Recently I needed to take an English exam to apply for grad school. There are quite a few options but I chose the TOEFL simply because it is the most famous test with most preparation material available. If you are in the same situation, you should seriously consider to take the IELTS test instead. Both have advantages and disadvantages.
For TOEFL, especially if you have not much preparation time (less than 1 week), I found out that following a few tips will help you a lot in succeeding:
1. In the TOEFL, 10 % of your success is based on your actual English skills, 90 % is based on your preparation on the specific tasks in the TOEFL. The good news: All tasks in the TOEFL follow exactly the same patterns all over again. Prepare exactly for these tasks. Don't spend even a second trying to improve your overall English skills or practicing tasks that are not part of the actual TOEFL test.
2. The TOEFL consists of four sections, Reading, Listening, Speaking and Writing, all worth 30 points of your score. Focus on 2 sections you are weak in and spend most of your time practising these ones. E.g. my weak parts were reading and speaking.
3. Use the following instructions for each of the sections:
- Writing:
This section consists of a few texts that you need to understand in order to answer multiple choice questions. Don't read the full text, you won't have time for it! Instead, read only the first sentence of each paragraph and the first and last sentence of the last paragraph. Now you will be able to understand the big picture of the text and can start attacking the questions. For each question, you usually will need to read 5-7 lines.
- Listening:
Nothing special here, just practise tons of example tasks (see my literature recommendations in the end).
- Speaking:
Most people say this is the most difficult one. It contains of 6 different questions. My personal advice here: Watch these videos made by a US teacher and you will get a decent score. There are videos for each of the 6 questions. As for preparation, write down the templates this guy suggests in his videos and master them.
- Writing:
There are extremely helpful templates that you can memorize and use in the actual test. Again, watch the videos for this. Important detail: Your essay should have at least 350 words for question 1 and 450 words for question 2 in oder to get full score.
4. Most importantly, use the right material. It doesn't make sense to practise tasks that don't show up in the acual test. The best material I found was the following. You can find it all online or in your local library.
Must have
- As so often nowadays, free online ressources tend to get more useful than official books. For the speaking and writing sessions, definitely watch these videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/NoteFulldotcom . More ressources are available on the according website.
- The Princeton Review - Cracking the TOEFL iBT 2009 Edition. By far the best book I've found, with excellent tips for reading and writing section.
- ETS - TOEFL iBT: The Official ETS Study Guide. Some useful tips, but you'll mainly want to use this for the original practise tests. (you should avoid Kaplan's well-known book, as it doesn't use original TOEFL tasks and is therefore useless in most parts)
Nice to have
- Barron's TOEFL iBT Internet-Based Test, 12th Edition. Get the CD with 7 full TOEFL tests to practice. Note that Speaking Questions 4 and 6 as well as Writing Question 1 are NOT original, skip those questions!
- TOEFL Vocabulary AudioLearn. Might be helpful for memorizing the specific words for Reading and Listening section.
5. Stay calm. Even if you have little time, you will be able to get a reasonable score if you stick to the above advice. So no worries and start practicing today! Good luck :)
Since Friday I'm off to visit my good friend Yuki a second time in Laos and then take a look at Vietnam. The time with Yuki is always a great fun, this time we were at a trade fair, where Yuki and his colleages had a booth for their ODOP products.
Yuki is hungry as hell and kills his fried icecream.
Actually what I wanna talk about is one of the stalls there that catched our attention. It was a so called Wheel of Fortune, a gambling thing. Gambling is in Laos quite popular, and it used to be in Thailand too, until it was forbidden and now you will find there neither casinos nor are there any kinds of card games allowed at all.
On this trade fair there were a couple of these gambling games, mostly quite unfair for the ones who play. In avarage you would lose 50% of your money. An exeption seemed to be the Wheel of Fortune, the chances to win seemed here even, if not favorable for the players (it's hard to tell because it is handmade as you see on the picture and so the sizes of the fields are not exactly identical)
The unfortunate Wheel of Fortune.
The rules of the game are simple: First you put any amount of money on one of the areas surrounding the inner wheel. You can put as little as 500 Kip (5 Eurocent), no problem. Then you make the wheel rotate and wait until it gets slower and is finally stopped by the metallic entity you see on the left of the wheel. Now you win or lose depending on which part of the wheel the metallic entity hits. E.g. it hits the red part and you have 1.000 Kip on red, you will get 20.000 Kip (1 x 20). If it hits one of those nice animals, crab or spider, you get the amount you put in multiplied by the number of crabs or spiders drawn on the part of the wheel.
