answers to dad's questions/school friday

i haven't tried incorporating dancing into the lessons. in a class setting, it might be harder, especially with no music and their tendency to not pay attention as it is. i'm not sure how i would work it in on an individual level, but i could try. you gave a good suggestion of including things that are in their daily life into their learning. i actually did that on friday, for the first time. before, during the study abroad portion of the program, i was just finding my feet and pretty much mimicking what the teachers were doing. i've realized that everything they are learning comes from western school books and aren't relevant to their lives. dad, it was a really good idea to include things that they sell and daily activites. i'm going to do that tomorrow i think.

so on friday i started the class with simple sounds and letters. we worked our way up to bigger sounds like ba, mo, etc. then to small words. i tried to pick the words that they might not have seen before. this is because they can all read cat, but they don't know that the letter "c" can make the sound of a 'k' and the sound of an 's'. i tried to think of words that they could read easily and would be interesting for them. words like banku, rasta, and football worked well. at the end of the day they read two big sentences: Rasta-men live at the beach, and, Asamoah Gyan is a good footballer. they were so proud of themselves that they read such big words. i was proud of them too. that class session made me feel much more accomplished then i had before. even the kids that couldn't really keep up with what was going on benefitted by seeing the process that is behind reading and that if they keep working hard at learning the phonetic sounds, than they will be able to read anything. even one of the german teachers, who has been at glona for a year, came into the class and told the children how impressed he was with their progress.

i'm not sure what makes ghanaian food so spicy. i think it is some kind of pepper. i can try to buy some, i've seen women selling spices. are you allowed to bring food products from other countries back into the US on commercial flights? i thought the answer was no, but i'm not sure if it applies to spices. i'm definitely cooking us peanut soup and rice balls. its soooo good. and maybe red-red if i can get the ingredients.

most ghanaians start their days around 4 or 5am. i'm not sure if they take breaks. since so much of the economy is informal, like street vendors, they create their own hours. i'm sure they would take a break around noon or so to have lunch. but the more dedicated workers may not stop at all. vendors are busiest during rush hour times, like 6am-about 9am and then from 3pm-6pm. dinner is served at our hotel at 7pm-9pm but i think that most families eat earlier, between 6 and 7pm. it gets dark here by 6:30pm so also, i think that most families go to bed around 9pm.

drinks are generally not served with ice. we are supposed to avoid ice anyway, because we don't know what water it has been made out of. glass bottles are everywhere; all sodas and most juices come like that.