The Adventure Has Begun—2010—Letter 1—1/11/10

We arrived safely last night about nine thirty as scheduled.  It took us about 30 hours from the time we left home until we arrived in Akropong last night.  The travel went well and British Air was very good.

We were greeted by several teachers with a school bus!  The bus has a big sign on it about Akuffo Tom School including a picture of our Board of Directors.  The temperature was 83 degrees at 9:30 at night so it was a bit of a change from New York. 

After we arrived home we discovered that one of our bags belonged to somebody else and that we were missing a bag.  It was almost 1am when we discovered this so we waited until this morning to cope.

This morning we went to school and were greeted by the faculty and the new administration.  They had a small welcoming meeting for us to introduce us to the many new teachers. 

The school looks GREAT!  It has been painted both inside and out and looks very nice.  All the wood clapboard buildings are now torn down.  At a later date we will send pictures.  After the ceremony the administrators took us around to all the classrooms to introduce us to the students.

At about 11am we left the school to meet Eric Arthur who had placed us in the school six years ago.  He was bringing another volunteer to the school and we could get a ride back to Accra to the airport with him.  Vera offered to go with Harry and Joan stayed at the house with Veronica, the new volunteer.

Eric drove us right to the airport where we were able to exchange the bags very easily.  The person whose bag we had was looking for it so they will contact him.  Hopefully, he has it by now.  Eric then drove us to a tro-tro station where we could get a van back to Akropong.  It was very, very croweded but it worked.

Joan got to know Veronica a bit.  She is from Canada and will be teaching Math at the school.  She is very nice and we will fill you in on her later.

We did not have electricity this afternoon until about six and we have dashed to the internet.  There also is no running water.  Things have not changed much in the past two years along that line.

We are very tired from the travel and the heat.  It will take several days to get caught up and to adjust to the weather.

We will close this off and head back to go to bed very soon.