not completely about food, but mostly.

It’s Zahava. We’re a week into the semester and slowly but shortly learning [from our mistakes]. An annoying proportion of things we try to do end up being complete disasters.

1) Food the first shabbos. We made boiled plantains and Israeli salad. Then we bought canned curried vegetables and canned spaghetti in tomato sauce. We wanted to make bread before shabbos, but we settled with matza. We didn’t have a fridge, so the plantains went bad by lunch. The dressing we bought for the Israeli salad was disgusting. The canned vegetables were decent, but the spaghetti was horrid. We had wanted to make bread on Thursday, but the only kosher yeast in the store was for making beer. We brought 6 boxes of matza: three egg matza and three flavored non-egg matza. Fun fun- all the egg matza boxes broke in transport. So we are running lower on matza than we thought.

2) The “yamballs.” In Rivky’s last post, she mentions that we made yamballs for this shabbos. I would just like to finish the story. First, we thought we were buying a yam (synonymous with sweet potato). Then, when making the batter, we realized we had bought a potato. We kept saying things like, “Oh. This is really good, but it would be even better with yams.” We thought we were such idiots and had bought the wrong vegetable. Then, turns out that in Ghana potatoes are called yams! So we did everything right the whole time! Footnote: we decided that they would actually better with sweet potatoes, so next time we make yamballs, we’re going to use sweet potato.

3) The fridge situation. I hesitate a little before posting this story because I fear that it is not finished yet. Here is the situation as of now. The day after we arrived in the country, we told a guy that we needed a fridge. Yeah, yeah, you’ll get one. We said we needed one before shabbos. He said we could get one by Friday. Great. Friday comes, and he tells us we will get one on Saturday. Saturday comes, and he tells us between 9 and 10am on Monday. That time didn’t work for any of us, so we asked if later in the day was okay. He doesn’t speak English so he reassured us that he will come at 9am. All four of us (Rivky, Yamit, Yamit’s roommate, and I) were planning on going to a class at 9:30am on Monday, so that was a little annoying. Odds are I wouldn’t be staying in the class, so I volunteered to wait here for the fridge. We called him at 9am on Monday to double check that he was actually coming, and he said he was coming at 3pm. I missed the class anyway. 3pm called him, and he said he was picking it up right then. 7pm he showed up in our suite with a “fridge” and charged us C5 more than the price we agreed on. Tuesday afternoon we notice it is freezing our all our food. There is no dial to turn down the temperature; it is simply a freezer. We told him on Wednesday. He brought us a new fridge today. It smelled horrible, so after shabbos, the first thing we did was clean the whole thing out. It took about an hour, but it looks and smells much better. It’s been on for about four hours. The freezer is working fine, but the fridge part seems to be broken. To be continued.

4) Classes. Classes started last week, and I have no idea what I’m taking yet. Besides Twi, I’m currently signed up for 11 classes. I already decided I’m dropping 3 of them. I went to the other 8. Out of those 8, only 2 of the professors even showed up to the first class. The final exam schedule doesn’t come out until later this week, so I won’t know about shabbos finals until then, so I can’t even know of the 8 classes which I have to drop. Ahh! How is it possible to really not know what classes you’re taking over a week into the semester?!

5) Showering. We’re getting used to bucket-showers. Once this week I wasn’t able to take a shower in over 24 hours. I have never felt more disgusting in my life.

6) Electricity. Last night, around 10pm, we’re sitting in our common room, and all of the sudden the light and the ceiling fan go out. The fans in the bedrooms are still working, and the electricity in every other suite in every other room in the building is still working. Mickey (our madrich/counselor/21-tear-old Ghanaian student) was sitting there with us. He said we might have gone over our monthly allowance. Ahhhh! No way!

Right now Yamit is taking a bucket shower in a dark bathroom. We had oatmeal for dinner.