Ghana- Day 4/5, February 9/10, 2011.

We woke up early, and got ready real fast. We had no idea if we would stay the night or not, and I had no idea what I would even need if we did. All I took was my toothbrush, pajamas, and a towel. Kelly, Jojo, Rolando, Ben, Eric, Rachel, Lillie, and Hannah, and I took a cab to the tro-tro station, and got one to take us to Busua Beach. We told the driver to drop us off at the Busua Beach Resort, where we thought we would try to spend the night. The rooms were about $170 USD  for one night. The place was really nice, but we kind of felt out of place. We went to lunch there and talked about what we wanted to do. We waited over an hour for our food to come, and meanwhile decided that we’d walk down the beach after lunch and see if there was a better place to stay.  For lunch, I had pizza with bacon on it. Wait, let me rephrase that: I had bacon with some pizza underneath it. I never thought I’d ever say this, but there was way too much bacon! 
After lunch,  we walked down the beach, and found this place called “The Alaska.” No words that I write will ever do this place justice. It was amazing, in an incredibly strange way. We got a bungalow for 5 of us, and only paid 10 cedi (Ghana currency) each. When you walked into the bungalow, it smelled like a grandmothers basement. It had concrete sandy floors and two beds. They threw a mattress on the floor too. These weren’t nice beds, by the way, just beds.  We all decided that we felt like we were in the middle of a very strange movie. We were so glad that we happened upon this place, instead of the luxurious place down the beach.
There were about 20 or 30 other SAS kids there, but most of them had spent the night before there, so they just hung out for the day and left by dinner time. There was also a group of people a little older than us from Germany hanging around. We spent the day hanging out on the beach and in the ocean. Later in the afternoon, some local kids showed up on the beach so we hung out with them until it got dark. I was with three brothers most of the time, John, Jacob, and Joseph. We danced with the kids to the music that was coming from the “bar.” Teaching them silly American dance moves while they taught us how they dance in Ghana. For the most part though, we just danced like fools and laughed with the kids. We spent a lot of time in the ocean too. The water was so warm, but so refreshing! Every once in a while, someone would snap our attention to the fact that we were in AFRICA. It was an awesome feeling.
Some people in our group decided to rent surfboards from a local surf shop and spend a few hours trying to catch some waves. Kelly and I had never surfed before, so we didn’t want to spend money when we probably would never even be able to stand up. Instead, we noticed a Ghanaian boy out in the water surfing on his own board. We decided we were going to get him to teach us. We made a plan: We were going to go over and ask him what he was doing. We would pretend that we had no idea what the big white thing he was riding on was even called! We carried out our plan, and he thought we were crazy. “You don’t know surfboards? Here, let me teach you!” Our plan worked! We spent the next hour or so trying to learn to surf on a beaten up board made of styrofoam and plastic. It looked like a shark took a chunk out of the front. Kelly went first, and eventually stood up and rode a wave all the way in to shore! It was my turn next, and I had a harder time. Frank, the boy, told Kelly “I think she has a hard time because she is… big,” pointing to his chest. Thanks Frank. Hahaha I did stand up once though! We said goodbye and thank you, and headed in to rinse off under the outdoor shower and try to get dry.
We hung out and relaxed and then had dinner. Jojo and I shared chicken stir-fry, and it was delicious. Some people had lobster, and I tried it and immediately regretted that I didn’t get one myself. I had to teach Ben how to eat one… his excuse: “I’m from Montana. Do you think I’ve ever eaten a lobster before??” Jojo and a few other people left after dinner because they had an 8am FDP in the morning, and the rest of us went back in the ocean. We had no concept of time through out the day, which was very refreshing. It had been dark for a few hours, and we were all getting pretty tired so we headed back to our bungalow to try and dry off and change. On our way back though, a tro-tro pulled up and Francisco, Travis, Will, Kristin, and Michelle got out! We were SO excited that they finally made it and found us, so we all pulled them to the ocean and jumped in again! We stayed out there for a few hours and came back to the beach to be greeted by a bonfire that Zach (the guy running the place) has started for us! We all sat around the bonfire talking, telling stories of  our past few days in Ghana. Brian and Max showed up and sat with us, they were staying a place down the beach with a few other people.  Slowly a bigger group of people came together and went swimming again. We could not stay out of the ocean!
I’m guessing it was 2 or 3 in the morning by the time we went to bed. Some people slept in hammocks, some slept on the beach, and some of us slept in the bungalow. At 6:30 in the morning, Ray (Rachel) came in and woke us up saying that there was a tro-tro waiting for us, and we could get our stuff together now or struggle later trying to find one to take us back. It was thunder and lightning, so we decided to just go. (The tro-tro was there because another sas kid, Michael had called them the night before because he had an 8am FDP.) We got our stuff together, and got into the tro-tro. I had no idea that there were still this many people left at the Alaska… but we managed to pack 18 kids into this thing. They fit 11, but 8 comfortably. EIGHTEEN KIDS and all our stuff in this tro-tro! I was sitting on something that was NOT a seat in the front-ish, and Michael was pretty much on top of me. This should have been about a 40 minute ride, but it turned into about 2 hours. We got stopped by the police, our driver was smacked around a bit, and we had to pay the police off. Then we ran out of gas on some sketchy back road, and our driver had to find someone to get us gas. He didn’t really speak English, so when we ran out of gas, he just stopped… got out of the car, and ran. We all sat in silence until someone said “What…?” We were pretty scared but it was all part of the adventure!
We finally made it back, at about 8:15am. It was my our last day in Ghana, so we went to find an internet café so we could skype and upload pictures and whatnot. I got to skype with my Mom, which was really good. I don’t get homesick like I thought I would, but it is really nice to be able to talk to my family and friends once in a while!

Ghana, you were too good to me. On to South Africa!