Update number 2, written on 6/25/09:

I am starting to like homestay even better now that the town is getting used to us and my mom is serving me better food (or I’m getting used to some Ghanaian food). I am called obruni much less now and people are not as fascinated by us, so they leave us alone more. Some highlights of homestay so far are: playing football with the guys in town, learning some Ghanaian dancing and drumming with about 50 kids watching, drinking cold orange juice with the queen mother, and dancing in front of the chief and most of the town at a festival. For this festival, we were planning to meet the chief in the next town for their festival, but the community here saw us walking with firewood (the traditional gift for the festival) and told the chief that we were coming to see him. We could not disappoint the whole community, so we waited while the Peace Corps people went to get schnapps to also bring to the chief and then went to the festival in our town. The community waited for over an hour for us to show up and then made us unexpectedly dance in front of them. It was fun, but mostly funny. Also, I am apparently part of the queen mother’s family, which means I got a ride to church on Sunday (yes, I went to church) in a Mercedes and then went to her house after for snacks and COLD orange juice.
Anything cold here is amazing! We are obsessed with this treat called fanmilk, which is like frozen yogurt in a bag. There are three flavors but chocolate is my favorite, it is like frozen chocolate milk and then the end is like cold chocolate milk, both delicious! I even had an “ice cream cone” the other day, which was like sherbet on a cone and I am obsessed with having cold fanta whenever I can. In case I ever complain about running out of money here, it went toward cold items and my phone.
Which brings me to my next story: I got a phone. This was a project and a half and is still not finished. So, we heard that the phones were cheaper in the official store. After asking many people for directions, we finally got a cab there and found out that they are cheaper, but they are locked and cannot be unlocked. This means that we could only use one service provider and never switch, which is very inconvenient here. So, we went to another store to buy unlocked phones. Well, those were locked too and the system to unlock them was apparently down. After a long hassle, we bought the phones anyway. Later, we find out that our phones will not receive calls or texts. A nice guy at an internet café fixed mine for me, but I still cannot receive international texts, which definitely sucks. I’m hoping to get that fixed when I get the phone unlocked. We’ll see, but for now, feel free to call me, I will put my number in my next mass email.
Today, my language group went to one of the neighboring towns to meet a Dagomba family, who speak Dagbani. We just showed up at their door unexpectedly and asked if they would help us learn Dagbani and, being typical Ghanaians, they invited us right in and were excited to help. It was great, except that we found out we were pronouncing some things totally wrong and they had other meanings the way we were saying them. This language is going to be very hard. For example, there are four words that sound very similar that mean: I reached my destination, thank you, my wife, and giving someone praise. Very different meanings, but very similar words. Luckily, the family said we could come over like once a week and talk with them, so this should help a lot before we get to site and realize we know nothing. They also gave us Dagomba names based on words that sound like our names, and mine meant something like “no one likes me”, clearly fitting for me.
And by Meredith's request, the new word is Gafarra, and it means excuse me or is what you say when you approach someone's house and want to know if they are home. The response is Garima.