Well I've been here over a month now and although everything seems kind of normal now and I'm over the initial culture shock there's still a few things that are still very different, I've noticed a lot more in the rural villages. When I first flew into Accra it seemed like a sprawling shanty town, now when I drive into from the countryside it seems like the most civilized place I've ever seen. A lot of things in village life are very much out in the open like women will walk around, ride trotros and go to work with their hair in rollers which is pretty amusing but one thing im finding really disturbing is all the nudity! Sound's strange cas these countries are ment toi be all conservative about women but it's the opposite here.I often see a topless women or a lady doing her laundry on the street in her underwear as I walk to school. Even in kpando the larger town I saw a really really old topless women-she scared the living daylights out of me!! Esther my host mom regularly showers starker's in the garden and I really don't think it's just me being a prude as mom would say. Im trying to deal with it but it's so gross! Another thing I'm beginning to get tired of is the food. Ok sure I'm in Africa wohoo I'm gonna eat African food but having banku/kenkey/akpley/fufu (all types of maize/corn flour/cassava mashed to death to form really gooey dough) and served with fish/chicken/goat or sometimes rat soup. Every night for a month is getting ridiculous, Ghanaian food is only meant to be swallowed you don't chew anything so after meals and meals of this it's all so tiring. I don't even crave western food. Just like something simple like rice and tomato puree would do! lolSomething I find hilarious here is that everyone has no political correctness what so ever, it doesn't come in to their language. Shouting yevoo/obruni (white person) to greet me is funny enough. But im working with a Canadian girl lady whos as big as a house, so im walking down the street and people are shouting "hello fat white women" -in the friendliest happiest way possible! She constantly gets called fat wherever she goes especially by my host mom Esther, some good quotes have been "I'm not cooking you eggs, you are fat enough already", "come jenny lets go see my sister, she is fat like you" "oh no you cant ride a bike you are too fat, the wheels will break". I feel bad sometimes but it's a compliment and a sign of endearment to call someone fat here it seems, but I wanna crack up laughing every time something like that comes up. I also find the references to white people hilausly, took me a while to get used to people shouting "woezo white lady" and saying "you are so white", or calling me "white sister" but my favorite has been people calling me "Mrs White" I love that one!The first time someone called me that it was a guy selling batteries from a basket on his head in Accra. Everyone carries things on their heads here, it's like there arms are useless so everything is put on their head. Like 80% of people here are employed in trading so that means selling absolutely anything, and the traders are usually weaving in and out of the cars when they are stopped at traffic lights or running along side a car trying to sell stuff to the passengers. Anything from doormats, toilet paper, flags, towels, French phrase books, underwear, phone chargers, I've seen the craziest stuff being hawked on the street like a man carrying two crappy plastic ornaments of a robin in a tree and selling them in between traffic, me and Cassie both saw and just couldn't stop laughing, its like why the hell would you need to buy that on your way home from work?If you don't carry things on your head here you're deemed as lazy. In Vakpo there are actually things that look like outside showers but there only for women to put a bucket on their heads and turn the tap on, I've seen nobody actually using them as showers. Even the school kids carry their backpacks on their head, and it's like instinct or something. I bring out about 20 books and all the kids at the orphanage don't wanna look at the pretty pictures, they wanna stack the books on their heads. There's so many things like that, that English kids would never do, like they don't want to hold the dolls they wanna carry them on their backs cas that's how babies are carried here. When were playing outside half the kids only want to grab some sticks and slice the grass with it as if the sticks are machetes cas that's what the older kids have to do at school. It's so amazing seeing the significant differences in kids here. Oh yeah I made another kid cry last week, I was at the market and he saw me, burst into tears and ran away in terror of me being white.hahaA very Ghanaian thing I've noticed is that the Ghanaians are hopeless at directions. Totally and utterly hopeless. The ting I get the most is "go straight. Go straight!"but I have had a few like "yes, go straight, umm don't go left when you see the women carrying the baby, when you see the man selling fish follow him" its crazy stuff like that. I met a man at the weekend who's theory was that "Bradt guide paid everyone in Ghana to give lousy directions so they would buy their books" which is probably true.Anywho I'm probably boring everyone with my notes about all the culture, I just find it really interesting, like today I named the chickens outside the house and then Esther said it's a taboo to name animals because it's disrespectful of whoever has the name of that particular animal! It's so sad how they treat the animals here; it's not as bad as I've seen but still pretty terrible. I haven't seen any severe animal cruelty though. Last week I did see a poor women who was nearly fainting in pain cas her teeth were knocked out by her husband who was beating her, that really shook me up, I gave her some money to go to the hospital and just hoped she wouldn't just give it to the man. I'm constantly seeing kids being cained, Esther usually whacks her 3 year old after she does nothing wrong, I wanna say something but whenever I mention it she just says your in Africa, these things happen. But its only because of the attitude of people like this that its gone on when they were kids and so on, that these things are still going on.I took out my hair this week…that was fun. I had 3 women working on it and it only took 3 hours, way better than the 7 hours it took to put in, and it feels soooo good to take it, I can actually have a good night sleep. I started washing my hair in the garden and apparently I can't do anything right, not even wash my own hair so Esther got her knickers in a twist about how I was washing it and she came over, sat me on a stool and spent the next hour washing and rigorously towel drying it for me like I'm about 6 years old. She's really taken on the mother role to an extreme! Haha I also managed to get the tv and dvd player set up. The dvd player was alright but the tv looked like something from early 80s in the Bronx when a load of people used to watch tv sat on the street. It was so crap, I was able to wire up the tv and held everything together with clothes pegs...and i actually watched The Mexican, sure there was no color and the sound was crap but pretty good for wiring a tv to a dvd player myself! Right that's all for now…this has been a really long post!!