I don't like making titles...

On a Mac right now. If any of you know me at all... I can't stand Mac's. However, it's pretty much a necessity right now since the power cord to my computer is totally broken. Okay, not totally but enough to where it makes me nervous to use it. The part that plugs in to the box is starting to pull away and several of the wires inside have snapped and are coming out. Hopefully George, the school computer guy, can tell me where to get a new one or he says it's not as bad as it looks and I can just put some electrical tape around it. We'll see. Getting a new computer cord in Ghana would be pretty difficult I would imagine. You for sure couldn't send it through the mail because if that package ended up at the post office it would absolutely get stolen. Anyway.

I guess that's part of the sad side of Ghana - workers who don't think twice about stealing from you. Anne Claire has had a few DVDs stolen from her and Ben has had guitar strings stolen. This happened at the post office. When packages get there the workers open them up and look through them and then make a completely baseless decision about how much to charge you for the things inside. Oh yeah, and then they steal your stuff.

Anyway, that was a frustrating tangent. I could also talk about how ridiculous the internet has been the last several days. But I won't.

Hahaha, really fun side note: Ghana was playing in a game for the African Cup tonight (quarter finals? something) and just now I could hear people all over the neighborhood cheering. My guess is that Ghana won the game. The neighborhood erupted in cheers a while ago, which I took to mean a Ghana goal, and the cheering now is 2 hours after the start of the game so I think we won! It's just fun to hear the yelling and cheering from different parts of the neighborhood.

Friday night was a really fun night. Just a few of us went out to dinner to get sushi at Monsoon in Osu. Thankfully the ginormous kidney stone that has taken up residence in my left side, left me alone for long enough to enjoy dinner. It found me again the next day but I've lost it again today. Maybe it's gone for good. Anyway, Friday was fun in Osu but I was a bit nervous walking around the whole time. Last weekend when we were there I was walking down the street, completely minding my own business when some pervert walking by us grabbed my chest. Um, thanks? You better believe I turned around and started yelling at him - seriously? That's ridiculous and completely uncalled for. The guy didn't say anything back. His friend just raised his hands like, "Please, please let it go." Jerks. So anyway, while we were walking around I was just waiting for it to happen again and thankfully it didn't. But dinner was delicious and the conversation was even better!

What was sad about the whole night was the ride home in the taxi. There is one road that the taxi drivers always take in the ride from Osu back to East Legon where we live. I don't know what it's called and most roads here don't have names anyway. But this one particular road always advertises a certain kind of nightlife - namely, prostitutes on every corner. We counted at least 20 of them on this one maybe 3 mile stretch of road. I remember a taxi driver one time telling us that you can tell who the prostitutes are by the kind of shorts or skirt they're wearing. Really short = prostitute. In America you would rarely see a woman wearing a cleavage bearing shirt to church but here you see that a lot because Ghanaian views on sexuality are different. To be crass - in America it's all about boobs and in Ghana it's all about thighs. So, you can tell who the prostitutes are on this street by how much leg they're showing. It was just so sad and crazy to us in the taxi on the ride home to see such a high number of prostitutes. I don't know - it's just normally something I've only seen in movies and then to see it right in front of me in real life was something totally different.

Anyway, to change topic completely

I've started the job hunt. Yes, yes, in June I'm coming back to America. I don't want people to ever get the impression that I'm totally miserable in Africa just because I'm excited about coming back because that's not the case at all. I'm happy here, my life is here, my job is here, I have friends here... Just because I'm excited about coming back to America doesn't mean I'm excited about leaving Ghana. It will be really sad to leave this place that's been my second home for two years. It will be crazy to leave the people I've become so attached to. I'm just ready for the next thing. I'm ready for my next job and my next step. What's so frustrating is that it's still far too early to start applying for jobs. I want so much to begin to figure things out but it's just flat out too early. You get into a community like this one though and people know what they're doing a year in advance because they have to. Amanda has known for a month where she'll be teaching next year (Japan, BTW, which is so exciting!). I want to know!!! Right now I just have to be patient and know that something amazing is out there for me that I will find. I know that everything will work out and I need to stop worrying about tomorrow like Matthew says. It's just hard.

Anyway, I'm sure Meg wants her computer back. I hope mine gets fixed this week. Hope you all are doing well! :-)