Star Wars Day

The girls started asking if we could go to the park when they woke up this morning (around 8:30). Somehow, though, we weren't ready to leave the house until around 2:00 when we had finally all gotten out of our pyjamas and brushed our hair. We had a few upsets—for example, Rachel dumped out the crayons and spent the better part of three hours picking them up (she picked them up while playing some sort of a game where her origami birds would pick up one crayon at a time and then deposit it in the box...it took forever) and then we had to vacuum because even after she'd finally finished picking them up there were bits of paper and junk all over the floor so we figured we'd just clean up all the floor space so that we could vacuum the whole upstairs.

And then we had to eat lunch and that always takes forever. And then we still had to do hair.

But we finally made it out the door and to the playground.

I had left facebook open earlier in the day and Miriam noticed a picture of Yoda and then the girls wanted to know why someone had posted a picture of Yoda so I explained that today was Star Wars Day—"May the fourth be with you" was the caption on the picture. So our theme at the park today was Star Wars and the girls were climbing machines—they were much braver than they've ever been before.

Cries of "Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi! You're my only hope!" echoed across the playground while the girls pretended to be trapped in various locations (or "stwapped," as Miriam would say).

Scissors and Corduroy

Yesterday Miriam had a bit of an accident. She had found a piece of string and came up to me, asking if I would help her cut it. I told her that I wasn't ready to cut string right then and that she'd have to wait. Rachel, however, was working on some sort of craft and said that she was ready to cut things. So Rachel grabbed the scissors and cut the string in half while Miriam held it taut. Then she left to go cut some papers.

"Rachel, be sure to put those scissors back when you're finished," I cautioned. "I don't want your sister to find them on the floor and think she needs to play with them."

"Don't worry, I will!" Rachel said, with a sigh and an eye-roll.

A few minutes later Miriam ran up to me looking very concerned.

"Mom!" she panicked, "There's dirty stuff on my hands! And there just keeps getting more and more!"

"Let me see," I said and grabbed her hands to look at them. "Oh! That's not dirty stuff—that's blood!"

I could see a definite cut in her thumb, which was obviously the source for the steady trickle of blood.

(You can have a steady trickle, right? Because it's not like this was a gushing wound—blood wasn't pouring out or spraying out or anything like that. This was just a little cut that kept steadily bleeding—like how the tortoise ran the race in The Tortoise and the Hare.)

Skyping and samaras

Today was a wonderfully relaxing day for me. Miriam and I walked Rachel to school in the morning and then came home to write a quick message to Andrew. Just when I sent the message he came online, which was rather surprising considering it was only around 9:30 in the morning (which would be about 3:30 PM in Ghana). They had just arrived at their hotel and he was setting up his room and decided to hop on the computer to see if we were on. And we were.

Right now he's at the Cape Coast...and loving it...of course.

He took us on a little walk from his bed, out the door, to the beach. His room seriously opens up right onto the beach, complete with palm trees and breaking waves. It's beautiful.

We spent some time chatting and making silly faces (because it's impossible to have a Skype call without at least one silly face when you're Skyping with children):

Long distance relationship at 6961 miles

Sometimes Andrew stays in places (like the Technological College, which is where they're at now)  where the internet is so painfully slow (...because it makes sense that the Technological College would have subpar internet...) that we can't do anything fun (like use Skype) so instead we just chat to each other online and I like that almost as much. In fact, it might even be better than Skyping because then the kids don't get so wild and crazy showing off for the camera. Instead they talk and I type and then Andrew types and I talk and so forth and we only occasionally end up wild and crazy.

Today we had kind of a wild and crazy day, anyway, so I was happy to have the girls sit calmly beside me while we chatted with daddy. We started chatting around 5:00 PM our time, which is 11:00 PM his time. My friend Cristina had come over to help me not go crazy by providing me with grown-up talk and my children another body to jump on. It was most helpful.

Embassies, paranoid surreptitious religious discussions, and beads (April 26)

Our first stop this morning was the Dutch embassy, since the Netherlands have recently pledged substantial money for sanitation issues in Ghana. We met with the main sanitation officer for the embassy (a Ghanaian lady) and the students did a fantastic job presenting Kweku’s Biofill and getting great feedback and research.

Toilets and the temple (April 25)

BYU’s MPA study abroad to Ghana has three main purposes: (1) complete a consulting project for a nonprofit involved in some aspect of international development, (2) visit NGOs already working on various social issues, and (3) have fun doing touristy things. Last year we had two projects: research in price trends for vegetables sold in the open air markets, and research in the vocational and technical sectors of tertiary education for the Church’s PEF program (I worked on that one).

Jetlag, tour guides, and luggage (April 24)

We arrived in Accra without any problems (and without our luggage) and met up with the island goers at the incredible Alma House in Accra. This year, like last year, a group of students arrived in Ghana a few days before the rest of the group to live with village families on the island of Pediatorkope. It’s like camping, only with typhoid infested water, raw oysters and fish, malaria-bearing mosquitos, and extreme tropical heat. While it’s a great experience for them, I’m quite content with never, ever doing it. Six of the eight students on the trip went to the island this year (we actually have a relatively small group this year: 8 students, Aaron Miller (the faculty director), Dr. Rex Facer (a faculty member who’s coming later this week), and me).

An ordinary day

We walked to school in the rain this morning but it was cheerful and sunny the rest of the day. Unfortunately Miriam has a cold and I insisted that she take a nap so we didn't get to enjoy the sunny afternoon, though Rachel did go to a friend's house so I suppose she had fun.

