Small Steps

I love coming home to a family. I’m so lucky to have this family here that will stay at the dinner table talking with me, that will explain to me how to get from point A to point B, and that cooks for me. (Although at some point I will be doing more cooking and cleaning).

When I came in the door today I told my host mother just that, that I love having a family to come back to after a long day. I tried walking to campus today for the first time. It took about an hour and was a pretty hot walk, although I am used to the heat now so it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. There are many benefits to walking though. One of them is that you get to interact with the people on the street and see the stands set up alongside. There are many stands selling fruits, mops, basically anything you can think of. A downside though is the close proximity of vehicles blowing out black smoke and stirring the dirt on the side of the road.

I now have accomplished getting to school three different ways and am ready for my next adventure – getting to my internship site at Tot To Teen. I was talking with Felix about how I get there from home and he said the easiest way is to walk to the mall (a small shopping center) about ten minutes away from my house, get a trotro going to American House, and then get out there. Once I get out I find another trotro going to Madina and take that until I get to Madina. After getting out at Madina I get in another trotro going to Adenta and finally get out at my stop at SDA. Whew. It will be quite the journey I’m sure. The way back is much easier with just one trotro and a shared taxi. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve also begun to go running. I met up with Nikki this morning and we went on a short run around her neighborhood. It was starting to get busy on the road though so I will probably try to go earlier on in the morning. Felix told me a good place to run where there won’t be many cars so I will try a long run to figure out a route this weekend. I also must say I am very fortunate to have my dad’s sense of direction. It’s very useful when trying to figure out how to get around. I usually try getting places by memory if I’ve traveled it once by car and most of the time it works.

Twi classes have started and I found myself asking a woman on the way out of campus how she was in Twi. I was very surprised that I did that. I even turned to Nikki, who I was walking with, and said I don’t usually feel that comfortable when learning to speak a new language. However, this experience is all about stepping outside our comfort zones. I’m taking small steps.