Ghana, Africa Day 1 slash 2

K, guys, I'm breaking this down day by day because, frankly, I've got a lot to do. I can't just sit here and blog all day. This house doesn't pick itself up and Pinterest doesn't just pin stuff on its own and well I really need to paint little Santas on my husband's toes while he is sleeping hehehe :)

Vivint does a Gives Back program every year. Their reps can donate accounts (basically means they don't get paid for those accounts) in exchange for the opportunity to go on a humanitarian trip. This summer they announced the trip would be to Ghana, Africa. Let's see...where's that bucket list...digging...digging...ah! Found it! Is doing service in Africa listed on here somewhere? Oh, what's this? It is! It was a no-brainer for me; I wanted to go badly. We donated 6 accounts and Vivint paid the rest of our way to Ghana. Thank you :) All we had to do was jump through hoops of fire to get all the vaccines, passports, visas, packing, moving into a new house, malaria pills, locating certain recommended packing items, babysitting arrangements, changing jobs done...and we were set to go. Ahhhhh....

Wendy came down to our beautiful home and spent the night. Friday morning (Nov 2) she dropped us off at the airport and headed back to Safe Valley, where she and her daughters rotated babysitting our little, never give you any grief, hardly ever fight, always eat what you cook, children. Ha ha thanks a bunch to Wendy, Hope, Holly & Valerie for watching them. You are life savers!

Our group flew into NYC. We were pretty lucky to fly straight out of NYC to Accra. Other groups had layovers in Europe. Mwah ha ha ha! Ok, no evil laugh. I would not have enjoyed that either. Sorry, unfortunate people.

Thayne's friend, Steve Kirk, waiting at the JFK airport. He is the funniest person I have ever met! Chung chow soy! He loves to pretend he doesn't speak English.

Did I just take a picture of our airplane? Yes, but it's the biggest plane I've ever been on so...chung chow soy! You think this is bad? Wait until you see the rest of the pictures. Oh, rest assured that Thayne took A LOT of pictures. Mwah ha ha ha! You're gonna have a lot of pictures to look at, thanks to Mr You Haven't Got Enough Pictures Until The 4GB Memory Card Is Full!

Oh dear. Please don't look at my face. Look at the butts on the people next to us. Yeah, that's better. I suffer from motion sickness. Yes, it's real. Combine that with an overnight flight to Africa that I could not fall asleep during and water retention from the climate change and voilà! You get a mug like mine.

We rode from Accra to Ho by bus. Crazy, crazy drivers there.

Street-side vendors

See! Look at that traffic. And there's a lady selling stuff, weaving in and out of it.

There she is. You'll notice that they carry pretty much everything on their heads. Their necks are so strong!

Most commonly seen domesticated animal there? Goats.

Banana chips

 Isn't this just gorgeous? It was so lush and beautiful there!

 Some van that had been smashed. When you get in an accident, you just get out of your vehicle and leave it there, I guess?

Potty break anyone? Yes?

Ok, see that wall? Go pee on it. Seriously.

 Buying ice cream

Lizard

Look at how they live! And that's living well. Breaks my heart.

Our first Ghanian meal. Very tasty! All of their food was delicious, but spicy. Their fruit was amazing since it was just freshly picked.

Globe Aware group coordinators.

Playing hacky sac with some of the locals.

Goodbye air conditioned anything for the next week :'(

Our room! Hey, this was so much better than what I was expecting to sleep in!

Our toilet that required buckets of water to be poured down it until your ahem was flushed away.

A shower! Oh bless you! Serious life saver at the end of our HOT, HOT days out there. No water pressure and no hot & cold; what came out is what you got.

The exchange rate was 2:1 almost. This is just showing you what their money looks like in comparison to ours, NOT how much a $20 US bill is worth in Cetis.