Miriam wanted to join Rachel at her friend's house, but I kept saying no. Because Miriam is sick. She kept insisting that she was feeling fine but I saw right through her sugar-coated tones to the snotty, sneezy, head-colded baby that she really is.

She sneezed.

"What was that?" I asked.

"That wasn't anything, Momma. That was just a toot in my mouth. I'm not sick!" She put the back of her hand to her forehead to check her temperature. "I don't even have a fever, so...I'm not sick. I am happy. I just need to put on my running shoes and go to Emily's house. That's all. ACHOO!"

"What was that?"


"That was a tootie again. That was just a bless-you tootie, not a 'scuse-you tootie."

I could look past the occasional sneeze. I could look past the occasional sniffle. I could look past the occasional cough. It's the occasionally sneezing + sniffling + coughing that I can't ignore. That and the zoned look she keeps getting on her face.

So I said no and broke her heart into a thousand million pieces. But she got over it. And I let her walk with me to pick Rachel up for dinner, which made her feel happy.


After dinner we did some jobs (garbage, recycling, dishes) and then made pineapple-strawberry-banana milkshakes. The girls thought that was a pretty neat treat.

Then the girls wanted to go on a walk before bedtime, so we did. We walked until Miriam got bored of exploring and stuck her thumb in her mouth and started rubbing her ear. Then we turned around to come home, but not before finding (and playing with) a roly poly. 

Rachel carried that bug the whole way home (and dropped it at least a thousand times; I'm still in shock that it survived the whole walk) and then put it to bed in the bug house we made last week. She's practicing being a scientist, but she only wants to study butterflies, bunnies, roly polies, robins, and rocket ships.

Miriam turned into a little cuddle bug. She walked along for a while with her arm around Rachel before she asked to be picked up because she was just too tired to walk anymore (not that we'd gone far at all, but it was bedtime and she's sick). 

Bedtime was still an ordeal but both the girls were asleep before 10:00, so that's something!

I just checked on the extended weather forecast and it made me smile, not because our weather's anything special but because it shows me exactly how many more times I have to put the kids to bed on my own.

Keep on survivin'

I can't tell who is up—either Miriam is talking to herself, which is a possibility, or she's talking to Rachel, which means they're both up, which means getting up for school tomorrow is going to be a bear. Also, someone is kicking the wall. Whatever...

So far we've survived a week and a day sans Andrew.

The general consensus is that we're doing pretty okay. My mom told me yesterday that, in spite of being pregnant, I seem to be handling this year's Ghana trip better than I did last year. And just this evening Reid asked if I noticed that the girls seemed to be handling Andrew's absence better than they did last year.

I have a few theories regarding this:

1) We must not have handled last year's trip very well.
2) We are handling this year's trip much better than last year's.
3) This year my children are 2 and 4 instead of 1 and 3, which is better...somehow.
4) Andrew must have been busier than we thought this past semester since the difference between having him "home" and him being on the other side of the world is negligible.

Flying All Around the World (April 23-24)

This year, we totally lucked out on plane tickets to Ghana. In the past few years, they have typically cost $1,500–1,700. However, due to some crazy fire sale Delta was having, BYU was able to book my flight for an incredible $1,200 (which I didn’t have to pay, since I’m the TA… ). If only the price from last year’s trip could have been switched with this year!

This crazy cheap airfare only had one catch—all our flights had to somehow go through JFK in New York. This made for some crazy itinerary wrangling. Salt Lake City to Minneapolis to New York to Atlanta to Accra (and the same in reverse in a few weeks). It’s like a grand tour of the northern border and east coast. Woot.

Our flight from SLC left at the ungodly hour of 6:00 AM, and as a sign of the ungodliness of the hour, we (Aaron, the trip director; Sam, an MBA/engineering student; and me) stood in a completely empty airport from 3:30 until the first Delta employees started to trickle in at 4:45ish. So much for that whole “be at the airport 3 hours before your international flight” thing.

When we got to Minneapolis we rushed to our next gate for our one-hour layover, which turned into a 1.5 hour layover, which turned into 2 hours, which turned into an unknown amount of time. The plane was at the gate, but the crew never showed up. How does that even happen?

Because of our tight layover schedule at JFK and Atlanta, Delta decided to reroute us on a new flight from Minneapolis to Atlanta, completely skipping the extraneous JFK connection (and 4 hours of flying time!). We headed off to another gate to wait for a few more hours, fully assured that our luggage was rerouted with us.

Upon arrival in Atlanta, we discovered that the missing Minneapolis crew decided to show up and take our luggage to New York. It was never rerouted, and because the plane left so late, it wouldn’t make it to Atlanta to get on the trans-Atlantic flight with us. As big of a pain as it is to lose your luggage, it’s kind of nice to be pre warned that your luggage is lost. It wasn’t a surprise to not find it in Accra—we knew that we had to go make a lost luggage claim as soon as we landed (and they actually had started the paperwork and had rerouted our luggage on a KLM flight through Amsterdam, oddly enough).

The flight across the Atlantic rocked. Mostly because Delta had this in every seat:

Yep. A USB plug for iPads/Phones/Pods. Not that I used it much—the plane’s selection of movies was incredible (I finally got to watch Inception and The Dark Knight). Still, go Delta.

The flight was incredibly long and uneventful. Like this post. (Totally recycling the joke I used for last year’s Ghana flight blog post) :)