As both Yuki and I have a weakness for all sorts of games, we started playing. Yuki always put his money on both of the animals, whereas I distributed it between red or yellow and one animal. And we lost, and lost... and lost. Yuki won the first round around 4.000 Kip and lost after that literally every round. I won in one round 20.000 Kip, but lost even more often before and after. There were other people losing money as well, but one guy won conspicuously often. He made at least 4 times 20.000 Kip and seem to be really lucky, after all. As both Yuki and I were about to lose all our cash and became suspicious about what was going on, suddenly a policeman showed up, took all the cash in the game and pulled the game master away. For a moment I was too perplex to react quickly, I was also not even sure if we actually had done something officially illegal (which was of course not).
At the moment I realized that the game was a scam and the wheel was rigged, it was too late and both policeman and game master were gone with the wind and had most likely devided the cash (I'm sure the guy had some sort of deal with the police). The other guy who won unnaturally much must have been his partner in order to attract new customers. We as foreigners were of course their main targets. Ashamed and defeated we still try to figure out how they could rig the wheel, since we had pulled it ourselves and we lost anyway. Was it a magnet, some sort of rope under the board? My tipp is that the metallic entity could be actually moved back and forth by a very thin transparent rope and if it's moved one milimeter it will change the outcome of the game and it can't possibly be seen by the human eye. This could have been done by the game master himself even though we watched him closely (he hardly needs to move). Whatever, if you have any other suggestion on how it might have worked please drop a comment!
Truck-Hitchhiking
Actually traveling in Laos is pretty easy and comfortable. However, sometimes it doesn't work out the way you planned.
After visiting Yuki in Savannakhet, I went on to the South of Loas, in a city called Pakse. I wanted to move on already the next day, so I asked the friendly lady at the bus station for a ticket to Hue, Vietnam tomorrow evening. She wrote it herself with date and time, I paid, everyting fine I thought.
Well, the next day I enjoyed a beautiful day motorcycling around Pakse to the largest waterfall in Laos (120 meter) and another even nicer one. Later in the day I watched the amazing What Phou Champasak, which is since 2001 an UNESCO world heritage side and definitely worth a trip, even if you are not into old temples.
Nice waterfall (forgot the name -_-)
Enoying Loas noodle soup with 2 randomly met people. By the way, the noodle soup in Laos is called Foe and extremely delicious. The variety in Thailand is greater though.
By ferry across the river Mekong.
Jesus, what a view! On the top of Wat Phou.
On my way back to Pakse by motorcycle. The road was aweful, I run out of gasoline and was late as well. In the end I arrived exactly on time 6.30 pm and got the next surpise...
In the evening 6.30 pm I arrived at the bus station to start over to Vietnam, but there was no bus at all and the same lady that had written me the ticket simply told me there were no bus the whole day, I had to wait until tomorrow.She was obviously sorry for it, but that didn’t help me very much. It just screwed my whole travel plans and my schedule is quite tight as 4 days for Vietnam and back is clearly not a base for relaxed traveling anyway.
So what to do next? I decided to go the whole hog and positioned myself at the street nearby and try hitchhiking. Unfortunately, it is already dark in Loas at 6.30 pm and Loas is not really the country where people go for a ride after noon. In other words, the street was completely empty. My last hope was a convoy of 2 trucks standing not too far away. And believe it or not, they were on their way to Vietnam! After a short discussion, they agreed to give me a lift to the Laos-Vietnam border for 80.000 Kip (around 8 Euro, bus was 15). Having said that we talk about a ride of more than 400 km on a Laos road this is a reasonable price and I didn't have much of a choice anyway. These guys were a little bit wary about a foreigner going alone to Vietnam and even asked for my passport but in the end we started the whole thing and I was sitting in the cockpit of the first truck between two truck drivers.
So what was the journey like? I can say it was not the most comfortable one in my life. In total, we needed more than 15 hours and the first couple of hours (in fact until 8 am next day) I felt somewhat bad about it.for a few reasons.
