100% Ghana day

So, I'm averaging about one update a month. Not bad :-)

This past week was a really great week - I had a lot of fun with my students. One day I had just started walking down the stairs in the high school when I heard a student start to sing "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus. I started singing along pretty loudly and we finished the chorus. Then, a male student started walking down the stairs with us as well and the three of us walked over and started serenading another student. Apparently, her and the male student have a history with this song and she started joking yelling at him and after a brief scuffle he landed on the floor! She told me that he had been purposefully getting this song stuck in her head for the last 4 days and she was not having any more of it, hahahaha. Maybe this is one of those stories where you had to be there... anyway, serenading students with Miley Cyrus is definitely a good way to spend the time between classes. Especially when you're singing with a female and MALE student, hahaha.

There was a semi-sad moment in Physical Science the other day, though. One of the students asked me if Physics will be hard next year. I told him, "I'm not sure since I won't be here next year teaching it." He was like, "Whaaaat?!" And then other students joined in, too and one even said, "Miss. Lyle, I've only been here one year and then you're leaving me." It's sad to think about how "unstable" the lives of these kids are. A lot of them move around a lot because of their parent's jobs or lots of different things and then when they get in to a school like ours the school is constantly losing and replacing teachers. It's just the nature of being in a missionary lifestyle but it doesn't make it any easier for the students or for me. I've gotten to know really well a lot of these students because I had a lot of them last year. One great (and not so great thing at the same time) about our school is that you get to know your students as more than just students - you get to know them as people. It's an environment where you can joke and laugh with your students. I just really appreciated that this week because my students are some really great people. It helped to remind me that no matter what crazyness goes on outside of the classroom, God has me here for these students and it's my job to love them and to show them the love of Christ. I'm definitely not great at that but this week was better :-)

Last night was a lot of fun in Osu. Amanda and I went early to do some shopping! We went to this new little store that Amanda found that is more pricey but has much nicer things. I bought a few pillow cases for myself that are amazing and that will look fantastic in my future apartment! I also bought a few Christmas gifts. Then Amanda and I went to Global Mama's and I bought a few napkins - again for the future apartment - and a few more gifts! It was a seriously successful shopping adventure. Then we walked to Ryan's Irish Pub where we met EVERYone else for dinner. There were a ton of us, much to the dismay of the staff at Ryan's. One would assume that more patrons for a restaurant would be a good thing. Not so in Ghana. They panicked. Oh well. They made lots of money off of us especially since they've raised their prices to ridiculous levels. I will not be back to Ryan's... ever. But it was delicious food followed by a trip to a gelato place. Aaaaaaaamazing!

Okay, so now this brings me to the title of this post: my Ghana day. Completely 100% definition of Ghana day - everything that could go wrong, DID go wrong. It was looking like a beautiful day this morning - a few clouds but mostly blue, sunny sky, AKA perfect pool weather. Faith and I suited up and headed out our door for the Royal Richester that is uber-conventiently just around the corner. Literally just around the corner with a 2 minute walk - amazing! We got there and asked to use the pool only to be told, "Oh, no. It's closed for the weekend for cleaning." Dangit! Okay, well, so Faith and I decided to walk up the main road about 10 minutes to another hotel with another pool. We walk in and pay and then walk out to the pool and wait for our chairs to be brought out. Then, the lady who took our money came out and said, "Oh, no. The pool is closed for cleaning." Ummm, seriously, Ghana? Deciding that God really doesn't want us lying out in the sun today, Faith and I started for home. Then we asked ourselves, "What if we get home and the power is off? What will we do?" It's actually a very common occurrence that the power is off on Saturday because for some Ghanaian reason they always do work on the lines on the weekend - not during the week when it makes more sense since people are gone at work. Anyway, we decided that if we got home and the power was off we would just go to the mall, hang out, take a book and read, see a movie, and just basically sit around in air conditioning. Can you guess what we found when we got home? That's right - no power. So, we showered, gathered our things and headed to the mall with Amanda. As soon as we got there we went up to the theatre to check what movies were showing and the times. Lo and behold - THEY'RE SHOWING THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE!!!!! Amanda and I had been waiting to see that movie since August and the theatre here FINALLY is showing it. So we checked the time and the next showing was about 2 hours from then. We all decided to head to the food court and look for a place to set up camp and read and eat lunch until the movie. A yummy lunch and two hours later of talking about how excited I am to see this movie, we trek back up to the theatre to buy our tickets... "Oh sorry, we don't have the movie. It didn't come." Um, excuse me, WHAT?! They had flyers and everything printed up already advertising that they were showing this movie. Apparently it didn't make it through the mail system or something because they didn't have it. AHHHHHH! Okay, well let's check out what else is playing. We decided on "2012" that started in another hour. Great, another hour to kill! Hearing loud talking and music we ventured downstairs and found a fashion show taking place in the middle of the mall. It was really funny and random until the lingerie the girls were wearing got smaller and smaller... And then the guys started modeling... it was awkward and gross but like a car wreck - no matter how much you wanted to look away you just couldn't! So somehow we whittled away another hour and finally saw "2012." I didn't know anything about the movie and therefore had no expectations, which is I think exactly how you need to see this movie. It was a summer blockbuster type of movie - totally ridiculous with scientific inaccuracies and implausible story line but a really fun ride. I enjoyed it! By this time we had spent about 6 hours at the mall and we were totally ready to go home but were loath to do so because guess what: the power was still off! So we wandered in to the grocery store thinking that if the power was going to be off we'd better be ready with something for dinner. Thankfully a few minutes after we walked in to the store our guard called to let us know that the lights were back! And thankfully they are still on!

So anyway - we had quite a Ghana day but you know what - it was really fun :-) I guess after living here for this long you just have to get used to it and go with it. God's really been working on me with that this semester - I still have to be thankful and praise God even when things around me are falling down and are frustrating. There's still so much for which I have to be thankful that I should be praising God all the time! I think that's part of the reason that I've had such a great week - I'm focusing on praising God even when things are frustrating and He's giving me amazing joy in my life. Yay!

Okay, well Meg just came in with the splendid idea of making Rice Krispy treats with her American marshmallows - only one of my most favorite things ever! So I'm gonna go help/eat that :-)

Amendment: Meg just pulled her marshmallows off her food shelf only to find that the American wrapped and sealed marshmallows have ants alllllllll inside..... It's Ghana - we're gonna eat 'em anyway :-)

Hope you all have a great weekend!