Life's a Happy Song: Finals and Togo!

Hello!

By now I have finished 3 of my 4 finals. They haven't been too difficult, but really long! My Twi one was specific for our class so that was really nice because we knew exactly what to expect. The second one was African Indigenous Religions and the entire exam was just 3 essays. They gave us 2.5 hours, but I finished after 2. I wrote 12 and a half pages!! I filled up the whole answer booklet and even had to ask for more paper! I'm hoping that at least I'll bore my teacher into giving me a good grade. ;) The third final I took was Psychology of Personality. I somehow managed to write 11 pages on this one, plus answer 60 multiple choice questions. It wasn't too difficult either, so I'm hoping I did well. I'm not sure how the essays will be graded though because we were never given any idea of their expectations. I'm hoping I got something correct in all those pages!

On Wednesday and Thursday I went to Togo again! This time it was so much more fun than the first time! I rode on the motortaxi and it was a little scary but really fun! There's not very much traffic in Lome, so that made me a lot less nervous. I don't think I would want to ride a motortaxi in Accra. I went with my friend Courtney and met up with our friends Emily, Tatiana and Jeremy, who had gotten there earlier in the week. It was very nice to have Jeremy along because he is French so he was able to communicate and translate for us. That really made a huge difference because we were better able to bargain for prices, find things to do, etc. We had a delicious lunch in Lome, a nice salad that came with the tastiest baguette! It was great!

After lunch we left for Kpalime in a small trotro crammed with 14 people. Granted, two of them were children, but it was still way more than there should have been! We made it Kpalime and randomly met a rasta man and an Italian guy who was there volunteering. The rasta guy (we never did find out his real name) said he has a children's home that we are welcome to stay at since the kids were not there now. It ended up being a whole adventure getting ourselves over there but eventually we all found ourselves at this home. The room they gave us had two big mattresses, one on the floor and one on a bed. There were quite a few spiders around and we saw a cockroach in the bathroom but besides that it really wasn't too bad. We took bucket baths but that's not too out of the ordinary anymore. That night we just went to dinner and walked a tiny bit around the restaurant then just went back and went to bed. The next morning we saw this beautiful Catholic church and walked around Kpalime. It was so interesting because the end of town by the church was clearly mostly Christian but as we walked to the other side we saw a lot of mosques. It was interesting to see the Christian and Muslim sides of town. We also went to the cultural center and got to see how the pottery is made. It was really great to just be able to walk around a quieter, smaller town and not be hassled by anyone or approached at all. I decided I love Togo! In general, the people are much less aggressive and the towns seem to be cleaner. The gutters are closed and it doesn't smell gross! It was very refreshing.

We left around noon and didn't get back to campus until around 8pm. It was a long day of trotroing, but we passed through a checkpoint on the Ghana-Togo border so I got my visa renewed with no problems. I had a really great time with some good friends :) I'm glad I got the chance to go again and see what Togo is like outside of Lome, too.

I only have one final left and it's on December 10th. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my life until then since I have so much free time. Maybe I'll just write random blog posts about life here! I can't believe how little time I have left! I'm definitely going to miss it.