how to help them. It was hard for us to listen to these stories. Also, often times the family could not speak English, so Emmanuel (the normal GLONA teacher) walked around with us and acted as a translator; with that being said, we often did not get the full story, or the questions that we asked were not asked in the correct way.

We asked things like: "Where are the child's parents?" "Does the child have access to clean water?" "What time does the child go to sleep/wake up?" "What does the child do before going to GLONA?" And more questions like that. They were pretty surface level, but still deep enough to give up a foundation on each child's life.

We had to type up personal records for each child to turn into GLONA that clouded a family history section and an academic section. It was extremely good practice for me and I think it will really help GLONA in the long run.

Here are a few pictures of the houses we went to. We got a picture with each family in the common area---which is outside the house.

This is Linda and her Aunt that she lives with.

This is Eric's family. They are all wearing red and black because his grandmother passed away and they are all here for the funeral celebration.

This is Laticia and her caregiver in their home.

This is Paulina with her grandparents--who she stays with--in their home.

This is Kobby's house and the lady that he stays with.

The Hardest Goodbye

I have been working with these kids for a month and a half now and today I had to say goodbye..needless to say, it was emotional. I taught the youngest class, so they dont really understand English; I don't think most of them understood that I wasn't coming back. I had to keep saying that it was my last day. In class, I passed out paper and crayons and we drew a map of Africa and America. Then we drew a plane going across the ocean and wrote my name. That way, they could kind of see where I was going. I put a star where Ghana was and told them, "See that star? That is GLONA. This is where we are right now," Then I drew a star where Virginia is and said, "See this star? That is my house. This is where I am going on Wednesday, May co mi fee en America." Then they kept asking if I could come back and if I really had to go home...it was so sad because I am going to miss them soooooo much.

These are the happiest kids I have ever seen. I brought bubbles and brought them to recess one day and I have never in my life seen kids get so excited over bubbles! They screamed and ran to pop them a laughed when I let them blow their own bubbles; it was incredible. And then I bought the school a soccer ball and Kobby gave me the biggest hug I have ever received in my entire life! I almost cried then and there! And don't even get me started on their love for stickers! I passed them out on our last day and they placed them all over their notebooks and face and backpacks, it was so freaking adorable! 

These kids hugged me everyday, could always crack me up, and made me feel so much joy that my heart was overflowing. It was the first time in a very long time that I felt like I was important and making a difference in somebody's life. Here are a few crazy pictures of them being goofballs, attacking me, and just showing me lots of love :)

Last Week Lesson

For the last week of teaching I wanted to do something that would be helpful for the kids and something that they would remember, so I put together little booklets and we made learning books :) I took a picture of Daniel's because he really enjoyed the project, so I decided to show his off!

So the title was pretty generic and lame:

Then on page 1, they wrote about themselves. They wrote their name, age, favorite color, favorite food, the fact that they go to school, and how many brothers and/or sisters they have:

Then we worked on some basic vocabulary for page 2. Went through the beginning of the alphabet and I thought of a word that they should know and we drew the picture next to the word so they could remember what the word is/means:

Page 3 and 4 were more vocab, but page 3 we drew a simple scene and labeled everything and page 4 we continued with the alphabet and chose random words and drew pictures:

Page 5 was my favorite because we spent a long time on their body parts. I taught them the head-shoulders-knees-and toes song except we did head-shoulder-legs-and-feet. Classic. They looooooved that song and showed it to the "principal" of GLONA. IT WAS SO CUTE! Anyways, we drew a little stick figure and labeled the body parts as their science lesson. Then we drew a boy and a girl with clothes on and labeled the types of clothes. I learned them in Twi and they learned them in English:

Oh and page 6 was just a scene with vocabulary again:

We drew a house and labeled it for page ) and page 8 was a safari! They didn't know what a safari was, and it was rather hard to explain, but we drew us driving in a car and looking through the window at the animals:

Some of these kids were showing off their dance moves and how they can sing, so we drew that for the next page:

Then we drew a map of the world with America, Africa, and China on it. Suiru was teaching with me (she came for the internship part of the program) and she is from China, so I made sure that they drew that country too:

They really enjoyed this whole project! I collected the books everyday because I knew that someone would lose theirs or forget it if they took them home, so everyday they would get so excited as I passed them out. It was adorable! And they never draw or color, so using crayons was such a big treat for me. It made learning more fun, and they did learn a lot--I know this because I gave them a quiz before I left and a lot of kids did really well:)

African Hospital

So I went to the hospital in Africa...I seriously thought I was dying. It was awful. Let me explain though:

I wasn't feeling very good when everyone decided to go to this bar, Champs, but I went anyways of course. It was a lot of fun, but I should've left early. When we got back I never left the bathroom. I was vomiting and had diarrheal alllllllll I night; I literally did not sleep. At like 6:30ish I went to Dr.Adams room and cried to her because I was in so much pain and I was also nervouse because I was so sick in Africa. 

We were going to Cape Coast that morning but stopping at the hospital in Apalm to pick up the other half of jmu students, so they just left me at the hospital there and I met them in Cape Coast later. 

They hooked me up to an IV because I was so dehydrated and they did the IV through my hand, which hurt a lot more than I would have liked. Then they gave me a shot in my bum to stop the nausua and help me sleep. When I was asleep they gave me 3 more IVs with antibiotics and things and when I woke up I took 3 pills and I was finally feeling well enough to make the 2 hour drive to Cape Coast.

When I got to Cape Coast, they had a coconut drink ready for me to help me feel better. :) it was rally sweet, but I still felt awful, so I went to bed at like 730 and woke up this morning at 10ish.

I'm feeling a better, just taking it easy on my stomach--white rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner...mm mm mm. I also have a ginormous headache, but I'll take it over tho their sickness.

July 1st Festival

This was a festival for all of the chiefs and queen mothers to walk through in Cape Coast (That is the beach picture). It was more of a parade than a festival though. People were going crazy over these chiefs through! 

They had intricate outfits and staffs that were gorgeous; some were being carried in on box-chair things through the crowd of people. 

They had people dance in front of them and they were covered in paint and decorations. 

Speaking of the people, they were chanting and waving cloth at them, they were singing, looking out windows and door frames, it was crazy!

I walked with Awuku the whole time almost and he kept yelling at me (jokingly) for taking picture of random people's kids. He said that my entire memory card will be covered with kids...he isn't wrong though...