First, these truck drivers were quite rough persons in general. They smoked literally one cigarette every ten minutes and used the usually pretty soft sounding Lao language as if they wanted to kill some one with each sentence. One guy was quite silent and looked almost always sad or angry, the other one rather talkative and kept laughing insanely. We also had a major problem with communication, in fact I barely understood a word. Actually I don't have many language problems in Laos, because I speak Thai now fairly well and most people in Laos can speak Thai fluently. However, these two truck drivers didn't speak any Thai at all (not to mention English of course). Since Laos and Thai languages are similar (comparable to German / Dutch I guess) I could catch some phrases and words but our conversation was very limited to short small talks. I often heard the word "farang" in their conversations, which means "Westerner" so they obviously chatted about me. Would that now mean, "Let's knock this arrogant Farang out, take all cash and everything else and drop him off at the next corner?" At least it sounded like thtat, so I was a bit worried.
Second, every hour we were stopped by police or some mysterious guys and after shorter or longer discussion we had to pay a smaller or greater fee, spreading from 5.000 Kip to 50.000 Kip. So I started to wonder if these guys really transported coffee or drugs, women or anything like that.
Finally this truck was of course not quite a VIP bus and my legroom reminded me strongly on the public transport in Ghana..
Anyway exhausted by traveling I slept a good time like a baby. We also made a 3 hours break at a spot where even a hammock (Haengematte) was available.
This was my sleeping place from 1 to 4 am. It wasn't as nice as it look like though, because loads of insects kept disturbing my sleep. By the way sorry for not taking more pictures, I didn't want to offend my drivers too much..
On one of our countless payoff-stops. We didn't cross a village larger than 20 houses on our whole way. Mostly we were surrounded by flat land.
Another 4 hours later, now 8 am in the next morning we reached a track spot with restaurant, actually it was more of a woodern lodge but anyway we got good soup and extremely strong Vietnamese coffee as well as Lao whiskey to start the day.
From here, it started to be more fun, because the other driver who was only 23 and could speak Thai fluently joined us in our truck. With him as translater, I leaned quite a few interesting things:
- These drivers weren't as dodgy as they seemed to me first, but actually quite friendly and fun. We became best friends, exchanged phone numbers and in the end I didn't even have to pay the 80.000 Kip fee.
- In fact, they exported a coffee called Arabica, which is very common in the area around Pakse. Popular and expensive as well. Police and land owners keep bothering all truck drivers in Laos (not in Vietnam at all) and get them to pay, regardless if their documents are correct or not. The amount you'll pay depends on your bargaining skills, your time and your patience.
- I learned my first Vietnamese words, starting with "Doo Ma" which means as much as "Fuck your mother". However, they demanded that this phrase is not offensive at all and everyone uses it over there.
- In the truck drivers' opinion all Vietnamese people are unfriendly and mean.
Anyways, at 10.30 a.m. we reached the border crossing named Lao Bao, drank a nice coffee and Red Bull and had to say a sad goodbye. Five minutes later I was ripped off by the ladies that exchange money, because I didn't know the exact rates, but at least I got my stamp for Vietnam and could work my way further to Hue, where I am now.
Eventually best friends: Enjoying a last coffee and Red Bull with my truck drivers.
I'm looking forward to a good shower and todays party can start I guess!
Even after almost a full year in Thailand there are lots of beautiful spots to discover. Together with the interns Emily und Koen (America and Belgium) plus two friends of Khwan, Tan and Of, we enjoyed a weekend in the West of Thailand, near the border to Burma.
Highligths:
Huge graveyard on our way to the waterfalls. Thousands of British, Australian and Dutch soldiers were killed by the Japanese during their WW2 invasion.
Hot springs. The water in these basins is REALLY hot, after 10 minutes you’ll feel like dying, burning or sleeping. Fortunately nearby there was cold river to cool down.
We spent the night on a ferry and had truly delicious food for dinner, unforgettable!! And…..into the water!
Khwan looks like enjoying, doesn’t she..
Random pics
Tuesdays and Thursdays: Board gaming in the Mc Donalds near Chit Lom, huge fun even though mostly in Thai. These gamers seem to have played every single game ever produced, in every single edition.
Visiting Coca Cola Thailand together with Andy.
