Made it to Ghana!

                 Well, I made it to Ghana and have been here about 24 hours.  After some relatively unexciting flights (the best kind), I arrived in Accra about 8pm last night.  Several stops to check visas, luggage, and customs later, Diana found me as I was leaving the airport, about to get enveloped into a throng of people.  Diana is a George Washington University student working on the same project I am.  She is from Ghana and her parents are nice enough to let me stay with them before we travel and before we can get into the house we are staying in at the University of Ghana.

                After dozing most of my 2 flights, I was somewhat awake when I got to their house and then stayed up until 1am playing scrabble with Diana and her brother Andy.  There’s a 4 hour time difference between here at the east coast, so it felt like I went to bed at 9.  It also felt like I woke up at 8, but it was noon . Oops.  Diana and I slept in the family room where there is a big fan, and I migrated back to my guest room around 8am.  Today we went shopping around 3, picking up Kate, Diana’s 4-year old niece from school, and then getting groceries and some other things including a fan for my room. 

                Currently I’m listening to a wonderful African rainstorm outside, a real gully-washer.  That itself might cool things down a bit.  It’s very muggy but not actually as hot as I thought it would be- low 90s I’d estimate.  There’s no air conditioning in the house, which is quite large, but there are screened windows in all of the rooms for a nice airflow.  And since they just had the house fumigated, I don’t have to sleep under a net either.

                I’ll be hanging around their house a few more days before Diana and I travel around the coastal and western regions and maybe as north as Kumasi for about a week.  Later in the summer we might try a weekend east towards Togo, and a weekend north if Diana’s parents will come with us.  Research begins on June 1^st through the end of July.  More on that later.

                Happy to be in Africa :D