***I tried posting this but the internet cut out on me that morning…***
Hello! Thanks again for checking out the blog. Its currently 6am Thursday 1/12, We have to be down stairs in 30mins to eat and depart by 7am for the Ashanti Region in Kumasi. Its a five hour bus ride and I am very thankful for my Ipod, and kindle!

OK, so now I would like to share with you our community service project from yesterday

Here is a short video of the principal giving our group a quick intro on the history of Kofi Anane Memorial International School.

It was by far the most touching experience ever. To visit a place where the average monthly income is 30 cedi which ends up being less than $20 US dollars per month really had the “impact” factor I was looking for. If i dont remember anything I will remember knowing what its like to be around kids that just apreciate the simple fact that they can go to school and be taken care of. They were so kind and full of life and energy. We spent a lot of time outside when them taking pictures however, a great portion was spent inside where they performed various songs, traditional dances, and a select few introduced themselves in both french and english. I personally think its so amazing when kids are able to speak 2 languages fluently. I believe that due to the fact that a lot of the students come from all over Africa, the teachers perfer students to know both languages to be able to interact with others.

I got two kids to point at the “No venuclar speak on french and english” sign. I thought that was pretty cool.

Our community service portion was to paint a room that the school hopes to turn into a library. I would like to say that it was the most empowering thing ever. I know I am being dramatic, but with every paint stroke I can say that I have never felt so good about giving back to someone that needs help. With all the sweating it was also a pretty good workout too. I mean it was so HOT in that particular area

See if I went down a little bit further I would’ve been doing squats. I love the fact that all I do is think about “how can I turn this into a workout.”

Alright sorry to cut this blog off so short. I wish I could add more photos, but its time for my 6:30am bfast appt. I’ll end this post off with some of my favorite pics I took at the school.

In this photo i love the fact that they are holding my hands. This one is a tear jerker for sure!!

The horrible living conditions we had to walk through to get to the school. This is the areas sewage system.

For me this was the most touching experience on the trip. I’ll never forget how happy those kids were just to have a place to go to learn, be cared for, and just enojoy life. It has changed my outlook on giving back to someone that is really in need.

So much for “I’ll be posting again later today!”  The internet connection has not been a good friend these past couple of days.

January 11th, WEDNESDAY NIGHT

Our group had a site visit at The Association of Ghana Industries (AGI). What I am gathering from many of these associations is that they need to start working together instead of all working toward similar goals and not making any drastic achievements. I heard similar things that I heard in previous site visits, so nothing too new to add about it.

January 12th, THURSDAY

On the way to Treasure Land Hotel in the Ashanti Region/Kumasi, we passed through various towns and Sonny showed me where is grandmother lives and various other interesting things such as a prestigious girl’s chapel and where the botanical garden is. The town Mampong had the first cocoa farm. Sonny told me that he went to about 7 different schools growing up since he moved around a lot when he was younger, living with different family members. He told me that his passion for music came from his mother who listened to 80s and 90s foreign music.

When we arrived at Treasure Land Hotel, I was surprised that all of our showers didn’t have shower curtains… everyone had issues with flooding their bathrooms. It was especially hard to shower because you had to hold the shower handle, it wasn’t fixed up on the wall. Talk about a hot mess.

At lunch, I tried a peanut soup with a rice ball in it called ground nut soup and I honestly didn’t like it but a lot of the other group members liked it.  We also had dessert for the first time- a skinny pancake with a strawberry jelly MMMMNNNNNN

After lunch, our group headed to Manhyia Palace. We had the funniest tour guide EVER (aside from Sonny of course). He was cracking jokes, grabbing our arms laughing it was great. We learned about some of the Kings of the Ashantis. We also learned about the golden stool, which the British tried to steal so the Ghanaians made a fake one to hand over to them. The British knew it was fake and we outraged so they destroyed the original palace, and then built the one we visited as a sorry gift. The golden stool is brought out every 5 years for  a special festival. They also bring out the stool when there is a new king. Another thing I learned was that when the King dies, you don’t say the King is dead, you say “The King is going to the village” because that is where they burry him, in his home village.

We toured the Prempeh II Jubilee Museum. I had no idea about this-but the President of Ghana has to bow to the King of Kings (currently from the Ashanti Region) but the King does not have to bow to the President.

