Hey Everybody!

These past few weeks have been…eventful. Mostly in the “are you really serious with this?” sort of way. For those of you that have seen me with a phone, computer or even an alarm clock for that matter, you know that me an electronic things don’t generally see eye to eye.I know this about myself and have ;learned to accept it as an inevitable character flaw, which is why I bought all new electronic things before coming to Ghana. Trying to give myself the best chance of making it out the other end with at least something I started with. These past few weeks have demonstrated just how big our disagreement really is.

It all started when my supposedly indestructible pair of Chacos (hiking sandals) fell apart. I wore these shoes every day for 23 hours out of the day. I lived in them. I know that Chacos are not electronic but it was a loss and this post is about all the things I reallllyyyy like that have abandon me since I’ve been here. Fine I can deal with the shoes. I bought a pair of shower shoe style flip flops….great for walking in the mud market during rainy season. I’ve only fallen a few times and only bled once so that’s basically like not falling at all.

Then my external hard drive jumped to its death off my bed onto the concrete. Kind of bad since I have a netbook with enough space on the hard drive to store 6 word documents. I’m over it.  I gained a shiny paper weight (and only lost about 300 movies).

Then if you recall I crushed the screen to phone. That one turned out ok since it was only 20 cedis to get a new screen put on. But if you recall in order to get the screen I had to have a screaming match with a guy in the market first. Whatever, it works now.

Then we move onto my computer that randomly shuts itself completely off, not even to bother with letting me save things first. We apparently don’t have a good relationship because it regularly eats my Word documents and does not give them back. But I guess its good that I’m in Ghana and have nothing better to do with my time then re-write documents…yea.

Then well move onto my glasses that decided to RUST and fall apart. I was unaware glasses did that. Be prepared glasses wearers…it can happen to you. Luckily my luck with glasses is similar to my luck with electronics so I came prepared with 4 extra pairs. If nothing else it has cemented me giving contacts another try.

Then there was my headlamp. Essential for Peace Corps life. The batteries exploded and killed the entire damn thing. Again, I know how these things work with me so I brought an extra.

We’ll then move onto my radio. I bought it “new” and put fresh batteries in it. Exciting because I could catch BBC Africa if I fiddled with the antenna long enough. Had that for about a week before the entire thing turn into a big, broken paper weight. Not sure what happened there.

Then the mother of all electronic abandonment happened. Itunes turned on me. I plug my iPod into the computer so I can play music through my computer speakers and I get about 3 songs in before all hell breaks loose. A window pops up and says my iPod is corrupt and that I need to format it. I promptly unplug it and close iTunes and everything seems to be okay. I attempt to reopen iTunes and it says I am missing some critical piece of something or other and it wont open. Whatever. I try the uninstall reinstall tactic but that’s also a no go. Fine. I can deal. A few days go by and I take my iPod out to listen to it before I go to bed, I turn it on and its asking me to SELECT A LANGUAGE!!!!!! I just got OWNED. No music, anywhere. For those of you that don’t live in alone in Ghana…that’s a BIG deal. FINEEEEEEEE. I’m over it.

Last week I had a few Peace Corps  friends over and we were talking about the gross bugs we’ve come across. Perfect conversation because I just had this really mean looking spider in my room and as luck would have it…I took a picture of it! Yea…you got it…the camera. I go to my desk where I keep my camera and…its not there. Okay, it must have fallen behind or be under something. Nothing. I SEARCH my room (which isn’t all that hard since all of my belongings can fit into a backpack)….nothing. Gone. Gone and Gone. Greattttt. It figure that the only thing I didn’t manage to break (mostly because it was water proof, dust proof, shock proof and sarah proof….yea, Dad knew what he was doing when he bought that beast) gets…taken.

So the good news is that since I no longer have any electronics left (aside from the Kindle, which I am guarding with my life…no joke) I can only go up from here.

Onto other news.

I got a cat! I think she is mostly white with either brown or grey spots. Shes in hiding. I got her last Wednesday and shes been in between the fabric and the foam of the student mattress since then. Hopefully she decides to come out soon. I poke her a few times a day to make sure shes still alive and she growls at me. Were doing great in the relationship building category.

A few days ago I was out in Cape 3 Points. Jake, Bethany and I are sitting around a candle playing rummy when we spot the mother of all spiders on the wall. This thing was bigger than my hand!!! We go up to it to get a better look (like the good natural resource people we are) and realize its not only a huge spider but has a giant egg sack attached to it! So like bad natural resource people we decide that we are unable to coexist with the beast, especially if there are going to be more of the monsters in the near future. The problem is that this is one of those spiders thats just too big to use a flip flop on. So we find some bug spray. The second we start to spray it the egg sack breaks and somewhere between 30 and 40 baby spiders rush out! Super scary. As soon as all the fumes and dead spiders settle we all start to feel really bad about ganging up on the giant, scary, soul sucking spider. I’ve gotten over it now thought. 

Well I think that’s all for right now. I am going to travel to University of Cape Coast on Wednesday to present the work I’ve done on a new wetlands curriculum so that will be fun. It’ll be nice to get away from Agona for the day not to mention its a beautiful drive along the coast….even smashed in a tro its beautiful, so that’s got to mean something!

Hope everybody is doing well!

<3