Ghana.

The University of Ghana, 2007.

I studied abroad in Ghana from August 2007 through December 2007. It was my first time abroad, and to go to West Africa was understandably dream-like. I had researched the country extensively but nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to experience.

I traveled to Ghana with the the International Student Exchange Program (http://www.isep.org/). This was a fantastic program which really aided in my assimilation to the culture and reduced culture shock a great deal for me. Unfortunately, it was expensive. I started looking into scholarships and found the Gilman Scholarship (http://www.iie.org//programs/gilman/index.html). This scholarship is really what made the ideas of studying abroad possible for me, so I ran with it.

In Ghana, I was able to not only learn about the culture as an outsider, but to become a part of it and integrate into the culture. I was taught how to prepare particular meals, how to interact in a different language, how to haggle with street venders, how to wash my own clothes, how to take bucket showers, how to eat with my fingers, how to tolerate heat, and more importantly, why it is that these experiences were so important.

I had three or four close friends in Ghana - Jennifer, Amelia, Halley, and Margot. I went most places with one or more of them. We traveled to the north of Ghana, to the middle, to the sides. We ourselves lived on the coast of Ghana in a city called Accra. An urban city. So no, there were no monkeys running around and I didn't ride elephants to class. Food was readily available and yes, there were grocery stores and restaurants.

There was construction everywhere. I mean...everywhere. I never fully understood what exactly a "developing country" was until I lived in Ghana. To see a country on the verge of an industrial revolution is so exciting - the convenience we enjoy in the United States is just beginning to become a reality in cities like Accra, in countries like Ghana, on continents like Africa. Of course, I couldn't help but be nervous for them. Knowing what I know now about what industrialization and capitalism does to a society, I see industrialization as a "necessary but impossible" entity.

I took directing class, a foreign policy class, an acting class, a Ghanaian literature class, as well as a class in the dialect of Twi. I certaintly learned a good deal from my schooling there, but perhaps most imporantly, I realized the implications that a colonizer/colonized identity of a country has on it teaching methods and its culture. More on that later.

Briefly, what I took away from Ghana is now inherent in my being - the way I think, the way I rationalize, the way I write and paint and act. Studying abroad (especially in non western european countries) will have a profound, inexpressable impact on who you are, and how you understand the world.