After our tours, we hustled through the central market in Kumasi. The only thing I could not handle was the STENCH from the meat areas. There were fish, cows, jaw bones from who knows what… I think every type of meat was present. Even cow tongue. I was upset that we walked around for 45 minutes, but were not given some time to shop and buy things. I reallyyyyy wanted to buy some high heels! I think some people were overwhelmed by the market, but I was familiar with the set up after being to a similar one in Brazil.

When we got back to the hotel, Megan Jada Tyler Sonny and I went to a local joint and just chilled out away from the hotel. His friend, Stanley, who was the chef at the hotel we were staying at joined us. It was cool meeting him since he will be in the US in February in NYC! One thing about this local joint-the bathroom was a ditch in the corner of the room. Like I said, when in Ghana do as the Ghanaians do.

When we got back from the local restaurant, Megan and I went in the pool and a student from a small school in Virginia joined us. After a while, it was FRRRRRREEZING!

January 13th, FRIDAY

Another overnight=limited internet access, sorry again for the delay!

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January 9th, MONDAY

On our way to the Volta Region, we got to take a few pictures by the Volta Bridge which is the major connection between the Eastern Region and the Volta Region.

Our hike to Vli Falls-if you ever visit Ghana this has to be #1 on your list. It was completely gorgeous and I got some of the best pictures and videos of the entire trip!! I tried some fresh cocoa. At first I bit into the entire thing which is a dark purple seed surrounded by a white film. As I’m chewing the seed, Sonny tells me that you are only supposed to suck off the white part so I had to spit out everything in my mouth, OOPS!

Jordan and Celia going toward the falls

After the hike, we were supposed to visit the Tafe Atome Monkey Sanctuary, but when we got there, the monkeys were already in hiding and it was near night fall, so we went back in the morning to see and feed them!

Our group ate dinner at the New Bob Coffee Hotel and the food was fantastic!! Best pasta and chicken so far!

When we arrived at Chances Hotel, our group was not really thrilled with the rooms. Stephanie actually had ants all over her bed and everyone that knew felt pretty bad. I think we all checked our sheets well after that! There was wifi there, but I never was able to receive a connection until we were already leaving.

On Monday night, Megan and I went night swimming again and chilled by the pool. At first we were hesitant to go in because it looked a little dirty, but it wound up being fine!

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January 10th, TUESDAY

Breakfast at Chances was not great, I don’t recommend it! I was happy to get out of there, no offense! The only good thing was the pool.

We departed for the Mokey Sanctuary and as we were hiking, Emanuel (our guide there) was making a noise to attract the monkeys attention to be fed. I was able to feed 2 monkeys a banana and I have a picture of it below…

Feeding the monkeys!!!!!

After you Monkey visit, we headed back to the Volta Bridge-the ride was rough for most of this trip as the roads are not paved well and there are huge holes everywhere, you can’t really sleep-we took a canoe ferry ride on the Volta River and got some pictures of the dam there. After the canoe ride, we had a wonderful lunch at Afrikiko’s River Resort. I ordered grilled filet tilapia with rice and it was delicious!

On the way home, we found these adorable kids!

After returning to Accra, we had some dinner at Ange Hill and then Gloria, Bruce, Cecelia, Jordan, Celia, Zach, Mia, Megan, Steph and I chilled at Krystis again and played some pool there.

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January 11th, WEDNESDAY

Our group woke up early to visit the Kofi Anane Memorial International School in Nima for our Community Service Project, which I have been looking forward to since I put down my last deposit for this trip!

When I get home, I have A LOT of videos of the students there dancing and welcoming us to their school. It was the most amazing experience I’ve had on this trip-possibly one of the most amazing in my entire life. We painted a room for them bright green and they plan to make that room into a library, so we will be sending over some books when we get back to America.

I’ll be posting again later today!

<3

Diana

Hello we are finally back in Accra! I love traveling, but I also miss “modern” Ange Hill Hotel’s facilities. Today we visited the monkey sanctuary that we previously missed yesterday. IT WAS AMAZING!!! What another great life experience. Here are some cool photos I had our tour guide Sunny take. Thank you so much Sunny for capturing such a great moment for me!! *please click on pictures to enlarge*

It was literally the coolest thing I’ve ever done!!!

