Hello Boston!

August 5, 2011

We finally finished Gahu!  It was a very impressive victory for all of us.   The group is looking really good too!  Hooray!  The ending is kind of neat with all of  us pairing off and dancing off the stage.  It reminded me a lot of previous dances I have done. 

I am feeling a bit tired, probably from all of the exertion I have been putting my body through. 

I really appreciate the teaching style that Nani uses during our drum classes.  He breaks everything down the way it is taught in Ghana then follows it up with an Americanized version of teaching.  We never use sheet music or notation, but I am picking it up faster and faster.  Nani knows some of the American styles because he moved to Boston a few years ago.  This makes it very easy to understand him.  He has started using phrases like “OMG!” which makes all of us laugh. 

After dinner, I practiced Kpanlogo with Odartey again.  (By the way I finally learned how to spell his name correctly.)  We worked on merging the female and male parts of the song.  It was a big challenge for me to dance with him, but my audience of fellow trip members enjoyed watching.  I will hopefully have a video of the performance in the concert to show everyone when I get back. 

Tonight was also the Kopeyia crawl.  During this our group went from place to place in Kopeyia dancing, singing, and having a great time.  I somehow ended up rapping the song “Baby Got Back” to provide some a capella entertainment.  How I knew all the words is a mystery.  I retired a bit earlier than most so I could recover from my dance lesson, and get a much-needed shower.