Fun in the Rain

Every day is filled with gazillions of new things. Today, we had the first "real" rain. When the sky opens up here, it opens! The kids were at the main market (traditional African market with 100s of stalls and 1000s of people) with Patience, the housekeeper. We discovered that Sophie is claustrophobic. She had a bit of a panic attack when everyone huddled under cover. I was trying to get a taxi and noticed a swarm of birds above the trees. The closer I looked, I realized it was actually a swarm of bats! Never seen so many bats and certainly haven't seen so many in the middle of the day!

There's just too much to try and convey. Here's some random info. about our lives here:
- Sophie had to get French, German and English dictionaries for school
- Sometimes phone numbers work, sometimes they just don't
- Minimum wage is 2.653 Ghana Cedi a day, less than $2 (I know this because I am having to brush op on Ghanaian employment law to be sure we're following the law with hiring)
- A couple of the main "western" superstores are South African chains - the electronics they sell have plugs that work in S. Africa, but not in Ghana - you have to ask to have the plugs changed to make your appliance work
- When it rains - it POURS and in some places it's not raining at all
- When airplanes fly over, they're so low you can't even talk to someone right next to you (our neighborhood is in the flight path - luckily it's not a busy airport)
- The opening of a major oil field has made prices skyricket - my house is just over $3,000/month - it's nice, but not a palace. Anything "western" or imported is really expensive. Anything made locally or labor intensive is pretty inexpensive - a housekeeper 5 days/week from 8-5:00 makes about $200/month.
- Overall, people are really nice, patient and kind.

We're starting to feel more and more settled. More soon.