Huh?! Who’s that? Visit from Muenster, Germany: Basti, Nat’s boyfriend and Liza, fresh from Germany as well. After eating delicious Guai Diau, we headed over to an indie film festival. If you get bored in Bangkok, you are boring!
Wojciech, one of our interns from Poland after a bad motorcycle accident in the hospital.
One of our last meals in my old messy home. Now I live nearer to the city center and it has been taken over by 2 Indians and a Polish guy..
10 days conference in Hyderabed, India, with 700 delegates from more then 100 (!) countries. My roommates were from Malysia, Tanzania and Kenya. One highlight: Global village, all countries presented themselves at a booth and showed a typical performance.
Sightseeing in Hyderabad later on. Yet more crowded then Bangkok, most of the inhabitants are Muslims, celebrating Ramadhan in the picture. (Edit: Hyderabad expert Dave just told me that this is bullshit: The major religion is Hinudism, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyderabad,_India#Demographics)
Mumbai from the airplane.
With Khwan at the amazing Kao Yai national park. We saw not only monkeys, deers and elephants, but also a huge cobra that seemed to be quite angry and ready to bite. Luckily we could start the motorcycle quickly enough to escape!!
Yet another visa-run to Loas. I visited my Japanese friend Yuki there who used to work in AIESEC Thailand and works now for ODOP (one district one product). One example of a product is this delicious snail on the picture, supposed to taste great!
Recently I went to Loei, in the North of Thailand, on a 7 days mediation retreat. It was an experience I really don’t wanna miss. Even though we had to wake up 5 am and couldn’t eat at all after 12 pm!! The day included 4 hours of self development sessions and 5 hours of meditation. Compared to others this was quite a soft retreat (a friend from Alaska told me he was on a 10 days retreat with 10 hours mediation a day and complete silence!) . The area was in a peaceful valley surrounded by pure nature. We had two teaching and mentoring monks from the Netherlands and UK (both could speak Thai fluently. Believe it or not since then I’ve been meditating every day! You should try it out, it’s a nice way to attain happiness ;)
With Khun Ittipat, a thoughtful and empowering friend
Sometimes I ask myself, why am I here? I am 24 years old now and work full time in a student organization gaining a ridiculous low amount of money. My work is only rudimentally connected to my field of studies and I feel lost sometimes.
So what is the reason I'm still here?
I have the chance to live a part of my life in the most beautiful country in the world and spend time with the most beautiful girl in the world.
My team, Palita, Charmy, Zong and Dessy. Some of the brightest and greatest people I've ever met. I enjoy working with you together.
I'm young and already lead and manage an organization with 200 people.
I know people from literally all over the world. Never underestimate the power of networking.
I had the chance to shape the 5-years future of an organization together with 700 people from more than 100 countries.
I meet and negotiate with CEOs from the largest multinationals as part of my daily work.
I opened my mind and discovered perspectives I never even dreamt of one year ago. I discover myself and look in the future.
Life is full of choices. I will never regret any choice I made. Spending time for helping other people can never be a mistake.
Thank you for all people supporting me and helping me to be now where I am. In Thailand, in Germany, in Ghana and in other parts of the world. Family and friends is what matters the most to me.
In spite of everything: I miss Germany. I miss home. I miss my old and best friends. Not even 100 days and I will see you guys again. I cannot wait.
already 2.5 months back in Thailand! In June I started my 1-year term at AIESEC Thailand, a quite insane experience so far. As at the last time, scroll down to look at the pictures, if you are bored with reading exciting stories ;)
Clashes in Bangkok
Right after arriving, I got to know one of the saddest chapters in the Thai history. You might have heard about the conflict in the TV. Basically there are two policital competitors in Thailand, called Yellow Shirts and Red Shirts. The Yellow Shirts support currently the government, while the Red Shirts wanted to overturn the government in the last months.
For weeks, the red shirts blocked the Thanon Ratchadamri, one of the biggest and most important street in Bangkok and claimed the area as law-free zone. To keep away police and army, they built a wall of wheels and woodern sticks. From this base they organized protests that ended in many cases bloody, like one in Silom (inner city): two granades were thrown at a subway station right at noon, 2 people died.
Quite scary for us, since our office is a 5 minutes walk away from the closed area and on our way to the office we passed army with machine guns and protestors against the red shirts selling Thai flags, pipes etc. At the end of May the government stormed the law-free area with army forces. As a result the violence escalated and the red shirts occupied several places in Bangkok and burned down the Central World, one of the largest Shopping Mall right in the center of Bangkok. At this time there was a national curfew and no one of us was allowed to leave our houses before 9 pm.
