I am in Cape Coast today. I just came in this morning and plan to go back to site this afternoon. My site is going well. It's actually been cold in the mornings and sometimes in the evenings (yes, I said cold). One day last week I even put on wool socks and a sweater until around 10 in the morning. Please note the wool socks have moose on them from my mother and they were worn with my pink flip-flops (or charlies) - real cute. It's slowly getting warmer now and will soon get unbearably hot.

I spent Christmas with other PCV's. We had a trip planned but we had to change it so we hung out in Accra for a few days, on Christmas Eve we went to Ada, which is not too far from Accra but it's on the beach. We spent two nights there. It was nice. Urji (one of the other PCV's) and I hung out in the ocean on Christmas day. It was a lot of fun. We headed back to Accra and then Urji and I went to her site. We were only there two nights before going back to Accra. Urji's site is near Koforidua which has the bead market so we went to the bead market. I didn't go overboard this time buying beads, but it was a lot of fun. After going back to Accra for a day or so I came back out west and went to another PCV's site, Tim. He lives near Takoradi which is only an hour and a half or so west of Cape Coast. We hung out watching movies on his computer and cooking. It was a nice way to spend New Year's. I then went back to site.

Last weekend we had a funeral in my village. It was for three people, all from the same family (an old man and a woman and girl who died in a car accident). Funerals are huge events here and for my small village they are The event. They brought in a generator and huge speakers so there is music and announcements. On Sunday night the speakers were still around so I went to town and danced for a couple hours with the kids. It was so fun. Everyone was shocked that I was out dancing, especially at night. I felt like I was at a wedding with no date because I hung out with 6 to 10 year old girls. They were a lot of fun. Because it's been so dry everything is really dusty so at one point with everyone dancing it felt like there was a fog machine because the dust was so thick in the air.

I am looking forward to the end of this month. Peace Corps is putting on an HIV/AIDS bike ride in the upper Volta Region. I am going to go and am really excited about it. The area is suppossed to be beautiful. We will ride for five days going to different communities talking about HIV/AIDS education. I'm sure I will post afterward, with plenty to say.

Take care!