We have arrived...... bats anyone??

Hello everyone,
Yes I have arrived in Ghana safely... I know this first post is very overdue, but things have been a little crazy here. So we arrived Sunday night in the city of Accra and were picked up at the airport by our instructor, Bev. We were immediately swarmed with several Ghanains who insisted on carrying our bags to the van. I haven't stopped sweating since the minute I stepped off the plane by the way. We arrived at the University of Ghana residence, called ISH. After two hours of bleaching our dressers and shelves and setting up our mosquito nets, Erica and I finally settled in for the night.

The next morning we woke up and I feel like I've been living in a movie ever since. We have a nice market right by ISH and I'm slowly discovering things that are ok to eat there and things that aren't so ok. There are quite a few American and Ghanain students living at ISH and most of the time I feel like I'm at summer camp. Our room is on the fourth floor, the top floor. There is one bathroom per floor and as long as you bring your own toilet paper and soap, they are actually not too bad.

We just started our first couple of days working at a hospital called Military 37. This hospital is ran by the Ghanaian Military, which is pretty intense actually. All the military personal solute each other every time they see each other. The nurse manager on each ward is called Left-tenant Colonel, yes I did say Left-tenant not leitenent. I've been placed in the Surgical/Trauma ward and I'm pretty sure I've just stepped back a few decades. They have very few supplies and do a lot of improvising. This unit has about 35 beds, which are always full and the patients have to bring in their own pillows, towels, gauze etc... I'm having a very hard time understanding the people here, their accents are thick and most of the time they speak "Twe", which is their tribal language. I've been feeling pretty useless on the ward, but its slowly getting better. I've seen some pretty crazy medical cases so far, stuff you would never see in Canada. Its been extremely interesting.

We work Mon-Thurs, 8-2. The hours are pretty great!! We went to the beach today after work. Not too shabby! Oh and one more thing I have to tell you about is the bats!!!! Grooooossssss.... There are literally thousands and thousands of bats living in the trees above our hospital. For those of you that don't know, I hate bats. I really hate bats.

I have some pictures that I will hopefully post but right now its taking about a half an hour to upload one picture. Anyway, this is just a quick little blurb about whats going on here. I'll try to put some pictures on as soon as possible. Hope you are all doing well.