Central World after the clashes.
Center One burned down as well.
During these time I started to use Twitter, I never took it very serious before, but with this tool you get the latest news minutes after, with photos, videos. Also this map was very helpful to see which areas where dangerous to go lately.
To stay in Bangkok at this time was not as dangerous as many poeple all over the world thought (scared by the news in TV), but still it was a scary and sad feeling to drive in the bus and see smoke and burning houses. We all hope this will never happen again, the political situation remains unclear though and in some provinces (not Bangkok) there is state of emergency.
The Thailand-India-Ivory Coast Story
I don't know wheater to laugh or to cry about this story. A guy from Ivory Coast (West Africa) staying in India contacted me a month ago to apply for an internship AIESEC is responsible for. Actually I was happy to talk to a guy so near to Ghana (he even used to live in Ghana). But then things turned worse.
The normal process to apply for an internship is to have an interview by Skype or phone between the candidates and the company and after the company accepted, the candidate books a flight and comes to the country.
But this guy couldn't wait and booked the flight immediately without having an interview or any backup plan. I told him before, it will be not easy for you to find a job quickly in Thailand, if you don't get this internship. His reply was, I'm the right person for this internship, I will get the job.
One week later I met him the first time in person. I remember the time, it was 2.20 pm. We had a lunch and talked about this and that and eventually he told me:
He: "Good news, at 3 pm I have an interview with the company" (I was fairly surprised, usually the interviews are arranged through AIESEC)
Me: "Wow cool! At which day?"
He: "It will be by today!"
Me: "What??? Where is it??" (It was 2.40 pm)
He: "I don't know exatly, somewhere around here:..." (he showed me his notes saying the company is at the other end of the town)
Me: "You never gonna make it till 3 pm, you will be at least 30 minutes left"
He: "No problem, they will understand it!"
I coudnt quite believe it, because this was his only very good chance to keep staying and have a nice time in Thailand! 4 days later it was clear that he didn't get the job. We tried to help him out and get him another job at a school in Bangkok (English teaching). We even arranged him an interview at 9 am with the director of this school. At the evening before I talked to him, that was the first time I became really angry. He told me he will not be able to make it at 9 am, because the traffic in Bangkok is so bad ha would have to wake up 5 am, etc. etc. I mean, this was his last chance to get a job in Thailand, and he demanded his 10 hours sleep in the night!?
So we cancelled the interview and I predicted him that was the last time I helped him.
2 weeks later he called me another time, telling me he wanted to fly back to India (and then back to Ivory Coast) and have a guess what happened? HE MISSED HIS FLIGHT, because of "bad traffic"!.....That is it so far, updates follow.
Lost-My-Wallet-Story
Arghhh! Some of my friends back in Münster or Tübingen might know it: I lose my wallet regularly, but I was amazingly lucky in the last years and always got it somehow back, by friendly foreigners, by myself or by the government.
Losing the wallet in a bus in Thailand, is a mistake you shouldnt make though. However I managed to leave it and seconds after getting off I realized it and took a taxi immediately. Unfortunetely the driver coudn't speak any English, so it took a while to explain him with my poor Thai to follow the orange bus number 77! As he realized it he run scared as well and accelerated massively. That might be the reason why he took the wrong way at the next intersection.
My situation was not the best at the moment: Now I realized that I had no money to pay the driver, my mobile phone had ran out of credit and the key for my house was in the wallet by the way (plus credit card, cash, driver licence and a couple of other cards).
The driver was the best example of Thai friendliness though: He understood that I didn't have money and switched the meter of. He even drove me through the half city for free to a bus station where I could try to catch up this unholy orange 77 bus and search for my wallet in there. (I noted the driver's phone number to call him later)
After two ours stopping busses and searching desperately for my wallet, I gave up. Luckily Khwan had called me in the meantime and we went home and called Pete in Germany to lock my credit card.
On 11 pm I got a call: "I have found your wallet, can you come to Mo Chit?"
Oh my god!! Lucky again! The bus driver had found the wallet and besides that he waited 2 hours for us to pick up the wallet, I love Thai honesty.. I even had to almost force him to take a couple of Baht as appreciation..
