I like Ghana...yesterday

So, the title of this post originally was "I like Ghana...today" but that was yesterday, Saturday, BEFORE the power went off for the umpteenth time this week in the middle of my doing laundry and being productive with e-mails and blogging. Sigh. Yesterday ended up being pretty good though - again thanks mostly to the Mozley family who are amazing! Amanda, Meg, Ashley and I headed off to the mall to use our free movie passes we got last weekend when the power went off DURING the movie. Amanda, Meg and I saw "The International" while the rest of the house girls saw "Marley and Me." "The International" was pretty good - Clive Owen is great! After that we headed across the mall to Game (think Target but smaller and not as cool) where they were having a soccer competition - in which Meg took 2nd place!!! Yep, little white girl beat a bunch of Ghanaian's and won two soccer balls, a towell, 2 pairs of socks, and 2 pairs of Nike soccer cleats. Picture...
After going home and dropping off our stuff we headed over to the Mozley's for dinner where Michael Mozley made us quesadillas - with CHEESE! It was just sooooooo good. "Remember the Titans" is also a very good movie which before last night, I had never seen - nice job Denzel. Thankfully, the power is on right now and hopefully it will stay on.

Okay, let’s catch up on some other stuff. It's been a while :-)

Last weekend and this entire last week has been a huge MESS of no power. Meg is writing a blog about that and since she’s a much better writer than I am, I fully intend on stealing her story and posting it here. So, update on that to come :-) For now – here’s a picture of my new shelves!Even with all the power nonsense, Friday ended up being a great day! First, it was Friday and just by definition Friday’s are great because that means it’s the start of the weekend at Okay, so technically it’s supposed to be 3:20pm but Amanda and I were so out of school right at 3pm. We came home, I threw some laundry in the washer (haven’t been able to do that for more than two weeks – thank you ECG, power company), we read for a while, ran outside and bought Fan Yogo as the little guy went by (YUM), ran on the treadmill, had dinner – typical Friday night. A bit after Meg got home (from a not so good soccer practice – thank you Ghanaians who don’t get that white people can LIVE in Ghana, too) Amanda and I decided to walk and get some fruit and crackers at this new shop that’s popped up close by. Every time I walk past this shop there is something new – the first time it was just the shop, next time it had a nice stone patio part, next time it had an awning, then they added tables and chairs, now there are lights and even dividers to shield you a bit from the road – it’s a great little place!!! It also just so happened that Friday night across the street from this place they were setting up chairs and sound equipment to have an outdoor church service. When we got back home we talked to Meg and all decided to head back to this new little place – I’ll call it Rosemary’s, that’s the lady’s name who runs it – enjoy the music from the church service and play some cards. After applying liberal amounts of bug spray – a necessity – we headed out to Rosemary’s and played a pretty competitive game of Phase 10 – Meg won! Seven bags of peanuts and a few drinks later we were commenting about how much we really appreciate Ghanaian culture – sometimes. We were also lamenting the fact that no one at home will ever truly know what it’s like to live here. Friday night we were sitting in patio chairs playing cards being stared at by children (okay, and adults), watching stray dogs run around, next to an open gutter, across from a church service where people were speaking – LOUDLY – in tongues, watching people in Mercedes drive by the people sleeping on the side of the road. Ghana is such a combination of opposites it’s funny sometimes. Anyway, it ended up being so much fun just hanging out and relaxing at Rosemary’s – we’re definitely going back!

So there's a small part of what's going on here! Miss you all in the States! I'm looking forward to coming home for the summer in just over two months :-)

So, there was supposed to be a video in this post but after 4 hours it still hadn't uploaded. Stinking, frustrating Ghana. Bah, anyway... Here is the story that went with the video that never uploaded...

Last night, it started to rain, which is something pretty unusual for this time of year in Africa! When it rains it POURS here - literally and in the pessimistic figurative sense. Anyway, Meg, Amanda, and I went out dancing in the rain, enjoying how cold it felt! Meg and I had just had a conversation before it started raining about how I was just beginning to take advantage of the video option on my camera and how I wanted to do MORE video because I think it's great. So, in light of that conversation, I ran inside and grabbed my camera and shot a lovely piece of cinematic art. We just watched The Sound of Music last weekend because of our upcoming trip to Germany and Austria for spring break, which is why the song that Meg and Amanda sang and danced to in the rain was fresh in their minds :-) It's the one that the girl and the guy sing in the gazebo. I love my housemates!


