My left ear

Hello again,

So in the few days since my last blog, a lot has happened. Among the more boring, I successfully registered for way more classes than I actually am allowed to take, because I have NO IDEA when the hell these classes are offered. I do need to add here, that if I can't take the classes I need...I might never graduate. EVER. hmmmmm

In the more interesting, and much more ridiculous, I woke up on Wednesday feeling like my left ear was full of water, and finding it very difficult to hear out of it. Eventually, the clogged feeling subsided, and I felt fine. That same evening, Elena and I met 8 of our new neighbors. They are all "freshers" and have just completed secondary school. I don't remember all their names...but some were: Debbie, Sylvia, Rose, Emanuela, and a set of twins who said we could call them "P" and "K."I have recently put up some pictures in my room, and among the various things I had, my "George Bush's dumb-ass head on a string" air freshener was taped to the wall. This inspired much discussion, and our neighbors were incredibly curious about why, if we hated our president, had we voted for him. We tried to explain that we hadn't, and they countered with the fact that the majority of our nation had. We attempted to explain that a small portion of people in the US actually vote at all, but it became pretty garbled in socio-economic stuff. At the very least, they think we are: A.) interesting. B.) heathens. C.) going to hell. The answer is C. And it was confirmed when we were invited to a youth group function scheduled for Saturday morning. We had to decline, we had an international student orientation to go to.

Thursday morning I woke up without the ability to hear out of my left ear at all. I had a jogging date planned with my neighbor Sylvia, but decided to cancel, as I felt my ear trouble somewhat serious. Elena, who has had a lot of ear trouble in her life suggested olive oil to break up the fatty lipids (mucus) in my ear. We tried it, twice, with no success other than me being completely embarrassed to be seen by the unusually large amount of visitors who came to our room to see me with cotton balls in my ears. I then tried a decongestant...with no success. In desperation (after the refusal of the Pharmacy guy to sell my ear drops) I tried Hydrogen Peroxide. No luck.

I was pretty frustrated with my ear ridiculousness...but did not let it stop me from going Mountain biking on Friday. Me, Elena, Megan, and Becky went to Aburi, a small town about 40 minutes from Legon and rented bikes to take a tour of these amazing botanical gardens. We decided to take the easiest tour (since none of us have mountain biking experience) but also decided not to take a guide. After a few wrong turns which incredibly nice townspeople helped us out of, we were on the right trail. We were zooming through this incredibly beautiful area, huge palm trees everywhere, a pond to our right, a stream just ahead, and then I crashed in a corn field. No joke. The trails were very narrow, and pretty rocky in some places and if you swerved in one direction you were bound to swerve in the other. My crash was not the last (for me or anyone else) of the day. I succeeded in crashing in random fields at least 3 more times. But the prize for crashing goes to Elena. This girl started the day face-planting in dirt, and ended it by launching herself into a palm tree where she received some pretty deep lacerations on her right arm and all over her breasts where a branch punctured through her shirt and did its damage.

Along the way we took a wrong turn and ended up going about an hour the wrong direction--through a corn field--until we finally turned around, found our mistake, and got back on the correct trail. During this, we were trying so hard to navigate what we were trying to believe was a bike trail, resulting, not only in a multitude of crashes and falling off bikes, but also in me treading through an ants nest and looking down to find at least 20 biting my leg and wriggling into my sock. Momentary freak-out ensued. In the end, this 1.5-2 hour trail took us 4.5 hour to complete. Not to mention none us had eaten for about 8 hours at this point, and we had probably burned through about 1500 calories. In short we were exhausted. On the way home, we stopped at a Shell station (the first I've seen here) and each spent at least 5 cedis on complete, wonderful, crap (Mars bars, chocolate croissants, ice cream, Pringles, candy coated peanuts, and a lot of water too.)

When we returned to campus we went to the hospital, to get Elena's wounds cleaned--she still had quite a bit of tree stuck in her various cuts--and to get my ears looked at, as my left was useless, and my right starting to throb. After a 3 hour wait, Elena was cleaned and given pain killers, and I was told the unnatural amount of "fluid" in my left ear was the result of allergies, and the throbbing in my right the result of over-excited Q-tipping. Ooops. I now have antibiotics and allergy medicine, so if I still can't hear in 3 days, I guess I should be worried.

It probably seems like the biking adventure was not fun. Quite the contrary. In the midst of the falling, the ants, and the impalements, we were laughing the whole time. Even though I am SUPER bad at it, Mountain Biking is SO fun. I am definitely going back soon, and its something I think I could really enjoy in the states. This was my first, true, African adventure. I plan on having many more. I love you.