Visa Run in Laos
In order to renew my visa, I have to leave the country every 3 month. I have to admin it's a little bit annoying, but fun at the same time! Last month I went with Khwan to Laos, here some pictures:
Market in Laos. The food is similar like in Thailand, for me slightly less delicious though. Highlight: Cheap and excellent Laos Beer!
Yet another must-try: Grilled frogs! The meet itself is crab to be honest, but they filled the stomach with some herbs, which were awesome.
Kanuing at an amazing landscape
One highlight of the trip: Around 20 meter high swing over the river, after enjoying a flight in the air, the jump in the cold water is still pretty high and can hurt! Surpise: Even Khwan dared to fly a couple of times ;)
MC at AIESEC
Right after arriving from Ghana, I started my incredible work as MC at AIESEC. It is hard to describe this work properly, it is extremely challenging and unique, that's what I can say for sure after the first 2 months. If it is meet big companies (e.g. Coca Cola, Electrolux, HSBC, Reckitt Benckiser, Nielsen,...), facilitate training for and coaching our members, analysing the organization and planning the next year, organize and promote our next National Conference, developing new products, etc., there is no time to get bored.
I have a wonderful team as well, Charmy, Aum and Zong from Thailand and Dessy from Indonesia.
Fun at the office: On the right Dessy, then myself with a bad-taste-but-cool-shirt, Aum, Andy, Earth and Troy.
Headache topic: Work Permit and Visa Training at Chulalongkorn University
Board Games at Battlefield Bangkok
Some of my friends might know, I love to play each kind of board games, preferably the ones who last 8 hours minimum and are played by real gamers (freaks) :D
After month of total game abstinence I found my paradise: The only (!) gamer shop in Bangkok, and I bet it's the only one in Thailand as well: Battlefield Bangkok. Usually Thai people are neither big book readers nor big board game players, this shop is an exception. Every weekend you can find lots of both Thai and expacts to compete against eachother playing all different kinds of games.
Our second session there was Twilight Imperium, a really nice game, we used to play that back in Muenster as well a couple of times. Even though we couldn't finish I loved it so much and will repeat it definetely soon!
2 months in Ghana and only 3 days left. I start to feel sad, as it was a very exciting time here. I can impossibly write down everything I experienced, but I will describe the highlights:
CAS Catholic Action for Streetchildren
Unfortunately, the project I actually work in, was one month postponed. We still could prepare the workshops, make promotions, seek sponsorship and so on. But I was not completely satisfied with this, since everything moved quite slowly. Normally you cannot have more than 1 meeting a day, because you cannot control the traffic, you have to find the place (there are hardly any signs with street names), you probably have to wait for the person, the meeting last normally longer then you would expect. People are also often not reliable. For instance, we invited 6 guest speakers for our workshops, 3 of them didnt show up, even though they confirmed a day before. One even switched off his phone and we couldn't reach him the whole next week.
Luckily I got a contact of CAS (Catholic Action for Streetchildren), which is a school for street children in Accra. Most of them don't have parents anymore or were left alone by their parents. They sell water or anything else on the streets and some of them are prostitutes to survive. The school is completely funded by private investors and provides a program for the children and a chance for them to leave the streets. The children can come and go whenever they want, no-one is forced to do anything. Otherwise they would probably quit. Children who stay long enough to develop themselves and show commitment have the chance to get sponsorship and learn to repair cars, fridges, to do computer work, arts or anything else to earn money.
In this school I work 3 days every week and I love it!
This is the class room. The children (they are 8 to 18 years old) learn here English (most of them speak the local language Ga or Twi) or Maths. Additionally, there is a special topic each week like tolerance, trust or creativity. Sometimes, these guys were quite tired and it took quite an effort to wake them up again. But the teachers (Stephen on the pictures) are really really patient with them and never get really angry. However, they are highly respected by the kids.
After class, the chrildren have the chance to participate in different activities like making bags, wallets etc. out of the empty water suchets which you can see always on Ghana's streets. I helped mainly in the computer workshops rooms, where the chrildren play educational Games to learn typing, maths, geography etc. Most of these games were over 10 years old, so I installed more modern and useful games and introduced them to the children. I really have the feeling that I could help a little in this way.
