I'm in week four of this African adventure, so I guess it's time for my first entry.

We had orientation the first week. The campus is so huge that most of it consisted of campus tours. The university has over 30,000 students, and the campus is probably five times the size of Truman's. The first thing I noticed about the campus are the open gutters. These gutters range in depth from about 1 to 3 feet and are about 1 foot wide. They run alongside almost every road. At first I was confident that it would be inevitable that I fall in them. To my enormous surprise, I am yet to injure myself (knock on wood).

I find the architecture of the buildings quite fascinating. All of the buildings are designed to accommodate for the lack of AC in this country. So basically, whenever you're inside, you're also outside. Most of all the halls ways are open. When you step outside of any office or classroom you're standing on what could be described as a wrap-around porch.

Our hostel is made up of mostly American students. Although I love it here, it has the look and feel of a prison. Razor wire wraps around the building and there is a fulltime guard by the front door with an AK-47. Also, Camel cigarettes don't exist here so with the razor wire, AK-47 and the high commodity status of cigarettes sometimes I think to myself "don't drop the soap" whenever taking a shower.

After orientation, the next couple of weeks consisted of registration. Registration is done on paper and in person, and when there's 30,000 students, you can imagine the logistical nightmare that is to come. This is week three of classes and I have one more form to fill out before I'm completely registered. My biggest feat yet.

The most interesting part of this trip came this past weekend as our group and I ventured a few hours west and visited Cape Coast. Here we visited two slave castles. And even though I recognize the slave trade as the worse travesty humanity has ever brought upon itself, I couldn't help but feel like a neo-Nazi touring a concentration camp. These castles were built on the beach and housed slaves until the boats came to take them to the America. Visiting these castles made slavery and the plight of African Americans a reality unlike anything I could have expected. We were shown the "Condemned Cell" in both castles. This is where rebellious slaves were sent to die of suffocation, thirst, or hunger (which ever came first). It's hard to put into words the atmosphere of us tourists standing in that dark (they turned out the lights for a few seconds to give the full effect), cramped, hot, stone room where so many innocent people had their last breaths.

On a lighter note, we also visited Kakum National Park. The park is a little north nestled in the rainforest. They have one of four canopy walks in the world. We walked across these bridges from tree to tree hundreds of feet in the air. The view was awesome. Also, I had my first confrontation with ants, soldier ants. They were walking across the path (I had the right away, I swear), and I stepped on them. I guess they got mad that I killed a few of their buddies and decided to swarm my foot. Yeah, that was embarrassing. The bridges weren't as scary as I hoped it would be, but I now know I'm ready for sky diving when I get back (bucket list, get ready).

So much more to say...but I'm sure only the most dedicated made it this far in the blog, so I'll save it for another entry.

Pat