24th March

So I'm officially independent getting around Tamale now, and I really love it. It's kind of empowering to navigate this foreign place and foreign people all on my own. I come home feeling good about myself. And it's also a lot of fun. Literally every time I walk through town a school kid/street kid comes up to me and says they want to be my friend and shows me around a few places or just walks and talks with me. And other days random vendors ask me to come and sit with them, and we chat about their way of life and then mine, and then they answer my latest questions about the language. And most days I buy bananas from this same lady and it makes her soo excited that I'm her regular customer. She always excitedly says, "You be back tomorrow?" Then i say yes and she says "Ahhhh:-) Goooood"

Something else fun- I've learned that many people in Ghana aren't afraid to pick their nose in public - or even while having a conversation with someone. First I just thought this one lady sharing a taxi with me was uninhibited in her old age...but since then I've seen a handful of other people chatting while digging for gold, as they say. It makes me laugh.

In other news, I'm in love with a little boy at the orphanage. It freaks me out how quickly I've become attached to him...and I don't really know what it is. I think he's about three but he doesn't have a name yet because they recently found him, and he couldn't tell them one. He's really smiley and easy going and it's a serious struggle for me not to favor him. I even catch myself instinctively giving him more food, and then I have to correct cause I know its not right. He was really sick this weekend so it made him really cling to me and cry more often, and the ladies there were hitting him on the head for crying so much and it made Me want to cry. At the end of the day I have to leave without saying goodbye cause I'm afriad I'll cry then too. I know I should probably try to not be so attached but I don't know how.