Church visit
Most Ghaneans visit church every Sunday, some even every day. The lady at our street who sells pancakes invited us to join her to church. It was quite different from churches in Germany, just watch the video!
YES Project
In the last weeks we finally started with our workshop that we planned and prepared so long.
YES project opening ceremony. We had three guest speakers talking about women and entrepreneurship, the economic situation for small businesses in Ghana and a concept to promote entrepreneurship. It was very interesting! Later we split the students into groups and they started to create their own business plans.
10 days travelling through Ghana
This was a huge adventure. In the Easter weekend we visited together with 8 or so other interns the Volta region, which is in the East of Ghana.
On a Church in Ho Hoi, the capital of the region. From this town we started two day trips, to the largest waterfalls in Ghana and to a mountain where we had a view to Togo. Actually I expected not too much, since Ghana was in terms of sightseeing rather disappointing, but this trips were simply awesome!
They sell not only water in these sachets...
arrrrgh!
2 hours climbing to the waterfalls. It was extremely hot on this day and the way was steep as hell, so 3 of our group had to give up and go back after half an hour.
But the waterfalls (called Vli) were very rewarding and we even could swim in this lake and use the waterfall as a shower! 100% refreshment!
Next to the waterfall live a big crowd of bats...
...that were hunted by the locals. By the way, I also ate a bat accidentally, because I thought it was a chicken. It looked and tasted similar, but was a little skinnier. Other strange things I tried here were goat, cow skin and crocodile.
Tatjana, Jaqueline and Ana on the top of the mountain. Where are they from?
With Ruben (Netherlands). Behind us is Togo!
On a strange tree.
Beautiful rain forest.
After this weekend we said goodbye to our group and I continued the journey with the two Dutch guys Ruben and Metthew. We crossed the whole Volta lake (the largest artificial lake in Ghana) by a ferry in 30 hours! We actually wanted to sleep on the deck, but 5 minutes after departure it started to rain and thunder like hell! It was quite scaring and in the night it got even quite cold, so we went into the sleeping room where we could sleep on benches. We also met a couple of Germans there who joined us in the next days.
View off the ferry.
The ferry stopped around five time to load in cargo.
Crossing the lake on a quite crowded boat.
Playing a local card game (which is really funny) at the national park Mole. The guy on the right introduced himself with a complicated name and added "But you can call me Prince!". During the games he made really funny sounds and became excited. He was one of the funniest persons I met in Ghana :)
On our tour in Mole we so plenty of antelopes....
....and one African elephant!
In the north of Ghana we spent one night in a little little village (around 10 houses), where one family lived. They produced almost everything they needed to live themselves. They grew up goats, pigs and chicken as well as different kinds of corn. No-one of them could speak English, but our guide Adams (on the left) explained everything really well.
The village.
Our last spot was the second largest city in Ghana, Kumasi. I love this city, since it is busier then Accra and has a beautiful market and a great chief and king's palace. On the picture I buy amazingly cheap and cool boxershorts. (1 Euro each)
On the market.
The largest market in Ghana. You can watch the people producing food, shoes, belts, decoration, simply everything..
Operation CIRCLE
Maybe you remember that I descriped last time the co-drivers of the Tro Tros (the busses here). When the Tro Tro goes to the Circle, the most famous roundabout in Accra that includes a huge station and a market, the co-driver shouts CIRC CIRC CIRCLE. We all found this funny and so we had on the 30 hours ferry trip the idea to start our own business. We designed simple t-shirts with the label CIRC CIRC CIRCLE. We were three: Matthew, Ruben and I invested each 47 CD to print in total 30 t-shirts. Unfortunetely the whole process took us almost 2 weeks, so Matthew and Ruben were already gone when it came to the actual sales.
Our marketing strategy was simple: I guess we were the first white poeple selling stuff on the streets to locals ever, so we expected a huge attention. Nick even wanted to arrange a local newspaper which failed in the last moment. Naturally, last Friday we started sales on the Circle itself. Within minutes, plenty of locals formed a circle around us, in this moment we were the main attraction at Circle ;) Unfortunately, no-one wanted to buy, because the price of 6 CD was simply to expensive for them. However, it was a funny experience to switch the sides and get to know how it is to bargain as a seller. Our initial price was 8 CD, last price was 6 CD, sometimes we reduced it even to 5. (we bought the shirts for 4,70)
Ana (Brazil), I and Nick (New Zealand) sell shirts at the Circle.
