Happy Birthday to my host brother Connor!! He is 14 today and I can’t believe it. He is such a great kid and he already tells me about his women problems, so am ok with his aging as long as we can still talk;) All my love to you Con and to Mags, Seamus, Shawn and Dan!
When I graduated from Carroll, I got some of the neatest gifts from friends and family. Keepsakes to mark my career at Carroll and things to help me move forward. One of those was a journal from my dear friend Katie Loveland, who really, I blame entirely for this trip to Ghana. I received other ones at the time, but this one was my favorite. It had character, and she wrote in the cover, “Congratulations Nikki! Here’s to bigger and better adventures, mishaps and other mischief.”
Mmm hmm. That is exactly what I was after. I refused to write in it until I had something worth writing on its pages. Entry number one was written on August 7th on my 6:00 am flight to Minneapolis and then onto Chicago. I had planned this trip to see my cousins and two of my best friends, thanks to Uncle Buck, about two weeks before I left and got the airport at 5:32 am just in time to walk on to the plane because I could, which has become my mantra for my free bird year. Because I can- a mindset formed in retaliation out of the confines of 5 years of basketball. Immature? Oh yes, but I don’t have to be responsible right now and I just want to soak all that life has to over me right now.
I bring this up because I just wrote on its last page last night and in a haze of nostalgia, I began thumbing through its pages. 8 months ago , Ghana was only a dream, I was freaking out about my applications for school and plotting with my best friend’s soon-to-be fiancé on the logistics of marriage. I was moving all over the place and scheming up crazy trips to keep myself entertained. I said when I was at Carroll that it was the greatest time of my life, and it truly was, but so has the free bird year. I am determined that every phase I am in should be the best.
Though you have no idea how much time has passed since the last paragraph, I can tell you that it has been enough time to launch the bullet sequence. Too many stories! Too tired!
-Jonah just stopped by, which is why I am tired now after our lovely visit. He made me laugh so hard this morning because he did what no man, in any country, should ever do: argue with his wife about the date of their wedding anniversary. Like every other man, he was wrong and had to apologize to Aggie. It was quite humorous.
-Also hilarious was the guinea fowl that ran away from Bob today. It was a gift to us and was in a cage in the backyard awaiting its death, and Bob decided to give it water and it escaped. He chased it all over the place and went all the way out to Miss Ivy’s school, which is about a mile away! Go guinea go! This was quite the sight.
-We had three surgeries today: an exploratory operation to investigate a mass in a woman’s abdomen, a cystocele (the gynecological equivalent of a hernia as Dr. Jean says) and a imperforated hymen, which I will not bother explaining. I have never been more grossed out and fascinated all at the same time as I was today. For real. This is one for the books. I get the willies just thinking about what I saw. The mysterious mass ended up being an ovarian cyst the size of an overweight softball. It was certainly large, but there have been much bigger. This was the first surgery, and I did not think Dr. Jean would take the time to cut it open, so I was going to once surgery was complete. However, she was just as fascinated as I was and did the honors. This is so gross so consider yourself warned… when she punctured it, this mucous colored substance came squirting out. She sliced it in half and found, brace yourselves, TWO giant hairballs!! EW!! It was so disgusting, but so cool at the same time. They are rare, but it is called a teratoma. During differentiation in embryonic development, not all the hair cells migrated to the head region and some stayed in the abdomen. Dr. Jean has seen actual teeth and hairballs in the same teratoma before. Isn’t that crazy?! And yes, you ask like I didn’t, there are pictures and live video footage! I will not put it on facebook because you will gag as I nearly did. SO GROSS!!
-I have been getting these emails from this forum through ISU that the Class of 2013 has to participate in. There are five questions we all have to fill out to introduce ourselves and it gets sent out to everyone. It has been days and I hadn’t bothered to check it until last night…. 90% of them are married and I will be one of the babies in the class!! Ugh. I did share this with my friend Katie I mentioned earlier, and she did remind me that I probably had the same feelings about Carroll being 90% Catholic and look how that turned out! Also, some of my best friends in Helena are married couples and they are super fun. I just have to keep telling myself to have an open-mind here…
-I decided today that if I did not have a healthy, happy view of myself, I may have been launched into an identity crisis. I was told once I looked like a man and now today in the middle of another meaningless proposal, I was told I was “very beautiful and fat.” It takes a few seconds of deep-breathing to suppress the American and not be extremely offended by these statements, but eventually I always end up laughing. It’s funny! I was in surgery today, so I wasn’t in the lab however I poked my head in to see Nelson. We were talking when this little man, even shorter than the short guy with the Valentine’s proposal, starts in on this schpeel in Konkomba I do not understand. Nelson starts laughing and the guy keeps talking and am looking at Nelson with pleading eyes sending “you better explain all this” vibes. He said the man would like very much to marry me because of well, the reasons I just told you, and Nelson told the man not unless he brought him 10 guinea fowl and they both laughed their deep, Ghanaian laugh. Can you believe this? So not only am I fat, but I am only worth 10 guinea fowl. I just shake my head and marvel at the stark differences between the world I came from and the one I am living in now.
-Kristi is doing awesome. Tomorrow our goal is to walk outside, and I know she can do it. She moved her flight home up about 2 weeks, which I am selfishly really bummed about. She needs to rest at home, and I know I would feel the same if I was her. We will leave for Tamale next Wednesday. She will fly to Accra and I will ride the bus for 12 hours and we will meet back up, stay the night in the guest house I stayed in the first night I was in Accra, and she will fly to Texas the next day and I will go to a town called Kpandu for my grand adventure into the Volta. It will be a good time, but I will be sad she is not there.
-Remember my issues with the lizard in my room? I had a monumental break through last night when I saw Houdini crawling on our window and all around. Because the bugs have been so bad in our room lately, I was so relieved to have him there to eat them. So from now on, there is no scoreboard. Houdini and I are friends.
Bullet sequence terminated. It is bedtime. I hope you had a great day today sprinkled with humor!
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