Today, I arrived in Ghana through a 30 hour odyssey. First, I flew out of Pensacola Airport to Washington DC, where I had a 11 hour layover, then to Frankfurt, Germany, and then finally to Accra, Ghana. This trip did not make any sense logistically- there was a flight to Accra from Washington DC only 30 minutes after the D.C.-Frankfurt flight. But, on the upside, the trip was relatively cheap.
I met some cool and uncool people on my way to Accra. Since my dad serves in the Military, I was able to stay in a "USO" in DC where I was able to gorge on cup noodles for free, which was nice, but then I had an encounter with two soldiers headed to Afghanistan. When I asked if they were nervous, one of them replied "No, man, I can't ****ing wait to blow the ****ers heads off" with the other consenting in the background. So, I just replied with an impersonal "cool," and dug in to my fifth bowl of cup noodles.
On the D.C.-Frankfurt flight, I had the opportunity to sit next to an archaeologist who just came back from the Amazon rain forest studying breast milk, urine, and feces. Matt, the archaeologist working on his dissertation at UCSB, scientifically explained how studying those three bodily fluids reveals the nutrients that are missing from Amazonian's diet and how it might reveal the diet of early humans. Personally, I think it would be rather awkward asking for breast milk, but maybe that's just me. I would usually be a little suspicious of exaggeration, along with his claim of involvement in hunting monkeys with hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, but he smelled and looked like a venturing archaeologist, so I believe him. For the next three weeks, he is headed to Southern Germany for a relatively tedious study on the remains of an early Germanic tribe. That guy's going to end up on the Discovery Channel one day.
It was about 7 P.M. Ghana time when I landed in Accra Airport. Surprisingly, I did not lose a single article on this 30 hour trip. Score one for me, score zero for irresponsibility. I soon met two of the three people who I was going to have the week orientation with- an older teacher from Norway whose name is "Pierre Old?" (except for that the Pierre sounds like a cross between Pier and Pierre and Old sounds like a cross between Olt and Old) headed to teach Physics and Mathematics at a Secondary School (I'm going to call him Mr. PO) and a girl from Belgium named Bienka (sp.) headed to teach a primary school way out there in the countryside. There is one more girl arriving tomorrow. Anyway, Bienka speaks four languages-Flemish, French, German, and English and Mr. PO speaks two-Norweigian and English, so the amazing thing was that they could both communicate fluently in English despite it being Bienka's third or fourth language. Apparently, this language fluency is the norm in Europe.
Also turns out that America is not the only country having problems because of political partisanship. Belgium has not had a government in two years because the Flemish and the French cannot agree on anything. Anyway, I have more things to write about but I have my Internet Cafe time is running out (it's almost 2 A.M. here) and I have to send an email to my mom who is missing her baby. More to come on all the adventures in Ghana.
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