Ghana—Day 6

Another FYI: we have tried to call a few of you, but can’t get through.  If you have a “will not accept unidentified callers” block on your phone, it will not accept a call from our Ghanaian phone.  We’ll try cell phones next, but since we aren’t using our own cell phones, we can’t pull up our address books to see what the numbers are.  We will keep trying…

It was our most uneventful day so far.  I’m actually having a hard time thinking of anything to say that would be interesting and/or informative.  We spent a couple hours in the hotel room doing laundry.  We needed to be to the home by noon to help another family Skype with their 3 kids.  That only took about a half hour, so that left us the rest of the day to spend with our kids.  We brought them back to the hotel and tried to watch Little Mermaid (it was scratched).  So we watched Johnny Lingo.  Man, I love that show!  Surprisingly, Courage really liked it, too.  Well, except for the part where Tama and Mohana are kissing right at the end.  He belly laughed and hid his eyes at that part.  After that, we tried to watch Chicken Little, but it was scratched, too.  We panicked a little because we had nothing else for options.  No internet connection at the hotel, and they don’t like us going into town or on the streets with the kids because of child trafficking concerns.  Once we have our Adoption Decree, we are free to come and go as we please.  But for now, we are a little bit stuck, and I’m beginning to go stir crazy.

We were finally able to hook up with Job this evening.  He helped us take a taxi (the scariest one so far), to a place called Next Door.  It was RIGHT on the beach, but it was dark and they had an extremely loud outdoor band, so the atmosphere was less than ideal.  We really had to focus to even see our food, it was so dark.  But I found French Fries on the menu, so that made up for some of the less desireable aspects of the venue.  The kids, of course, had chicken and fried rice.  Shocker!  We finished our meal and took them back to the Home. 

Now we are back at the hotel.  John started flipping channels and after about a half hour, National Treasure came on the screen.  Oh, joy and rejoicing!  Something on the TV that we can understand, tolerate and not have to filter for filth and potty-mouth words.  So there’s our day.  I am worried that it might have been a little boring for the kids, but John assures me that they don’t know boring.  Their whole life is the same thing every day, all day long.  So sitting in an air conditioned hotel room with a soft bed, pillows, snacks and movies can’t be too much in the way of mind-numbing for them.  I hope he is right because the tourist destinations and attractions are few and far between here.  If these kids get the cabin-fever as bad as I’ve got it, we might be in for some turbulence.  Ugh…struggling tonight. L

Ok, She was right in that it was a rather uneventful day.  I did actually enjoy it though.  We have been up late every night since we got here (writing this blog), and have been getting up early every morning.  So with all the emotional ups and downs we have experienced, it was kind of nice to just sleep in, hang out in the hotel, and then go to the Orphanage at noon.  When we got up I decided to wash some of my clothes in the tub with a bar of laundry soap I bought at the market.  It wasn’t that easy but I was surprised how clean it made my whites.  It took me over an hour to clean them so I put my colors in my back pack to have someone do them at the house.  I had three pair of shorts and three T-shirts.  When we got to the home, Delight heard me ask for help with them and she told me that she wanted to do them.  While we were uploading yesterday’s blog entry, she went outside and hand washed them and hung them on the line.   Besides that being a super sweet gesture, I was amazed how clean she got them.  They look better than if we would have washed them at home.  I don’t know why I wrote about that other than it was simply another reason of why she is so great. 

It was a rather slow day, but I think it was good for the kids to be with us and do nothing.  It is not like life is going to be one exciting trip to town after another, once we get home.  I guess we have to admit to them that most of the time, we do things like we did today.  We get up, go to work/school, come home, eat dinner, prepare for the next day and go to bed just to get up and do it all again the next day.  I don’t think it is necessary to “entertain” them each and every minute that we are here.  I think it was great to see them hang out and probably deserve to be bored, but once again, there was not a word of complaint.

We did enjoy our dinner tonight at  “Next Door.”  Jenny described the situation pretty well.  I would like to go back a little earlier in the day so we could enjoy the beautiful scenery.  The kids were so tired, that while we waited for our server to bring us our food they were resting their heads on our shoulders or the table.  But they were great.  We had a nice conversation with Job and then enjoyed a wonderful meal.  We took the taxi back to the hotel and picked up a treat for the girls in Delight’s bedroom.

She shares her room with eight other girls. The room is about the same size as our kids’ bedrooms at home and these have four sets of bunk beds stacked in the room.  (And to think we were worried about Emily, Abby, and Delight sharing the same room.) 

Last night when I went up to tuck in Delight, her friend Elizabeth asked me if I could bring her an apple back from the market today. Then Mahti said yes, me too.  That was followed up with Dejanu’ and several others saying “me too!”  So Delight and I got nine apples today to bring back.  I put them in the refrigerator at the hotel and picked them up on the way back from dinner.  When we handed them out to the room they were still very cold.  You would have thought I had brought them steak and lobster.  They were very happy. 

Well, I don’t really have much more to report. Tomorrow is church at the orphanage.  I’ve heard it is something I do NOT want to miss.  We’re looking forward to it, but as we sit here typing, we are sad that all of you are about to start watching the Bronco game.  Cheer loud for us. 

Until tomorrow…