A Welcome Post from a New Blogger

Greetings!

I have been given the opportunity of a lifetime to take a study abroad graduate class.  This class will have a group of people from across North America traveling together to learn the customs and traditions of the Ghanian culture. 

So, in the interest of preserving my memories, I have decided to keep an online journal or blog, if you will, while I am in Africa.  I will be going to Ghana, Africa to study Drumming and Dance for 3 weeks in July/August.  There are a lot of things I am excited to do, but mostly I am going to bring back knowledge for my students to benefit from.  Hopefully, some of them will be reading this!

To be completely thorough in this blog, I am going to keep track of all of the preliminary things I will do before leaving.

Being the sleuth that I am, I have already looked into the places I will be going, where I will be staying, etc.  So there are, of course, pictures!

This is a photo of the Dagbe Cultural Center in Kopeyia, Ghana.  I will be here for the majority of my trip.  This is where I will be taking all of my drumming and dance classes as well as anything else I want to study. I am hoping to get into so Kente cloth making and Ghanian cooking too!

This is one of the outdoor hut classrooms.  From what I read, it is mostly used for dance classes. It looks like it will be nice and breezy.... if there’s a breeze of course. 

My professor for the course, Jeremy Cohen, also spoke at orientation about the beaches near Kopeyia.  How they are not quite what we think of when we think “beach.”

Granted we don’t usually envision boats, fishermen, and pigs roaming around the Jersey Shore, do we?

Part of the process of getting ready for a trip like this is the vaccinations.  In order to get into Ghana, you MUST have the yellow fever vaccine.  Of the vaccines I got for this trip, that one was by far the most uncomfortable.  Pretty much any time you get a shot in the back of your arm, not in a muscle, it’s going to be irritating.  Kind of like stubbing your toe.

I have a very extensive list of things to hunt down for the trip, everything from a headlamp to those pants that zip into shorts. Looks like a trip to Cabella's is in my very near future.

I have a lot of things to do before leaving, so stay tuned!