Travel days and arrival

      The last few days have been filled with lots of travel and little sleep.  For me it all started on the 5th of September when me, my family and Tim drove out of McCarthy to Anchorage. We had wanted to leave early but in typical McCarthy fashion we ended up moving two large boulders for about an hour and a half before heading out.  We stopped along the way and said good bye to some good friends.  Owen and I drove with Tim which was a lot of fun, we listened to great music and ate lots of food for our 8 hour trip.  

      On the 6th which was also the day I was leaving AK I woke up early to be with dad before he went to work.  For the rest of the morning it was doing laundry, running around the house with mom making sure I had every thing I needed. At noon dad came home early from work to spend the rest of the day with me.  I finished up packing around 2 and then we went and picked Owen up from school.  After finally getting the whole family together including my 2 dogs we went to baskin robins for my pre departure ice cream.  After ice cream at around 3:15 we headed to the airport with all my stuff.  I had to say good bye to my puppies in the parking garage, which was probably the most emotional part of the day.  After checking my bag we took lots of pictures and I gave lots of hugs to all my family members, surprisingly no body cried at least as far as I know.  Finally around 3:45 I new I must go so I said my final good byes and headed through security to my first flight.  My flight from anchorage was univentful and right when I arrived in Seatle I boarded my plane to New York.  

       I finally arrived in New York at 6am but actually 2am Alaska time.  Once on the ground I got my luggage and then found my way to where the hotel shuttles pick you up.  I caught my shuttle to the crown plaza which was where the pre departure orientation was taking place.  When I arrived at the hotel none of the AFS staff where there so I sat in the lobby for about two hours trying not to fall asleep.  Finally some one came and gave me a room, once I got to my room I was so exaughsted that I collapsed in to bed and did not wake up for many hours.  After my refreshing nap I went to lunch where I met many kids who were going to places like Italy, Spain, Panama, Argentina, Paraguay, and Egypt.  Later at dinner I met up with all the other kids going to Ghana, there were more than when we last met because 4 of the kids who had been chosen to go Turkey where with us because going to Turkey had became to dangerous.  The next day we did group activities in the morning.  Then at 1pm the Ghana group and the Italian group got on a bus and headed to the airport.  We had a chaperone who was travling all the way to Ghana with us, so with him we got through security then waited at our terminal for 4 hours!  At 5:30 we got on our plane and took off.  We arrived the next morning in Ghana after a 10 hour flight in which I did not sleep at all, and also we had some pretty scary turbulence that made me cry in fear but in the end all was well.

       Once we arrived we got our luggage and headed out.  Some AFS volunteers picked us up and we drove about 1 hour to our hostel on the way we saw goats and chickens in the road.  We saw so many people selling things all over the streets and almost all of them carried their goods on their heads with ease.  We finally made it to our hostel and ate our first and very delicious Ghanaian meal (it was a little spicy though).  We were all so glad to finally make it to our exchange program.