Week of February 14

     So... I have made a decision that this blog is going to be like a journal of each week here which I hope is still interesting. Today I am writing on a Tuesday, but hopefully I will be able to get on a schedule of just writing on Sunday. We now have an internet connection, which is a flash drive that I plug into my laptop and then buy internet time on, so I will now be able to update this as I would have liked to since I've been in Ghana. It's the only place really where I know how to reach the people I want to let them know what is going on here. First things first though, uploading pictures onto the blog takes a lot of time and I'm already so far behind that I am feeling rather overwhelmed so this is the link to my facebook album and it has all the pictures up until now, ENJOY!!
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=17736&id=100001963982884&l=f0cea964ec
     As for this week, we were really excited about our new car and gave him a name and everything, it seemed to be going well and the driver was bringing in around 25 dollars a day which we thought was pretty good. However, just our luck the carborator stopped working, then the lights had to be fixed, then the gear box needed to be changed and the shocks and it is just taking way too much money, time and energy to fix so after all this hassle, we are now going to sell it for more than we bought it for and Paul's dad has a guy who can get us a more durable car (hopefully haha). 
     We are officially not getting our own apartment. Paul's parents sat us down on Sunday and explained that it is not safe for us to live on our own here because there are a lot of people who would like to harm us. They believe in Black Magic here and if people are jealous of you, they can use it to kill you apparently. Paul and my marriage is the first of it's kind in Hohoe, and probably most of Ghana so people are envious and that's why his parents are so worried. It's true though that everyowhere we walk in town people stare, whisper, point or call out to us so I think it's just better that we play it safe than sorry. We've fixed up Paul's room a lot though and are buying a table today and hopefully are getting shelves made this next week.
     We also bought bikes this last week, Paul picked mine up on Tuesday and on Wednesday it was stolen from the mechanic shop where he had ridden it. Supposedly it was a friend who took it and he was supposed to bring it back but after 5 days of waiting and trying to get a hold of the "friend," Paul surprised him at 6 this morning. The boy had apparently ran my bike into an old man which led to having the bike be seized by the police so Paul had to go with the boy and his mother to the police station. The police said to get the bike back, the boy has to pay 50 cedi which is around $35 but he doesn't have the money but supposedly the mom is going to find the money and call Paul when she has gone to collect the bike. Also, while at the police station, Paul saw the bike sales man who was still working on the bike Paul had purchased for himself. The bike guy was at the police station to report that his store had gotten broken into and all his bikes had been stolen, along with the bike that Paul had been waiting to pick up so we've now bought 2 bikes and have in our possession 0. I wish I was making this all up, but it's So true and So typical Ghana.
Other than that though, this last week was great, we were able to go to church in Ho (a town which is an hour and a half away) and the spirit was strong and we felt Great! Also, I was able to bake a cake from the cake mix that I brought from home haha only after Paul lit the oven with a match first on the top, and then the bottom. Also, Paul's dad has taken over on the visa process and he and the National Security Coordinator took a copy of our passports and marriage license to the Ambassador of the U.S. Embassy yesterday so we'll just have to see how long this whole thing takes, we are optimistic though that it won't be like years. In the meantime, we are really just enjoying our time together and making great memories :)