The food.

Okay, so everyone wants to know about "the food". Well, here it goes...

I'm a pretty adventurous person when it comes to trying new foods (as I've had to adjust my palatte for Asia, South America, and Central America), but the food situation here is honestly like nowhere else I've been before.

Usually, I get about 3 or so migraines a week, so before I left, Mom asked me to keep a daily "food journal"--well, Mom, and everyone else, that would be pretty difficult considering the fact that I rarely even know what I'm eating.

The first few days were a lot better, because the program had all of our meals planned out and paid for at pretty nice restaurants, but now we're on our own. There aren't too many "restaurants" on campus that we've found, but we have a few of our favorite spots...

Which brings me to egg sandwiches. When we first arrived, we heard the other International students talking about egg sandwiches (and naturally, at first, all I could think of was McDonalds' egg McMuffins/McSandwiches or whatever they're called these days). But you have NOT tried an egg sandwich until you've had one like this.

There is a little market across from our hostel that looks like the epitome of how you would envision a market in Africa--dust, natives selling odds and ends, occasional singing/chanting, the blasting of everything from praise and worship music to Justin Timberlake, etc. This is where you will find egg sandwiches. These two sisters (or perhaps friends?) make fresh bread everyday and put an egg-omelet slab in between two pieces of "sugar bread"...and there you go, you have an egg sandwich. And it's about 40-55 cents per egg sandwich (depending on what mood they're in and what sister is serving you).

Last night, McKenzie and I were sick of egg sandwiches, so we bought a loaf of bread (which usually ranges 50-80 cents/loaf), and painted it with peanut butter and nutella when we got to our room. My egg sandwich was also accompanied by a 10 cent orange and a 10 cent banana. So my dinner last night was a whopping 45 cents. (Don't get me wrong, meals aren't always this cheap, and they often find ways to add charges for Americans' bills, but some places typically charge at least $3-5 per plate).

Other than egg sandwiches and fresh fruit (we've also gotten watermelon and pineapple), there isn't much that I've taken a liking to. I have already tried many of the standard Ghanaian dishes---fufu, banku, jolof rice, etc., but they are all pretty similar and generally consist of some sort of rice/soup/dough concoction. And oh yeah, you can occasionally find fried plantains, fried chicken, and goat (how lovely). To be honest though, I don't see the food situation getting much better...I would love to live off of pineapple and oranges, but my mouth is already blistered with a few cankersores. Hakuna matata.

We manage to live off of whatever else we can find here and there-mentos, and other "sneaky snacks"--as a girl in our group, Maggie, coined.

Last night, I said to McKenzie, "Girl, I feel like we're on Survivor (well, besides the fact that Survivor is like 40ish days and we're here for about 140)." At night or in the morning, my stomach is growling, and I look in my bottom desk drawer only to find one fewer Kashi bar. My food supply is slowly dwindling.

Oh, and sidenote---just to give you an idea, I just stood up to walk to the front desk to add one hour to my Internet cafe tab, and I'm the only "obruni" (white person) in here, surrounded by maybe 25 Ghanaians. It's a beautiful thing to experience being the minority.

A few more tidbits about Ghanaians...not to generalize, but just what we've observed and have been told by our Ghanaian leaders...

*Everything is "tomorrow". "Oh, you come back tomorrow." "We will have it...tomorrow." "You can register, tomorrow." "We will have more...tomorrow." "You can just get it--tomorrow." Tomorrow is starting to become a way of life. We are definitely learning patience and are beginning to understand that many things just take time (contrary to what most impatient, demanding Americans believe).

*They are much more laid back than we are. One of our leaders, Thomas, said, "Americans. You eat, talk, and drive, all at the same time. You have a holder for everything-a cup holder, a "bread holder", a cell phone holder, holders for everything. But we, Ghanaians, when we eat, we take off our shirt, sit back, and relax while we eat for an hour." And that's not far from the truth. He threw in at the end that he recognized that our way of thinking connected to our rushed lifestyles--that "Time is money and money is time." Sadly not too far from the truth either.