After a while we moved to Oxford Street which is in a richer area of Accra. Here sales went up like hell, we could sell more than 15 shirts, before we went exhausted to a near bar to celebrate a success with a couple of beer towers. There we agreed after tough discussions that we would have a CIRCLE party next day and sell the last shirts exclusively for the guests. And it was a great success of course. Just look at this picture:
Random pictures
Having a meal in our room.
Morning after a rooftop party.
Stall in Kaneshie market.
I try to teach children Thai. Later I noticed however that my spelling was completely wrong!
Homers, the restaurant we ate almost every day.
In the last years, the value of money was changed. Locals often still use 30.000 instead of 3 CD.
When it rains in Ghana, then it rains hard!
Random thoughts
Malaria
Malaria is more common in Ghana then I expected. Another intern who lives in Kumasi had recently Malaria and at the same time all (!) 4 of his roommates got sick. All of them had taken prophylaxis against Malaria. Luckily, there is a quite effective treatment against the disease, if you see a doctor immediately. Anyway, I'm a bit scared: Another intern died from Malaria a month after returning home, as he didnt realize fast enough that the fever he had was caused by Malaria. You can get Malaria even years after you got the actual infection..
Energy and water
One of the major issues holding the economy down is the unreliable water and energy system. In the last weeks they had problems in Accra to supply every house with energy, since they had to repair some spots. So they switched off the electricity in certain areas and continued after a couple of hours with the next area. That means, in our area (Russia) we had often no energy 6 - 12 pm or 6 - 12 am, sometimes in the afternoon. However, the sad thing is that they didnt publish a schedule for the switch-off-times, so the times were completely random and unpredictable. I still can't understand why they didnt..
Homosexuality
I had quite a few discussions with Ghanaians about this topic. Gay couples are still not tolerated by society in Ghana (and probably most other parts in Africa). The main part of Ghana's is very religious (Christian-Catholics). You cannot possibly show your homosexuality in public, if you don't wanna be blamed or at least less respected. However, there seem to be a positive development, as some of the young and highly educated people start to be more tolerant. So why can you often see two guys holding hands at the streets of Ghana? According to the locals, it is just a expression of good friendship!
Hospitality
I didn't even know it before I came here, but Ghana is one of the safest places in Westafrica. It was really bad luck that they try to rub me twice in my first days. Since then, nothing like that happened. The locals are VERY friendly and help you always if you ask kindly. When you walk through the streets you probably hear a couple of times people shouting "White man" or "Obrooni" which is the same in the local language Twi. That is not meant to be an offense, it is just an expression of excitement or hospitality.
Bargaining
You should have a passion for bargaining if you want to pay the right prices. The discussions can be very direct, in beginning it seemed to me even aggressive or rude. But even after the toughest discussions, the people are best friends again. One time we argued almost an hour about a payment and they shouted and were really hostile (it was quite scary), but 20 minutes later they helped us very friendly like nothing had happened. Everybody uses phrases like "I beg you", "small money", "don't do this to me!" or "don't make me suffer!" to make it very clear that the price is not good! We copied these phrases and use them now as well, we got a lot of funny talks in this way.
Volunteering in Ghana
I observed that there are plenty of volunteers in Ghana who all try to help the local society. Unfortunately there is often a lack of funds at the same time, because investors are rarer than NGOs or volunteers. Without these funds it is hard to use the available manpower in a efficient way. Ideas and willing to change are there, but the money is missing. Most of the volunteers in Ghana have to set down their expectations in the beginning realizing that development is very slow under these conditions.
Phrases
There are very funny phrases and strange words. To catch some-one's attention, you just make a noise like a snake: sssssssssttt or pretend to give a long and incredibly loud kiss. You hear this noises a thousand times a day. Other often used phrases are "Are you sure?", "You are invited!", "You are welcome!", "Ohhhh no no no no!", etc.
The End
In only 2 days I have to leave Ghana and start my new life in Thailand! I'm very sad to leave the life here and with it all my new friends. But I look forward to seeing Khwan and all my friends! :) As some of you might know, the political situation is currently quite unstable. If you are interested you can see the latest Bangkokpost-News on the right site of this page. I'm excited how the situation will look in reality.