I also thought I would share some of what God has been teaching me these last few weeks! It's been a long, laborious, and sometimes painful process but here's what I've got so far :-) Instead of me trying to explain it all I'm just going to give you some verses that when read in order explain it better than I ever could...

We live by faith, not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:6)

...you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. Those who doubt should not think they will receive anything from the Lord; they are double-minded and unstable in all they do. (James 1:6b-7)

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

I can pray and read my Bible and listen to sermons and do all that I'm "supposed" to do but without faith - none of the rest of it matters. I have to have faith in God - faith that he'll meet me wherever I am - because He will! Hebrews says that He will and that I will be rewarded for earnestly seeking God. Yay! This might seem elementary to some of you but in my actions I have been doubting God - doubting that he'll be there with me when he asks me to do something. See, I can't explain it right :-)

Okay, what else is going on... OH. We got a "new" bridge. Every day on our walk to school we have to cross this bridge and just in the past few weeks they've put in a new gutter. Ghana = open sewage/gutter system. With a new gutter comes a new bridge...
Looks safe, huh? Good thing it's not too far off the ground. The bad part is that the water underneath - super disgusting. The official count of diseases you would get from the water if you fell in is 7 million.

This past Friday was International Day at school. The best part was that I didn't have to teach my classes and that every family in the school brought a food dish native to their home country to share for lunch. It was sooooooo yummy. Then, that night at Emily and Liz's (and Becky's now, too!) we had a mixer party! Emily, Liz and Becky provided the ice cream and the rest of us each brought a mix-in. My insides don't always agree with ice cream and it's not my favorite dessert but I eat it anyway - mostly for the toppings!So much for all the working out I've been doing :-)


Anyway, I hope everyone is doing amazing! Send me e-mail updates! elyse.lyle@hotmail.com

Eating Soap and Oil Fires

Okay, so I've been thinking all day about the blog I was going to write when I got home tonight and now I have a real story to tell! I'll start with the scary one and end with the funny one.

So tonight was Egyptian night. Mariah and Amanda went to Egypt over Christmas break and tonight was their night to show pictures and tell about their trip. Amanda has been doing experiments with making falafel - they ate it a lot in Egypt. Her last try was AMAZING. To make it, you have to fry it. As Amanda was assembling the falafel tonight she put the oil in a pan with a lid on the stove to heat up. I walked into the kitchen to talk to her and Meg while everyone else waited to watch the slideshow of pictures in the living room. I looked into the pot of oil through the lid and it didn't look like it was doing much - it certainly wasn't boiling. A few minutes later, Amanda was done assembling and took the lid off the pot. Immediately the oil started smoking. Confused, Meg opened the back door to help let out the smoke and I picked up a towell to try and fan the smoke to the outside. When the smoke didn't stop and began to get worse, I picked the pot up off the stove and walked it out the back door. As I was standing and holding the pot trying to decide what to do - it caught fire. FIRE!!! The pot exploded in my hands. It startled me - of course - and burned my thumb, which then caused me to drop the pot without thinking. THANKFULLY (seriously thank you Jesus) the pot of fire spilled away from me. So now, the ground covered in oil is on fire and the pot is STILL on fire. I'm standing and yelling at the girls in the kitchen to get the lid to put it on the pot to put out the fire and the girls are yelling at me because all they can see out the back door is fire. So Jules (Amanda?) must have picked up the pot lid because the next thing I heard was a crash of glass - she had dropped the lid because it was still flaming hot from being on the pot. By this point the ground is no longer on fire but the pot is still blazing. I head back in to the kitchen to find something to put on the pot to put out the fire and find our cookie sheet and quickly head back out the door. After a few tries of trying to get the cookie sheet on top of the pot with my shaky hands, our guard Daniel came over and got it on top and finally got the fire to go out. Ahhhhhh! That's when I realized my thumb hurt pretty badly and was probably burned. Back in the kitchen I can't remember what happened but I started to feel bad that I had poured out all of Amanda's oil :-( Sorry Amanda! Anyway, my thumb is fine, just a tiny blister that will probably be gone by the morning but my lungs and throat could be better from all the smoke. Oh and I still have my eyebrows - yay! But really, this night so could have been SO much worse. What if the fire had started in the house? What if when I dropped the pot our guard had walked by and I doused him with fire? What if when I dropped the pot it tipped the other way covering me from the waist down with fire? I could be in a Ghanaian hospital right now. BAH! And none of it has to do with luck! It was nothing short of a miracle from God that everything happened the way it did and no one got hurt. God really protected me tonight and I'm SO thankful! Below is a picture of me with my bum thumb, blackened pot and broken lid.Sidenote: Meg just turned on her iPod with it on shuffle and what song starts to play? "We Didn't Start the Fire" Meg's response, "It's Jesus!" Haha!