Now back to our visit to Vli falls. I got the opportunity to get some feedback from group members about their experience underneath the waterfall

Jordan’s reaction

Diana’s reaction

Ashleigh and Zach’s reaction with video of the Vli falls

A majority of the group went out tonight but a few (including myself) stayed behind. I got Jada and Tyler to give their thoughts about the trip so far. I cant believe time is flying by so fast. I’m already getting use to being here and I’m imagining the culture shock I will feel from being in the USA.

Tomorrow on the agenda is a community service project along with a site visit. So excited to hand over all the goodies I brought for the children. Each one of us will also get a chance to talk to them about what inspires us. I know what inspires me so I think I will talk about nutrition and physical fitness. I miss it so much and cant wait to get back to Crossfit and eating normal. Until tomorrow!

Hello and thanks for visiting the blog. It’s early in the morning and I’m already dressed and ready for the day. Yesterday we took a long bumpy bus ride to the Volta Region. It’s a lot different from Accra, which is more westernized, but this hotel room we are staying in is amazing! Yesterday we took a hike to Vli Falls. It was AMAZING! Although I didn’t get into the water, a lot of student did and they said it was the most life changing experience ever. I have three videos, but the internet is super slow so I will have to wait until we head back to Accra.

On the Agenda for today is packed. Yesterday we missed the monkey sanctuary, so today we plan on squeezing that into the schedule. By the time we got there it was late and the owner mentioned at that particular time he would have trouble getting the monkeys to return. How weird would it be to see monkeys in the dark! I’m literally laughing so hard right now. I’ll update you guys later.

Hello and thanks for stopping by to check out the blog! Its been a while because we have been super busy with site visits, lectures and traveling. This is literally the first day in a few days that we have finished everything by 5pm and have had the rest of the evening to relax. I would like to say that today I did something many people will never experience, and that is riding a horse on the beach with the breeze blowing and sun glomming in your face in AFRICA. Here our some pictures of my lifetime experience. BIG THANKS to prof Radar for taking this amazing pictures!

Enough about my cool “never forget” experience at the beach. I’m now going to backtrack with some pictures and videos from first business site visit at The Ghana Stock Exchange. We initially surprised them when we showed up early for our 10am meeting, but they didn’t keep us waiting for too long and had a presentation about the Stock Exchange ready for the group. I dont know anything about even the New York Stock Exchange, so it was interesting to get a little background information about how stock markets work, and more specifically a foreign newly emerging stock market. Here are some photos.

After one lecture we went to the national theatre to eat lunch. Here is prof radars reaction to the food being served.

I also got our tour guide Sunny to give some feedback on how he felt about working with Temple University in his native accent. I guess a lot of Americans believe Sunny sounds more American than Ghanaian. lol

After lunch we headed to another business event. The Ghana Chamber of Commerce. Personally, I did not think they were prepared for us at all. They sat us all down at a table and told us “here is a brochure everything is explained in here, now do you have any questions.” It wasn’t as formal and well put together like the Ghana Stock Exchange. Maybe thats why Prof Radar reacted the way he did.

We ended up finishing the day super early, so Gloria suggested we visit a local art market to do some shopping. It was fun, but they are too aggressive for me. Mia had a great time bargaining and got some good deals, she was kind enough to talk about her experience on video.

After a long day we packed our bags for the next day because we were heading to cape coast!! We visited two castles that were both used to detain slaves during the slave trade. It was truly touching to see where my ancestors could’ve resided in such harsh conditions during the slave trade. I took a lot of these pictures in raw format, which cannot be uploaded to the blog. Instead, I used flickr

Please visit this link to look at the cape coast pictures

I apologize for not posting the past couple of days. At Anomabo Beach Resort, wifi was not available and I had no way of posting, so this is going to be a longer blog about Days 5-7 (Friday, Saturday and Sunday which is today).

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FRIDAY

Everyone woke up early for our 3 hour trip to the “Central Region,” where we visited Cape Coast. When we first arrived in Cape Coast, we visited Cape Coast Castle which is a castle used for the slave trade before it was abolished. While the castle was beautiful, it was almost difficult to enjoy it after hearing the dreadful stories from our guide.

Cape Coast Castle!

Our tour guide at Cape Coast Castle

Cape Coast Castle Again!

