Finding Sea Shells

This past weekend I went to a beach just outside of cape coast.  To get there I took a trotro to a junction where I walked about 20 min to the beach.  Walking down to the beach it looked perfect.  There were palm trees lining the golden beach which was perfectly clean.  The water bright blue and crashing on the beach and around rocks.  I immediately ran right in and swam for a half hour, it was so refreshing.  After swimming I decided to walk down the beach a ways.  I loved the feeling of the sand on my feet, it was literally a perfect beach.

As I walked I started to come across more and more trash on the beach and in the water, eventually there was so much that I could barely walk with out stepping on something.  In front of me was an old net twisted with a shirt with some princesses face on it, there was also a clock twisted up in it all.  Right next to my left foot there was an pink stuffed toy and the heel of an high heel shoe.  Behind me I had stepped over a huge pile of so many colors from cloths and countless other things all torn up and tangled togather.  A ways of to my right there was an old mattress, with many holes in it.  It was sad to me how quickly the beach that had been so clean had become so thrashed.  

As I kept walking I started looking more closely, and I found some of the most beautiful shells I have every seen amidst all the garbage.  If there was a big clump a trash usually there were more shells, because the trash kept the shells from being swept away by the water.

As I walked I started to think, that this beach was actually representing my exchange.  As I thought about it, it kept making more, and more sense.  The initial beach I had arrived at had been perfect, it was so clean and picturesque.  And my life in Alaska had been pretty much perfect, I had loving family and friends, and so much to be thankful for.  On that beach I had gone on the walk I search of an adventure just like I had when I decided to come to Ghana.  

This exchange has been very challenging for me, and more than once I just wanted to go back home, I just wanted life to be easy again.  So with the beach like my exchange I found lots of trash every where and longed to go back to that perfect beach.  But then I looked closer and I found beautiful sea shells expecially next to the largest pieces of garbage.  I've learned on this exchange that after the hardest days there is a beautiful reward.  What I learn here I could never have learned back home.  On the perfect beach there were no shells it was just sand.  So I found that even though something is harder, even when things just suck, you find that you gain invaluable things that you never could have if life had been perfect. 

So I guess my point with the beach is that even though this exchange is hard and it sometimes feels impossible, the shells make it worth it.  I want a life that is up and down not just steady, cause that's how I'm going to grow, learn, and love.  So right now I'm off to find some more sea shells in this exchange.