tetteh quarshie cocoa farm

pronounced (teh-tay kwar-shee) cocoa farm.

me with some cocoa pods

(since my blog isn't letting me add spaces in between my paragraphs, a new paragraph will begin with ">")

the last few days have been a lot of fun! i guess i last posted on tuesday, which means since then i have: gone to makola (again), bought more fabric for all you lovely people, visited a fabric/clothing store (run by a lovely lady named gifty) that marykate and i have been wanting to visit FOREVER, taken things to marjorie, our new tailor fred, AND the almond tree, picked up things from both marjorie and fred, attended my first trivia night at a local obruni sports bar called champs, went to the art center again (met a really cool ghanaian named "colin powell" who knew all the capitals of every u.s. state, plus every capital of every country in the world), saw milk for the first time, and went to tetteh quarshie cocoa farm! oh, and i've done a little bit of school work here and there...you know, tough life.

i am realllllly trying to make the most of my FEW short days left in ghana, and it's funny because as time is running out, i am re-falling in love with it and really trying to do as much as possible while i'm still here. my friend anika and i were talking about how we think it's so strange that this four months of our ghana life is just a little bubble, a little chunk of time where our lives were SO different. but we will ultimately go back to our usual lives, having lived this ghana life that we will be seemingly cut off from once we leave here. not to that we can never have anything to do with it again, just that the people we interact with and the things we do on a daily basis will be a faint memory, at least 'til i return. which i will do. the whole thing is just very strange/happy/sad. 27 days! for those who don't know, i plan to leave on friday may 8th, getting into new york on saturday may 9th. my best friend jon is picking me up from jfk and he's been instructed to immediately take me to the olive garden on 22nd and 6th. i'll spend a few days in new york, spending time with my friends one last time before summer, seeing my cousin's new apartment, and going to my friend kala's graduation. i will fly back to texas on tuesday, may 12th, where summer will officially begin!

>GOOD NEWS! gillian is OUT of the hospital. :) she is back home and it is great to have my roomie back. i missed having someone to blurt out random things to, or someone with whom i

could find mindless ways to waste away hours on the internet. they didn't find anything specific wrong with her (yeah, after a week of ALL that!), but she is feeling better and is in good spirits because...her mom is coming TOMORROW!! we are ALL so excited to have a maternal influence in the house, especially one who's bringing with her some goodies from my mom!

tomorrow is easter, which we'll celebrate bar-b-que style. solomon's is hosting a bar-b-que for all the nyu in ghana people, along with some of our ghanaian friends and neighbors. should be a fun time. i'm going to church in the morning with marykate...can't wait for another raucous ghanaian church experience! i hope you all celebrate easter with the people you love, and remember what it's all about (strangely enough, not those marshmallow peeps OR the easter bunny).

>since the title of the post is tetteh quarshie cocoa farm, perhaps i should give a little more detail about the day trip we took this morning! anika, marykate, stephannie, marika's sister and i got on an 8 am tro-tro from apapa to tema station, where we took another tro-tro to aburi, where the cocoa farm is! aburi is also where the botanical gardens are, and we will be taking another trip (with nyu) up there in a few weeks! it's gorgeous and up in the hills, overlooking other cities. the scenery is very different than accra- very hilly and green and tropical. the cocoa farm was rather small and not quite what we were expecting, but it was still really fun! for some reason, when we got there, there was no one manning the entrance, so we just walked in and showed ourselves around. about 10 minutes later, a ghanaian named tio found us and asked us to pay. initially he asked for the "foreigner's" price, though there was a student price on the price list. we insisted we were students at their ghanaian university and should therefore only have to pay the students' price. plus, what the hell is a foreigner's (aka obruni aka white person) price anyway? if we tried to pull that crap in america...well, we just wouldn't even dream of pulling that crap. but, we worked our magic and only paid the student price, and got a really neat tour of the farm. apparently it takes something like 3-6 months for a cocoa pod to get ripe (the yellow color), and then 2-3 days to ferment, and 7 days to dry. they sell the cocoa by weight. usually each bag of cocoa is 64 kilo and will make about 100 ghana cedi. i asked how many pods it'd take to make one bag, and based on some calculations, it'd take about 30 ripe pods! plus manual labor...that's a lot of work for only 100 cedi a bag! the adventure was fun and i had a great time with my girlfriends. :)

notice the "foreign tourists" fee...yeah right.

marika, stephannie, ataleigh (marika's sis), me, anika, and marykate at tetteh quarshie.

>we just got done ordering chinese food and are gonna have a movie night. last night we watched milk, which, if you haven't seen, you need to stop reading this and go out and rent it RIGHT now. seriously. RIGHT NOW. it was phenomenal and the acting was great and the story is so inspiring and the issue of gay rights something i am very passionate about. do yourself a favor and rent it now. tonight we're gonna watch frost/nixon, which is supposed to be very good, too! i'll let you know! :)

>have a wonderful, wonderful saturday and happy easter, friends and family. missing you all so very much.

>love love love

(ps- dont know why this blog is formatting like it is. i've tried to fix it but it's not working. will try again later. sorry!)