After our tour of the castle, we headed to lunch at Hans Cottage (Crocodile Pond). The lunch was fantastic and I was able to grab a fresh coconut for my drink before we got to lunch so I really enjoyed it. The fish at this restaurant was so much better and healthier than any other fish I have had in Ghana so far. Makes sense since we were right on the beach while we were eating!

After lunch, we headed to another castle called Elmina Castle, which is the first and largest castle in which the slave trade was carried out. At first it was owned but the Portuguese, but eventually the Dutch took it over. While we were there, these 3 young boys wearing clown masks were running around try to get money from our group. It was so strange! Another thing that was strange was hearing from Sonny that the Ghanaians don’t really learn about what happened concerning the slave trade since it is culturally “taboo.”

Outside of Elmina Castle, thousands of boats are docked. These boats are used to catch fish. Cape Coast provides a majority of the seafood for Ghana.

After our second castle visit, we met up with Doctor K.T. Mensah and heard a lecture on Oil Production in Ghana: Challenges and Opportunities. The overall thesis was that oil being found will bring a lot of opportunities to Ghana if they allocate the money correctly and this money goes to the country’s growth such as infrastructure.

After the lecture, we went back to Anomabo Beach Resort, I showered because I was drenched in sweat from the day and being in dungeons with no circulation did not make it better. Then it was time for dinner, which was excellent and the restaurant was right on the beach so it was really breezy and beautiful! After dinner, Megan, Gloria, Cecila, Bruce and I went NIGHT SWIMMING!!! The water was so warm and it felt so nice after a long day of sitting on the bus and walking around to just be in the ocean. We were in there for a good hour swimming and we actually went out in the water pretty far!

Alright now here comes a good story… after night swimming I rushed to get ready because everyone was leaving to head out for some drinks. I literally got ready in 3 minutes rinsing off and putting on some clothes but when I went to leave, I WAS TRAPPED IN MY ROOM. I’ve never had a panic attack like that before. Stupid me left the key on the outside of the door and didn’t take it in with me when I rushed inside to get ready. The door can only be unlocked and locked using the key, and I guess from the outside when I shut the door, the key locked the door and trapped me!!! I called Mia, Gloria and Bruce and no one answered. I started shouting out the window for someone to help me I started banging on the door. Then finally, Mia called me back and rescued me it was so crazy for me.

So now about the party… Sonny told us that gas station parties are “off the chain” so naturally we had to go to one near Cape Coast! It was seriously a blast!! When we got there, they set up a large table for us right in front of the live band (remember we are at a gas station). We ordered some drinks and were taking pictures, enjoying Africa. Then, we noticed that they were playing hiplife music in the back of the gas station so we went back there and staying until about 1 in the morning dancing and laughing and meeting some new people. The only negative… it smelled like straight up body order on the dance floor which was under a tent. When I got home, my shirt wreaked of manly body oder. Totally gross. I couldn’t throw away the shirt though, because it’s the shirt that my best friends and I from home call our “sisterhood of the traveling shirt” so I washed it…. hope they still want to wear it haha! It was one of the best days/nights in Ghana so far, so it definitely has its luck

Gas Station Party Dancers haha!

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SATURDAY

After the long night, I didn’t see the point in getting up at 6 since it was pretty hazy outside and the point of getting up early was to catch some sun rays, so I got up at 7 and took a walk, found about 15 sand dollars and some really nice sea shells

Seashells and Sand Dollars!

After packing up to leave Anomabo, we headed to Kakum National Park and did a CANOPY WALK! I was literally in love. I love anything that gets your heart racing! It was a great time-especially when a family was asking me to take pictures with them and telling me they liked me. All the kids were hugging me it was really cute and felt nice. I plan to send them pictures since I have their address when I get home and print them out!

Mia on the Canopy Walk!

Some of our group ready to do the Canopy Walk!

Me with the family that I'm going to send pictures to!

After the Canopy Walk, we had lunch at Abandze Beach Resort where we had lobster, crayfish, fried cod or some fried fish and then rice french fries and coleslaw. Everything was delicious! While we were there, we met a woman from Rochester where she teaches and she is married to a Ghanaian and travels back and forth from the US and Ghana. At Abandze, Megan and I took a walk and I got a really cool picture taken!

