Sorry for the delay

So it's been a long delay. I'm sorry! I hope now that i am getting into a routine and classes have begun, I can now blog more often.

Some info:

Part of the reason that I have not uploaded pictures (besides having a slow internet connection) is that many ghanains do not like to get their picture taken, especially the people in the markets. Also many landmarks and government buildings cannot have pictures either. So most of us here haven't even taken our cameras out yet, but i promise to and at least show you all my home.

the curreny here is the cedi (dollars) and pesewas (coins). the exchange rate is something like $1U.S. gets you 1.45 cedis. so i usually think of it as units here being %70 of what they would back home (1o cedis= about $7 so 70% rule) which is awesome! everything is very inexpensive except some american products but apparently this was only at the Kwala supermarket where cereal costs something like 20 cedis! theres a shoprite that some students have gone to already and said it was cheap, so hopefully i can get some american food there (craving cranberry sauce, ketchup, and junk food!).

People speak twi (pronounced chwee) but this is only predominant in Accra, the city i'm living in. There's also about 6 other languages spoken in ghana but apparantly many of them are very similar. it's surprisingly easy to learn (at least compared with learning spanish haha) and i'm taking a class on the language so i should get pretty good at talking with the locals.

Courses I'm probably taking, all of which, in some way, had a problem this week.

Monday--Issues in International Relations at the University of Ghana. This is my one class that is not at NYU but with an NYU-affiliated university. This place is huge--one of the biggest in all of west africa with a student body of about 35,000. the humanity's department has been known to have professors that don't show up the first few classes...and that happened this monday. But it was ok since i audited another class that i might take instead about human rights issues. It's amazing that although this is a public university and only 4% of the student body are international students, the human rights class was only white students! The international relations class has a bunch too but there are some ghanains as well.

Tuesday--Documenting the African City. This is a film class (the class i'm most excited for!) in which we learn how to film We watched two of the four films from last semester--one was about a deaf school in accra and how they are treated in Ghana. The other was about the LGBT community and how they have been treated in ghana as well (answer--both groups haven't been treated well, haha). both were pretty sad. can't wait to start filming!

Wednesday--Twi language class. Not much to say here, should be pretty simple and fun. Akwaaba! Oh, one thing that is interesting is that people go by the day they were born. There is a specific name for every many and woman depending on the day they were born--for instance our professor was born on Friday so his name (and any other who was born of Friday) is Kofi. I checked online--i checked online and found that I was born on a thursday, which is cool because thursday names are different from all the others:

Male Female

Monday Kwadwo Adwoa
Tuesday Kwabena Abena
Wednesday Kwaku Akua
Thursday Yaw Yaa
Friday Kofi Afia
Saturday Kwame Ama
Sunday Kwasi Akosua

Thursday--African Popular Music--I might not take this class, but it sounds interesting because we get to learn some drumming and also learn about the history of music and certain genres in Ghana. Also this professor is the one non-Ghanain professor at NYU. He's British.

Thursday--Survey of West African History. I love history so I am also excited about this class! the class only has 3 or 4 students including me so it should be an interesting experience...

Ok that's all for now. i might post again tonight.