Akwaaba HOME

So I'm home, and I must say, I feel torn. I'm happy to be home and everyone was so inviting, yet I still MISS Ghana. Now looking back, I wish I could have stayed an extra couple of days...::sigh:: But now that I'm back, it's the return to the daily grind. Getting ready for my last semester of coursework is definitely something great to come home to, and I can't believe that I've made it this far. I have to admit, I am PROUD of myself. Here are my final thoughts on our Ghana intersession abroad:

I was hoping that the course would have been a little more disability focused, instead of just thinking about accessibility. Perhaps actually spending a day or two volunteering at local organizations that we visited (Veterans' Rehab Hospital or Autism Center). That would have definitely made our visit more purposeful and given us a great deal of experience to bring back home with us. I appreciated the fact that after a while, accessibility was kind of engrained in our minds, everywhere we went we thought about whether or not Ghanaians with disabilities would be able to have adequate access. It was nice to think about life using another's perspective.

I appreciated all of the cultural components to this trip, it was nice to learn so much on traditional medicine, family structures, religion, music and dance. It would have been hard to leave these components out of this course, because Ghana wouldn't be the same without them.

Adequate free time is always nice in a foreign country, just to take a day or two and go venture off on our own to a place of our choice, or maybe back to a place we had already visited. After all, this trip was a little expensive, but we had little freedom and even less leisure time to do what we wanted.

A longer stay perhaps could have compensated for less free time, I couldn't believe that we did not even stay a full two weeks in such an extraordinary country! That's a real bummer!

Afia Beach Hotel was a great place for us to stay, the accomodations were very pleasant, as was the staff there. I was just hoping for more of a "student experience," such as staying at NYU Accra campus. But I do understand the undergraduates were coming in and no one should be inconvenienced, although I did feel for the money that we pay for the short amount of time we stay in Ghana, we should have been at least considered this option.

Finally, about this 10 page paper! I understand this is a course and coursework is required, but I think there should be a choice to either write a paper or complete a journal, or maybe a shorter paper, perhaps 5 pages. I just feel so rushed to complete the coursework and sometimes feel we are not very prepared to write such a paper.