Taken by Megan

So after the Canopy walk, we headed back to Accra and back to Ange Hill Hotel where we got ready for Chez Afrique where there was a live band! The food was good, but I was afraid to eat because there were ants crawling all over the table I was eating at. I still ate anyway since I was starving, but I didn’t go back for seconds. With the live band, you’d think that everyone was going to want to dance, but nooooooo… After a while just Sonny Megan and I got up and started dancing and about ten minutes later, everyone else joined us! It was really fun, I love dancing! Sonny was telling me what some of the songs meant. One was “once, not a fool, twice, not a fool, the third time, you’re a fool!” Another one was “I was going to marry you, but you did something bad and now I’m going to leave you.” All the songs have really simple meanings and they are fun to dance to!

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Actually here is a list of some songs I’ve been hearing a lot and really like, most of it is hiplife since Sonny is a DJ and that’s what he plays for us!:

The Thing by Atumpan

Humpty Dance by Digital Underground

Facebook Boy by Tiffany Efya

Fely Tchaco- Bou Le Wou

Waist and Power by 4X4

Fall In Love by D’Banj

There’s more, but it’s hard to find the titles of them on google!

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Okay, so now I get to tell you about my crazy night out in Accra last night. Everyone in the group minus Gloria and Bruce went. Sonny got the bus driver to take us all for only 5 Cedis each! We were out till after 4 AM!! We started off in one bar where the famous drink was called “Judgement Day” It was the size of a shot that you just sip on. It burns allll the way down. One was enough for me. After having that drink and a Club Ghanaian Beer, Megan and I went to the bathroom. Not kidding you, it was the most disgusting bathroom I’ve ever seen in my life. There were stagnant barrels of water all over that stunk. The bathroom has a hole in the door by the floor, it was never cleaned, ever… I held my breath the entire time. I couldn’t believe how terrible it was. Anyways, so at this bar that I think was called Jerry’s? We met some people from Wisconsin name Misch and Angela (sorry if I spelled your names wrong) who are doing the same program as up so Sonny and Cena set up our meeting out together. Sonny’s friend Frank was there too! After a while, we left this place and took the bus to a club, where we decided not to go in because they were charging the boys 30 Cedi to get in which was a little too much, so we left and went to a place called Bella Roma which was A BLAST! As soon as Megan and I walked in, a guy was buying us drinks. We danced, had some more free drinks, met a lot of people and just were having the time of our lives! Like I said, we left after 4 AM!

Left to Right: Ashleigh, myself, Jada haveing some judgement day!

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SUNDAY

Woke up late (aka 10:47 AM and I had to be on the bus at 11 AM). Missed breakfast, but Ashleigh and I were not the only ones that slept in! Everyone was beat from the night before. Today we spent all day on the beach at La Pleasure Beach which was really nice and relaxing. Being in the water and swimming around felt good after being stuck on a bus for so long. While in the water, I met Amelia, Nate and Lindy also from Wisconsin and made some general plans with them to hang out while both of our groups are here in Africa. They were really nice and I’m excited to hang out with them again! The beach here was full of trash, but I didn’t care so much as it was just plastic bags and nothing too disgusting. I got a little bit of color finally on this trip I’m definitely not coming home with any tan though-our schedule was not made for tanning in Africa! We are booked from morning till dinner with activities.

In the water at La Pleasure Beach!

Celia ride a quad at La Pleasure beach!

The people from Wisconsin on their bus

At the beach today, I tried a Ghanian soup called Fufu. It was a type of soup. You first have to wash your hands in a bucket before eating this since you eat it with your hands. You use your pointer and middle finger as your “knife” and cut out a piece of the dough in the center. you make sure it’s dipped nicely in the soup and then just swallow the dough. You don’t chew the dough at all because it gets rid of the soup flavor. It was DELICIOUS! There was also goat meat in the soup, which was also amazing. I also had some chicken and rice while I was there which counted as my breakfast and lunch of the day haha. Another even to note about this beach was that you should not expect to go there to completely relax on the beach. Vendors constantly come over and try to sell you things and don’t really take no for an answer. I actually did buy 10 bracelets for some friends and family while I was being harassed though. After a while, this gets a bit annoying. There were also a lot of performs such as acrobats, musicians, and even a man as a drag queen with a very large fake butt haha.

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These past few days have been amazing, and it makes me even more excited for the last half of the trip! Can’t wait to head to the Volta Region tomorrow and see the Vli Falls and see the Monkey Sanctuary!!!!!!!!!!

