Long time, no posting.

Seems like I have forgotten about my blog, but I have not! I have been busy lately with my work at the hospital and the traveling I have been doing on the weekends, so the blog has suffered! As of today, the strike that the professors have been on has passed, and classes are now resuming as normal. We didn't have classes for about a week, then the International Programs Office set up classes specifically for the international students with our professors to ensure that we got credit for our classes if the strike did not end up passing. Now things are still messy because the class is in two different places, but that is someone else's job to figure out, not mine! I am just glad that everything is going to proceed as normal and that everyone will get credit for the semester, Ghanaian and international.

My work at the hospital continues to be the most rewarding part of my stay here. I am just grateful for the opportunity to be able to see and experience so many things I would never be able to in the US. Part of it is due to less stringent laws regarding students in a hospital, patient confidentiality...etc. The other part is due to Ghana having naturally different medical issues than the US, so it has been great to learn about completely different things. Culturally, the attitude towards medical treatment here is different. Patients in a public hospital don't ask questions or second-guess a doctor, ever. They go to the hospital because they are sick and expect to leave when they are better. The who, how, why, what does not really matter to them. They don't ask for explanations about treatment options or anything like that. In turn, the patients are not asked about their preferences. They are not even asked if a student (me) can be present while they deliver a baby. Some of the things were shocking at first, but I have gotten used to them to some extent, accepted that bad or good, it is the way it is and I am not in a position to change it.

Other than all of that, things have been going great! The weather is starting to get sunnier as the dry season approaches and mangoes are starting to appear at the markets! I have spent the last 3 weekends traveling, so I think I will stay close to home this weekend to get some sleep and I have schoolwork I need to catch up on. Life is good. More postings will be coming about the trips I have taken.