So after almost 7 hours in an airport with nothing in it besides duty free shops, I finally boarded my plane to Accra. Which, as Rahul correctly warned me, was full of smelly people.I landed in Accra with no real issues, I was proud at the time.I barrowed someone's cellphone to call my host family to tell them I was late but was on my way.According to my guidebook's recommendation I successfully bargained down to a fair taxi price and was on my way.One minor problem was some major confusion about the exchange rate and how much money I needed to take out.Apparently since my guidebook had been written they completely changed their currency, so I ended up with way too much money and was the local "bank" for Augustana students that needed to exchange money for the first few days, but it was fine.

Then I would say in the next ten hours everything went downhill.I had very specific directions on how to get to my home, (go to this roundabout, past this school, turn left at the third intersection, etc etc), but as I learned quickly, in Ghana, taxi drivers might as well have been abducted Australians forced into a car and told to drive people around Accra…drivers knew nothing.They knew no famous landmarks, no road names (when the road had a name, which wasn't always the case), nothing.Even when other people told you they would know this church, or that school, or the name of that house, they never knew.After a week there I was directing a cab how to get to a hotel turn by turn.So, getting to my home was a mess, and took 4-5 stops of asking people for help to finally get there.It turned out it is was in the nice, safe neighborhood of Labone that the organization told me it was in, and is kind part of a larger home that numerous families and extended family member live in.There was some confusion about the time of my arrival, even though I showed up 5 hours late they thought I was early and did not have my keys.So I waited for another hour sitting and watching an African version of the Discovery Channel and hanging out with a one-legged, semi-deaf grandfather, who speaks little English.Meanwhile all I could think about is how it was 6:30pm, and Kyle and I's plan had been for me to meet him at his hotel at 5:00pm (which had a spare 6 hours in there after my plane landed at "eleven," but with the five hour delay, lost cab driver, and missing keys, time was adding up.I was so worried that he was having a heart attack that I hadn't shown up yet, and I had no way of reaching him.

Finally my keys arrived and they showed me to my room, which seemed okay, no A/C and no mosquito nets, but okay. Then I asked where the bathroom was, which I just assumed was communal, which was still okay, and then they showed me a room outside with a bucket for the "shower" and a room with a hole for a toilet.I wasn't thrilled.I had specifically requested running water, I didn't need hot water, just running.Indoor would have been really nice too, because from my experiences in Indonesia, water in a bucket or in holes equaled mosquito paradise.

So exhaustion setting in at this point, I finally get in a cab to find Kyle.After another 40 minute cab ride that should have taken 10 minutes , I was finally at the Coconut Grove Regency. I find Kyle playing with the hotel's dog, weaving a basket and waiting for me.We decided to just eat a late dinner at the hotel.Meeting all of his friends for the first time I got a wave of awful nausea and actually ended up not eating and just sitting in his room puking.The longest day ever continued to get interesting.We waited until I thought I could stand without puking and then decided to go back to my home to get my stuff.Between me being sick, and planning on leaving the next morning at 8am from the hotel to go on a daytrip with his school, we thought it'd be best to just stay there for the weekend and go back to the home Monday before I started volunteering.We get into a cab, with way more specific directions the family gave me, and surprise surprise, end up lost.It gets a little more interesting this time though because it's dark, and then one of Ghana's rolling blackouts hits the neighborhood, and dark becomes an understatement.At this point we offer to pay for our driver to use a cell phone "stand"/kid at a table with a cell phone, to call the family to give us directions.Meanwhile Kyle and I sit in the car and try to hide our white faces because we have had enough people yell seemingly unfriendly comments at us that we both decide it may be better they don't spot our white faces.Finally my host family comes out looking for us (apparently the phone kept cutting out), and spot us sitting in the cab.The wife of the family may still be the nicest person I met in Ghana, she was so sweet and so concerned about us.So we get my stuff and go back to the hotel…which is finally my first successful taxi ride in Ghana, because we use the same driver who drove us from the hotel.And thankfully by this point the nausea is gone and I conclude it must have been food sickness from the plane food on Kenyan Airways, since it was basically the only thing I ate, and it passed so quickly.I was still without a normal stomach for a few days following, but no more of the violent nausea!

Day 2 in Accra we wake up early to some outer areas of Accra with Kyle's class.We go to see the Akosombo Dam, which is where the majority of the electricity for Ghana comes from…though we all agreed they could use another one since the blackouts seemed to be such an issue.We took some dam pictures, bought some dam souvenirs and said every dam joke in the book and then headed on to our lunch spot.After a lunch of three hours, and learning of the slower than European style service in Ghana, we headed to the Aburi Gardens.

The next day was one of our only free days without scheduled activities while I was in Ghana and we had made big plans to go to Togo for the day, or boat to some exotic beach, or go mountain biking, and we proceeded to spend the entire day sleeping, basket weaving (art class assignment for all the students) and laying by the pool.For anyone who has traveled with me before, you would have been proud.