Coming to a Close

Yep, I'm almost coming home! Today is my last day at the orphanage. I'm going back to Accra to stay at the volunteer house for a day. I met a girl named Kim at the volunteer house before I came to this orphanage. She was placed in the Volta Region, but we are going to try to go to the temple on Tuesday! After that we are going to see a movie, probably Harry Potter, and have a Western day.
This week was amazing. Martha and I went to the Volta Region. It is GORGEOUS! You know on the Lion King when they are singing Hakuna Matata and Timon and Pumba show Simba where they live; when they pull the giant leaf back and it shows green mountains with really cool trees and rivers running through it. Thats what it looked like. It was unreal. Things you only read about or see on movies. I tried to take pictures, but got so frustrated because they dont even come close to doing its justice.
The first thing we did there were the caves. It was crazy! The coolest hike I've ever been on in my life and probably will ever go on. Once we got to the top of the mountain we started going through all these trees, vines, and rocks. There were ropes attached to the rocks that we had to hold onto because it was literally up and down, and side to side. I have NO idea how our tour guide did the whole thing in flip flops...I took a little stumble and was wearing my Chacos! No harm done though, just a scrape or two. So these "caves" werent really caves; more like tunnels, but it was still amazing. We came to one of the tunnels and the tour guide told me to stick my head in. As I did a bat came flying straight for my face!! I about had a heart attack. It then got more scary as she told us we had to go through the bat infested tunnel... it was fine though. Once we started to go through, they flew out the other way.
The next day we did the waterfalls. Also something that only happens in movies or a book. We took a 45 minute walk through the jungle to get to the water falls. Once we got there we swam at the base of it (dont worry this water was clean and we didnt get any parasites) It was unbelieveable! We went right under the waterfall! It was like going right into a vapor storm and we had to start walking backwards because we couldnt see a thing. The water felt like hail on your back, it was really strong. Definately worth it though. Then as we were coming out all these bats flew up in the air. Literally hundreds of them; you could barely see the sky. Then as we looked more closley at the cliffs, they were COVERED in bats! Thousands and thousands of bats!
After the falls, we went to the monkey sanctuary. To get there we had to take a dirt bike in. It was pretty funny with trying to put our driver, Martha and I, and our bag on it in one trip. Once we got there I've never seen so many monkeys before! They were running around, jumping on the roof of the office, and swinging from tree to tree! On the tour we bought bananas and fed the monkeys! You would hold a banana in your hand and a monkey would come up, peel it, then eat it from you. They were so funny!
When we came home all the kids saw us and yelled "They're back!!" They ran to us and helped us with our bags. Thats when I realized I am really really going to miss them. My last night here was hard....The kids are so awesome. We had a "dance party" with them and bought them all fanmilks. Then Romeo fell asleep on my lap. I'm excited to come home, but I wish I could stay; its bittersweet. The time sometimes felt like I was here for ages and would never leave, but overall it went by so fast. It was definately an amazing experience that I'll never forget.
Well, I leave the orphanage in a matter of hours now. I need to go finish packing and getting everything ready. Thanks for following this while I've been here. I'll see yall in a couple days!

Only in Africa

Things are going well here in Africa. We took the twenty oldest orphans to the beach last weekend! It was awesome! Even though the whole thing was a disaster it was a blast. We got there fairly alright, but our driver was two hours late picking us up. When he finally got there his van broke down. So we took about 6 different taxi trips to get all the kids to the next station. Once we got there THE NICEST man paid for a van to get us all home safely. So everything all worked out in the end. I did get food poisoning out of the whole ordeal though. We bought all the kids dinner and sure enough, eight hours later, my insides were in the Africa jungle. Bleh....
I forgot to mention some other things that happend a few weeks ago. One of the best nights I've had here! One of the volunteers had The Lion King on her laptop so we projected it in the computer lab and showed it to all the kids. They LOVED it! They were clapping, cheering, and giggling through the whole thing. Especially at the end when Simba beats Scar. It was so cute.
Another really cool thing was we had "The Big Clean". All the volunteers pitched in some money to buy cleaning supplies and we had a massive cleaning day. We only cleaned the dinning hall and kitchen, but it took a good three or four hours. Probably the dirtiest thing I've ever seen in my life. We scrubbed until our arms were sore. We scrubbed down all the walls, mopped the very very dirty floor, got all the spiders out of there, and sanitized all the tables. You wouldn't believe the dirt and many many spiders we cleaned out of there. It was really good to help them all like that though. They kept thanking us for our hardwork. It was very rewarding.
Well, my time is short and I'm leaving here soon. This might be my last entry...Until then though, I'll see ya'll in about a week!