Hello from Legon

We're in Legon! It's funny to blog when you're paying for your time to be online; I may be a bit more curt than I'd like, but you'll get the gist.

The flight was exhausting, but part of that was my fault; I stayed awake nearly the entire time, and payed the price when I lost my lunch on the second flight (I blame it also on these malaria pills). But all and all everything went fine, and we got to Accra on time and Jefferson's mother, sister, cousins, and adorable nephew were there to pick us up. It's been great meeting his family, especially his sister and her son, Fi (short for Kofi). Fi is three and a half and the cutest kid in all of Ghana. :-)

First impressions are that I've been traveling too much, because nothing was shocking in that culture-shock way but everything reminded me of somewhere else: rural China, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Indonesia, even Sedona. The only things that are different are, obviously, that everyone's African, and then all that stuff that you can read about in the Ghana guidebooks: the Christian store names, for example. The former-British-colony aspect is also pervasive. But again, these are first impressions, and this is the urban capital. I'm hoping that things will be different when we go to Koforidua next week, or Kumase next month.

Good news: I don't have a single mosquito bite. They're just no where to be found! And the weather has been awesome. It's nice and cool outside all the time, with wonderful breezes. I even got downright cold last night. The only major downside to this is that the cold showers are less than refreshing.

Lingustically, Ghana is so so so interesting. What I notice right away are the names of stores and signs; there are occasional signs of Portuguese, such s "La Paz" road and "El Ayudo" store; there's a postal truck with the German name "Schnelle Post." And the night that we arrived, Jefferson's uncle and cousins were glued to a Filipino soap opera, dubbed in stilted American English. And the English that's spoken is British in ways I didn't expect, like using the tag question "isn't it?" at the end of statement about the 2nd person singular. So interesting!