Day of Sun: Sunday

After all the traveling Amanda and I did on Saturday, (and all the money spent getting from one place to the next) we decided to check out the university's outdoor pool which is about a 15-20 minute walk from our dorm. 

As we left our dorm at about 10:30, it was quite overcast with some storm clouds starting to form.  We decided to venture to the pool anyway as the water would help cool us down from the heat.  When we arrived at the pool, there appeared to be a swim practice going on for kids, and there were a few older people practicing as well.  It was an olympic sized pool (I can't wait for the Olympics to start!!)  with the lanes being used by swimmers. It was still quite cloudy when we arrived at the pool, but we were determined to swim.  We had nothing to do besides lay down our towels and set up camp.  I read Janet Evanovich's To the Nines, and Amanda read The Girl who Played with Fire. 

As we were waiting and watching the swim meet and reading, three Australian girls came up to us and asked us how long we had been waiting.  We told them about 20 minutes, and they decided to find out more information about the wait time, and then sat near us as well.  They were quite nice and pleasant to be around.  They are here in Ghana for a year volunteering in the city, so they aren't staying at the University. 

Finally, around noon, the pool started to empty as swim practice was drawing to a close.  The pool was quite deep,  (having dive boards up to four stories tall!) but we are unsure as to how deep the pool actually is  there were no depth markers on the sides of pools like we have in the U.S.  We had to pay 4 cedis for a swim cap (these are NOT flattering), and 3 cedis to swim.  The Australians jumped into the pool before we did, and stayed in for a short amount of time.  Other Ghanaians showed up to swim from kids to elderly people.  There were also some Asian and White people at the pool, so it was a little more diverse than what we've seen since our planes landed here.  There were probably about 30-50 people at the pool. 

Amanda and I jumped into the pool and stayed in the water for about an hour.  It felt so good to have some relief from the heat (and today, the clouds!) and just be in the water.  Our dorm only has a shower (which doesn't drain that well), so there arent many bath opportunities.  We got out of the pool and Amanda told me that my back was starting to get pink.  I then dried off quite quickly, and then covered myself from head to toe with sunscreen.  We read for a while and then jumped back into the pool for a short amount of time.  At this point, I was paranoid about getting sunburned, so I kept applying sunscreen. 

We left around 3:30 in search of food.  All the cafeterias we tried were closed
 and so we stopped back at our dorm to shower.  When we returned to our dorm, we discovered that we didn't have any electricity.   We weren't sure how much water we had left because in the States, you usually don't have that much water left once power goes out.  I showered first real fast, and Amanda did the same.  We seemed to have water still!  After our showers, we started to turn pinker as our sunburns were starting to set in.  Aloe and lotion was applied along with taking some ibuprofen. 

We decided we really needed food and at 5, we walked about a half hour to a place off campus called Bonjour. There they had a pizza place, a chicken place, and an ice-cream place....all in one.  Amanda and I both ordered pizzas (their pizza portions here are quite small with respect to their larger portions of everything else.  A regular pizza is 10 cm, a Medium pizza is 20 cm, and I am not sure about the large pizza).  We both ate our Medium pizzas, and by this time it was dusk.  We decided to walk back to the dorms.

The mosquitos started to come out, but because it was breezy and we were constantly moving, I don't think either of us were bit by any (which is great because we didnt spray off with bug spray and we were already sunburned!).  It definitely turned quite dark on our walk home, and Amanda's cell phone had a torch light/flashlight which we used to help us see on some of the unpaved paths.  The walk home seemed to go by much faster than our walk to Bonjour, so that was a relief at least. 

When we returned home around 7, we were still without electricity.  I was washing my hair in the shower and we finally ran out of water.  We had nothing else to do but read (like we do most days, which is also why I am running out of books to read already!) with our booklights and our phones. 

There were three other dorms without power and so our compound was quiet--which is quite unusual as there always seems to be noise, talking, and singing going on.  Finally at 10:30, our electricity came back on and everyone within the four dorms in the compound cheered loudly....it was really cool.