My New Day to Day

A few months ago I gave an overview of my daily routine, but that was when I was in school. Now it's totally different. Since I am going to sewing school and teaching, I am very busy but happy. Because my days are filled with things that I enjoy doing with people I love to be around (and I have plenty of downtime on tro tros), I don't feel rushed or stressed. Here's what it looks like (in detail) nowadays:

• Get up between 5:30 and 5:45 to workout or go for a run
• Take my bucket shower, iron clothes (while listening to Freakonomics, Radiolab, This American Life, or the Progressive Christian Voice podcasts usually) get my things together, and prepare for the day.
• Eat breakfast (usually eggs and bread) while watching Al Jazeera or talking to the host fam and leave the house by 7:30.
• Walk to the tro tro station ("Banana Inn") and get in line for a tro tro to Post Office. Gotta be on the tro tro by 8:00 or I'll be late to class.
• Get off at Post Office and get on another tro tro to Circle. Get down at the Champions stop and walk to the AFS office where I meet my friend Jeneni.
• Jeneni and I go to sewing school at the YWCA from 9-12. Right now we're still practicing all of the basic stitches but this week we are going to start on our first dress!
• Go back to the AFS office from 12-1 for downtime to check email/facebook, take a nap, or work on anything else I need to do.
• At 1, leave to walk to the Circle tro tro station and buy some mango or pineapple on the way. Or if I'm not going to eat lunch at work, I will buy a bunch of fruit and groundnuts or coconut and make that my meal. It just depends on how I'm feeling usually.
• Get on a Korle-Bu tro tro and get down at White House (ironic). Arrive at BASICS by 2:00.
• Make my lesson plan, grade, fill out logs, and eat lunch with the rest of the staff if I haven't already eaten. Lunch can be waakye, pasta with sausage, banku with stew, kontombre with yam, jollof rice, or plain rice with stew. There's a post coming soon on Ghanaian food, I promise!
• At 3:00 the kids arrive and I help them with homework. Then they have 15 minutes of  meditation/naptime, then lunch (for many of them their only meal of the day), then we work on whatever I have prepared for 45 minutes.
• There are two activities everyday, which for my class of 3rd graders can be Arts and Crafts, Library, Computers, Discussion/Bible Study, Movies, Spelling Quiz, or Clubs. Sometimes I'm in charge of preparing a lesson for those activities or sometimes I'm with another teacher and we work on it together.
• At 6:30 the kids clean up and go home. I fill out my daily logs and walk to the tro tro with my friends Marcus and Joe. I get on a tro tro to Banana Inn and at around 7:30 pm I end the day walking the same route home that I walked that morning at 7:30 am.
• When I get home I shower and eat my dinner.
• My evening (from 8:30-9:30) always depends on whether the power is on or not. I can either sit outside our gate with my uncles/cousins/neighbors and chat or read or write or use the computer.
• By 9:30 I'm tired and ready to sleep!

I was thinking about the past twelve months, and it's amazing how many times my day-to-day life has changed this past year. It seems that I can't seem to do the same thing for more than a couple months. In America, over dinner or in the car, my mom always asks me to rate my day on a scale of 1-10 or to say the best thing and the worst thing that happened each day. Here, while walking home, I often think about those questions. If looked back on the answers recently I think my average day would be an 8 or a 9. My favorite moments are mostly in the small interactions I have with people on the tro tro or at school, or in breakthroughs with one of my students, or in learning something new. The important thing is that I am beyond happy with what my life is like right here, right now.