Letter to Christina

If you thought my waist-length braids were good, you’ll like this too: I got up at 5:30 this morning for my first day of cross country/track practice! Lol. I know. Despite what you’re probably thinking, today was actually pretty decent, but mainly because I think we just did a warm up and stretches. It definitely brought back memories from circling up on that orange track and gossip-chat-stretching with the girls. On the other hand, I saw a guy doing those one legged hops across the field … which brought back a whole different set of memories of pain and gasping for breath and those dark intimidating sunglasses that we loved so much. Lol, oh nostalgia.

Anyway, I’m not sure if I’ll stick with it but for now at least it’s a good way to start the day off and to make friends with my Ghanaian hallmates.

I live in Volta Hall, which is basically the sorority dorm of the campus. It’s the only all-women dorm complex and our motto is “ladies with vision and style.” They’re definitely serious about being stylish here – everyone dresses to a tee and looks super cute in a sharp preppy put together way. So much for my hippie Berkeley clothes or going to class in sweats. Most of the international students here live on the other side of campus in an international hostel, but I’m really happy to be living at volta with only 8 other international girls. There’re a lot of little things that are different that you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t live right next to the differences. Like the other night I was making a tuna pasta salad except that my pot is kind of janky and doesn’t have a handle. It was definitely too hot (boiling!) to pick up so I was trying to do this complicated balancing with knives thing to strain the pasta – when my friend grace (Ghanaian) comes in. without flinching or even really thinking about it, she moves me to the side, grabs the pot and pours. In response to my ‘No no no, don’t do that it’s hot!” her friend just smiled and said “here, a lot of us are trained to touch hot pots from when we are little, so by this time we don’t feel hot and cold on our fingers.” How badass. Ghana 1, Miriam 0.

Since I haven’t written at all yet, here’re a few of the facts of my life here, just so it’s easier to imagine:

I went through a 2 week orientation with 60 other int’ls from California and Indiana, which involved guest lectures on Ghanaian culture, epic tourbus trips around the country, seeing Ghana from behind tinted glass and full air conditioning, dancing, and all of those ‘we’re a new bunch of college kids trying to get to know each other’ rounds of ten fingers and such. At the time it long and drawn out, but looking back it was a good way to get to know 60 people quickly, and now a lot of them feel like really close friends.

Since then, we got to travel a bit on our own, then spent a week registering for classes because you have to physically walk from department to department and then come back the next day and the next. This is the second week of classes but I’ve only had a few lectures because most of the profs were on strike last week to get higher wages, and some just don’t show up for awhile. But I did have one pretty awesome lit class, somewhat reminiscent of Hudelson except without the tripped out music and movies. Also, in between the epic class registration week I got to see Kofi Annan and John Kufuor (the former UN Secretary General and current President of Ghana!).

here, everyone gets a
‘ghanaian name’ when they’re born, depending on the day of the week they were born. Since I was born on a Monday, I’m ‘Adjoa,’ Anyway, “Kofi” is a Ghanaian name too, which means Friday born, and since Kofi Annan is Ghanaian, it means he was definitely born on a Friday too. Interesting, no? what day where you born on?

I’m off to my African language class (twi pronounced closer to “tree”) but much love, this is the first of many!

With love,

Miri

Ps. It’s so great being from California! Everyone knows where our state is and when I tell Ghanaians that I’m a cali girl they get really excited and ask about our rappers and our LA style and SF and san diego and the ocean…