Sunday, June 14, 2009

Dirty laundry and crabs

Sunday, June 14 - Ghana Adventure Day 9
More of today's photos in slideshow section 2 - click HERE to view.
(back-dated post, completed on July 19)

I was so exhausted after yesterday! (Plus I stayed up until about 2 am cross-stitching…) The girls did a great job playing quietly. I spent a while teaching them to cross-stitch. Akos enjoys it, but doesn’t quite have the hang of it yet. I'm not sure how to explain the concept of “diagonal” to her.

Next, we sorted out our dirty laundry. Some I am going to splurge on and have the hotel take care of. Mainly, I did that with the things that would take a long time to dry. The rest I washed in the sink – I used shampoo instead of my laundry soap sheets this time – it worked much better. We have a large shower, so we threw the soapy clothes in the shower, the girls stripped down and rinsed the clothes for me, then took a shower. I have clothes strung all over the place in here!

Akos didn’t want to go to the pool or do anything this afternoon. I held her for a while, but she wouldn’t tell me what was wrong or what she wanted. She wore a swimsuit, but wouldn’t get in. She just watched a video on my iPhone. Then I asked if she wanted to go to the beach and catch crabs. She nodded. So, off we went, and from then on, everything was great. We caught a couple of little crabs, and the girls would scream whenever the crabs moved. It was so funny.

Later, we went back to the pool, and the girls were the only ones there. Akos was throwing diving balls into the pool for Lydia, then I noticed she had gotten in, down to the second step. Now, she says she will swim tomorrow with her vest and with me. ☺

Interestingly, when we were at the beach, Akos said you never go to the beach on Tuesdays. A cultural thing, I’m sure – I asked if the waves were too rough on Tuesdays, and she nodded.

We had dinner as usual – I had red-red again – yummy! Lydia and Akos both tried the fried plantains – Akos liked them, and Lydia loved them! We had a big problem, though – Akos seems to only want to eat rice, no meat or other protein. She asked for chicken instead of sausage (hot dog) tonight, then wouldn’t even try one bite. I told her that she needed to eat some of her chicken, and she shook her head vigorously. I got firmer with her, and eventually separated out just about a tablespoon worth of chicken and said that she could eat more rice after she ate just that little bit. We had some emotional struggling that was way out of proportion, but I finally helped her calm down, and we had a good night. She's just had so much change to deal with all of a sudden - I have to expect some ups and downs, and hope that the downs will become easier and less frequent in time.

Till tomorrow...
Jeanie

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