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Thanks for stopping by

<3 Diana

Thanks to everyone that has read any of the previous blogs from Ashley or myself and welcome if you are just beginning to read! Let me know if you are able to make comments or not (if you can’t leave a comment, you can email me at dianatweiss@temple.edu).

The group at the Invasion Lounge! (The 2nd floor of Krystis). Krystis is located about 2 blocks away from the Ange Hill Hotel, where we are staying, and just opened 10 days ago! The building had multiple layers. One was food, then upstairs was a chill bar with some pool tables, and then on the last floor there is a night club that opens only on weekends.

It was another long day for our group here in Ghana especially after our little night out (see pictures above). At 10 AM we had to be at the Ghana Stock Exchange for our meeting. It was really refreshing to have a well organized and planned out presentation set up. Our group received a lot of information and we were all thrilled to have the experience of meeting Elizabeth Matecoal, the General Manager and the executive director of Security Deposits. We even got to meet and hear from a broker.

Ghana Stock Exchange Site Visit!

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We had lunch again at Trafix, they were playing Celine Dion again haha!

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After lunch, our group visited Ghana’s Chamer of Commerce and Industry. It was a little disappointing that this visit was not as organized and planned out as our earlier site visit, but it was interesting to meet with them and have our questions answered.

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Our last stop of the day was a craft market, where we were given one hour to shop around. No one in the group wanted to stay longer than the given hour, it was overwhelming to be drug into shop after shop in the heat while the sales people try to sell you everything in their shop. They say “come into my store, there is no price for looking”… “I like you, I’m going to make you a special deal”… “I hope you will buy something from me so I can feed my children”… I feel bad saying no, but I don’t have money either as I just paid a few thousand dollars to be on this trip and I don’t feel like purchasing anything I’m not  in love with. After I was done shopping, I bought some fresh coconut water for 0.70 Cedi, about .40 cents.

The dresses I purchased at the market! I also got a elephant figure and a drum keychain!

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Our ride home from the market was interesting, there was so much traffic and this time people were selling jump ropes, toilet paper, onions and chocolate! Sonny bought a bar to share with everyone on the bus, then next thing you know our entire bus is buying Ghanaian Chocolate bars! The boy selling them blessed us and told us he was out there all day and we were the first customers had had the whole time (it was around 5 PM). Here is a video of the boy who we bought chocolate from: Chocolate Boy

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Thanks again for stopping by

-Diana

Another great day in Ghana! Although today I felt a bit more tired than the rest of the days. Must have been because I stayed up playing uno past midnight by the pool and then woke up at 7 AM!

We started off the day with breakfast at the Ange Hill Hotel, then had a tour of the University of Ghana from a masters student there named George Luis.

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After our tour of the University, we headed to the Aya Center which is actually owned by the University of Ghana and had a lecture there from Professor Kofi Asare Opoku. I found out that he actually taught at Laffayette University, which for those of you that don’t know me, is only about 30 minutes from my house at home! Professor Opoku gave a lecture on the Understanding of Ghanaian Culture and Traditions. Professor Opoku started off his lecture by telling us 5 proverbs, my favorite one being: “One must come out of one’s house to begin learning.” Obviously this is one of the reasons that I love to travel, to learn about and experience other cultures.

What mainly interested me was when he was talking about how people are named in Ghana depending on what day of the week they are born on. Here is a quick list of days, names and what they mean:

Monday: The girl’s name would be Adwoa, the boy’s would be Kwodo. People born on a Monday are calm, peaceful, tranquil and cool.

Tuesday: The girl’s name would be Abena, the boy’s would be Kwabena. People born on a Tuesday are warm and compassionate.

Wednesday: The girl’s name would be Akwa or Akua, the boy’s would be Kwaku or Kweku. People born on a Wednesday are vicarious leaders, childhood leaders and they offer themselves for others.

Thursday: The girl’s name would be Yaa, the boy’s would be Yau. People born on a Thursday are bold and courageous.

Friday: The girl’s name would be Afua, the boy’s would be Kofi. People born on a Friday are wanderers, but wanderers in the sense that they are always searching for knowledge, growing, probing, searching and asking questions.

Saturday (ME!!) : The girl’s name would be Amma, the boy’s would be Kwame. People born on a Saturday “posses anecdotes for the snake bite” meaning they have the medicine for that poison… they can reverse a crisis.

