heyyyy. suuup? i always say that to people here.. and they never know what i'm talking about. sometimes i worry that i won't be able to speak real english when i come home. i've met other american volunteers here.. and they say they can't tell i'm from america. they say i have some kind of exotic accent.. i don't think it's actually true.. but maybe if it is, i'll get tooooooons of chicks when i come home. woooo

umm and so now only eight weeks left. exactly. but who's counting? ohohoh. when i said "but who's counting" i said it really big voiced(in my head..), like one of those guys who is nearly fifty or so and has a big booming voice and talks a lot cause he thinks he has a nice voice and that he is really clever when he says really cliche things.. and then he laughs like some kinda jerk santa clause... that's what i wanna be when i grow up. a that guy. mayyyybe.

anyways, africa is nice. how is your place? oh, that's really great.

lately there are these really shiny green flying bugs around, and when one lands on you, you have to yell, "ah! d.k. poison!!" and take your shirt off real quick. it's the best.

i always say i'll write a real update, but i don't think that's true. i only have two months.. and then i'll be home. and then you can just ask me things if you want to know. but uhh.. this morning there was a small frog that climbed all the way up my door and was sleeping on the stick i used to make my door stay shut. that was neat. and yesterday there was a nice cricket leg in my breakfast. turns out crickets are realllly good at getting into places they shouldn't possibly be able to get in to, and really bad at keeping their legs on.

that's how i start most days, if i am to do a real update and tell you how i spend most days- first, i wake up around 4 or 5 when the mosque calls out for the first prayer of the day.. then i go outside to take a leak and punch d.k. bugs in the face and get owned by mosquitos. then i sleep till about six. thennn a small boy named timothy who speaks no english and has no front teeth walks with me from the orphanage, where i sleep, to my house. but he doesn't walk he runs with a big tire that he pushes with a stick. which is really hard to do turns out. so when i get home, i sweep all the cricket legs out of my room and play ukulele for a while. thenn Gba, another small boy, who has teeth and really likes fighting allll the time comes in and tough talks me.. really. everyday. he's five. but this morning i threw him out of my window.. the kids here are really tough, it's great, you can throw them any place you'd like and they just laugh. and so i do.

thennn i play ukulele again.. and kids from my house come and go out of windows and things. and friends come around and i try to speak mampruli.. that's the language where i live. it's just a small tribal language that a lot of ghanians don't even know exists.. there are forty something different languages spoken in ghana. i can understand quite a bit of mampruli.. but speaking is trouble. but it's a lot of fun to try and talk to all the people in my village who only know mampruli, cause i mess up a lot of stuff and say a lot of things i don't mean to say.. and it's funny.

then around 8 or 9 we go to the orphanage in Guabuliga, we have to push the car to start it every morning and it usually breaks down along the way. it's a twenty minute drive or so down a really bad road that a lot of donkeys use. then at the orphanage, i throw kids down some more. and usually the older boys have caught a bird or something, and put it in their room so they can eat it later. so i tell them they should let it go, and they take it outside and come back, proud to show me that they have let it go.. and then the bird starts chirping from inside one of their pockets. that's happened a few times.

aand so we hang out til around 1 or so, then I go back to Wulugu, and we get a flat tire or something.. and socrates(the driver.. he pronounces it so-crates, not saw-cra-tease) and i sit and laugh about having a flat tire again, cause when it's really hot.. i dunno.. it's just kinda funny.

then i eat, either rice or pasta. that's pretty much all i eat. and then i go to the well and fetch water to bath and try to fetch the turtles that are there swimming around, as i've said before. then i play ukulele again, or go and visit friends, or sleep, or sit on a tree, or read, or keep roosters away from my house.. cause i hate them. they know me now though, and they run as soon as they see me. i chased one out of my room all the way to the market side one morning.. i keep bags of water that i use to squirt at them.. so i ran after this rooster, shooting water at him all through the village.. that rooster doesn't come around anymore. and everybody in the village seems to remember the crazy white boy, chasing a rooster with some kind of water gun pretty well..

theeenn in the evening, there's more throwing kids and friends and ukulele and eating and mosques and churches and funerals (funerals here are huuuge, loud dance parties that literally last until daybreak, three nights in a row.. it's funny when the funeral house is close to where you sleep.. and in a small village like mine, it's usually pretty close.. and people die a looot) aand other noisy things. then i go back to the Wulugu orphanage and hang out with the kids there til around 11 or 12, and then i sleep there at the orphanage. aaand that's mostly it. horay real update.

and so now i will go back to home, it's about an hour south of this place. now i'm in Bolgatanga, and i will walk to the very smelly, very noisy, goat filled station where i will buy a new pair of flip-flops for something like 50 cents.. fity you hot. uhh.. and then i will climb into a small van that looks as though it will surely fall apart at any moment.. but has a really nice paint job. and for maybe 1 dollar i will go back to my small wulugu. and that's all.

ohhh and something kind of neat, i've started playing bass guitar for church service. which is a lot of fun. i just have to listen and pick up on the songs and i get to play with a really crazy drummer who reminds me of animal and plays with actual sticks. like from a tree. and his drum heads have been traded out for animal skins. and there is a really sunglasses wearing keyboard player who doesn't speak english but plays really jams. church is a looot of fun. just a big dance party and we dance and sing and every one goes up and down the aisles jumping and dancing and singing.. it's really great. the local music is really good, just really feel good 3-chord kind of stuff. and their melodies are killer. and when i get home i'll probably steal a lot of them. woo!

anyways.. i just copied down the lyrics to "eye to eye" by powerline.. cause i love that song.. and mostly that's all i actually do here in ghana, try and learn that song.. soo now i have to go back and do that.

watch out for d.k. poison. looooooove, drew