Here's another picture and it's one of the oil spill...see how HUGE it was??? And can you see the splatter pattern? That's approximately where I was standing and see how everything splashed AWAY from me?So, we're all alive and well thanks to the amazing God we serve! Thank you!


Now the funny story :-) Actually, just the end of it is funny because the buildup won't make sense since none of you reading know this student. Anyway, this 7th grade student came up to me this morning offering me "candy." It looked like a big Listerine strip - you know those ones that you put on your tongue and they dissolve? It looked like one of those only yellow and bigger. So I kept saying no and finally this student says she'll eat some of it to prove to me that it is candy. She ripped of a tiny piece and put it into her mouth. From her face I could tell it was most certainly NOT candy and she started to laugh and gag at the same time. Come to find out - it was SOAP! This student was so committed to getting me to eat soap that she did it first! HAH. Really the joke was on her because I outsmarted her. Genius. I'm sad that this story sounds lame in light of the story I just told but really - it was hilarious when it happened :-)


Okay, I gotta get off here and go plan a European spring break vacation with Amanda!
Love and miss all of you in the States!!!

Back in Ghana

Okay, so don't get too excited because I'm not "for real" updating yet. Although I did just realize that I haven't updated in over a month - bad. I will soon! What I AM doing though is relating a fun story from last night. And because Meg (housemate, awesome) is a much better writer than I ever will be - I'm stealing this from her blog (www.HimandMeg.blogspot.com for copyright issues)... Remember that this is written from Meg's point of view and not mine!



Tonight we had a visitor. I had just come in from an evening run with my buddy Jules. I was laying on the floor doing some abs and OUTTA NO WHERE comes this THING. This THING that slithered SO RAPIDLY FAST past my head on the floor, looked as if it had no legs. Amanda, who was sitting nearby, catching up on some correspondence, and I quickly leapt up onto the nearest piece of furniture while shrieking without telling our throats to do so. We both had different stories. "It has no legs!" "It must have traveled at least 35 miles an hour!" "It was ORANGE and BLUE and HAD NO LEGS!" "It MUST be a baby SNAKE!" "...at least a foot long!"

Hearing the commotion, Elyse (who was being given a relaxing-massage in the next room by our good friend Rebecca who takes it upon herself to use her massage therapy education to bless the people around her-THANK YOU LORD) ran out with Rebecca to save the day. Immediately, we recounted the terrifying tale to the both of them. They quickly grabbed flashlights and took an aggressive approach to getting that thing out of our house, so we might sleep this evening. After 15 minutes of searching around the couch under which it had taken refuge, we had just about given up. We slowly moved the couch back to its original position while Amanda thoroughly explained that she wouldn't be able to sit on the couch for the next few months. While taking one last sweeping look at the room, Elyse and Rebecca spotted the what we had decided was a Salamander (because of it's slimy looking qualities, dark blue body and orange tail) in the corner of the room by the front door!!! Grabbing the box from her newly transported, from the States, Bible (one side in each hand) Elyse frantically tried to push it towards the door. After an EXTREMELY long and jumpy minute, we watched as the salamander slithered faster than NASCAR into a thin curtain rod that has been laying near the front door ever since it had fallen down a few months ago. Rebecca seized this PERFECT opportunity to grab the tube and CHUCK it outside before it had any opportunity to escape. VICTORY!!!! Mice/cockroach/insect/lizard/and now Salamander sightings (as you can see) quickly become collaborated floor events.

While I used my camera to videotape the celebration, my eyes diverted to the 17 bread-roll size holes in our screen door. Maybe we should get that fixed soon?



Pretty much a typical night around the Palace :-) And, for those of you on Facebook, I will do my best to get the video that Meg took uploaded!