Sunday: The girl’s name would be Akosua or Esi, the boy’s would be Kwasi or Kwesi. People born on a Sunday are very protective.

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Our next lecture was an overview of the Ghanaian Economy, given by Dr. Kwesi Jonah. There were two areas that Dr. Jonah spoke about that interested me. First was where the earnings from the oil industry are placed and second, areas that Ghana needs to concentrate on in 2012 according to Dr. Jonah.

There is a law that establishes how the oil budget works. These are the four basic area that earnings are split between:

1) Annual budget, including development

2) Stabilization fund, so when the price of oil tumbles, they have money to make up for it

3) Heritage fund-small amount that pays for future generations, since oil is a non-renewable resource, this fund will help out Ghana when the oil runs out

4) GNPC- Ghana National Petroleum Corporation, the Ghana government pays for shares and pays off loans with this fund.

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The second area that interested me was things that Ghana needs to concentrate on in 2012:

1) It’s rapid build up of debt (currently 14 billion in debt) Ghana can not be sustainable with this amount of debt accumulation.

2) The money is not going to capital development. Tax payer money is going to pay off others instead of developments.

3) There has been a cut back in project grants and program grants since the countries that were helping them out before have also seen some hard times recently.

4) Most people are living in the rural areas and producing agriculture, but it is not very productive and is not a growing industry.

5) Every election year, the Ghanaian government goes on a spending spree after the election even though there is not even enough money to build a single road.

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Our last lecture was actually a site visit to Centre for Policy Analysis (CEPA). This Centre writes reforms and policies that it then presents to the Ghanian government. The government relies on these private offices to do some of this work and research.

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Me with Ashley, the birthday girl! This was taken at lunch which we had at the University of Ghana

Sonny is our trip tour guide, while George was just the tour guide for the University of Ghana

View from the top of The University of Ghana

The whole group-sorry every shot I got was blurry

Tonight Gloria bought a cake for Ashley’s birthday so we all got to sing and wish her a happy birthday! After posting this blog and getting ready, I hope that my group will decide to go out for the first time to somewhere fun!!

-Diana

Hello and thanks for stopping by my blog. Another full day of events has gone by. Today was my birthday!!!!!! I’m not crazy about birthdays, but this one is a birthday that I will never forget!! I would also like to say that my hamstrings have finally stopped hurting from last friday! And I MISS Crossfit and eating Paleo like crazy…I tried to explain to people that I dont eat carbs and to some its just unreal. So its good to know that there are people that understand and it just makes me miss you all more!!!! Today we had a full day of lecture. Here was our agenda:

8am-Breakfast
9am-Tour University of Ghana
10am-Lecture: Understanding Ghanaian Culture & Traditions/ Prof Kofi Asare Opoku-UGL

This lecture was hands down the most interesting lecture I’ve ever had the opportunity to sit through. Pro Kofi shared vital information about Ghanaian culture and traditions. I think that any lecture that I’m not falling asleep during is facinating to me.

Noon-Lunch @ The University of Ghana
1pm-Lecture: Overview of the Ghanaian Economyy/ Dr. Kwesi Johnah-UGL

This lecture was also very informative and the group was very engaging. I had the opportunity to find out more information on what I plan to do my research paper on. I’m so glad he came in to share his knowledge!

3pm-Site Visit: Centre for Policy Analysis
5pm-Return to hotel
7pm-Dinner

I’m pretty burnt out so I’ll make this a short one by adding photos from today.

Tour guide George, myself, and Sunny… My favorite picture.

Another photo of some group members and the tour guides..Everyone loved the scenery in the background

A dark photo of the banner they had waiting for us outside the airport. I’m not sure what was going on with my camera settings. I’m hoping I can get another shot of this.

Prof Kofi- 70 years old and looks AMAZING. He is also a farmer and has taught African studies in various University’s in the US.

Prof Kwesi another AMAZING man. He was so passionate and had so much energy towards Ghana’s economy. He made a boring economics lecture very interesting and fun. I specifically loved the section on Ghana’s oil production. This was a subject I googled so I had pervious knowledge that he further expanded.

Last but not least, I got a short video of faculty lead Gloria Angel giving some feedback about todays lecture on African culture & tradition.