So I have this totally weird feeling this week. Maybe you've experienced it before too? I am REALLY excited for my trip to Ghana, but just in this week have been kind of dreading the day that I leave. It sounds really stupid, but I have wanted to travel to Africa for so long, and now that it is happening I am almost dreading it because I don't want it to be over too soon. That sounds kind of silly, but I think it might just be a natural part of the excitement and emotion of doing something new for the first time.
To ease my mind I am starting to really get into practicing some of the more common phrases of the local dialect Ewe. It's been really fun so far. It is definitely something I've had to work on as my pronunciation was a bit off on my first try with some of the words. It is such a beautiful language. I've always found languages to be fascinating and wondered how one gets started...how does a community come to a collective agreement on the sound and meaning of a word. I guess this is why there are people who devote their entire lives to studying languages. Learning languages has always been something that I have struggled with. There are a number of things that come naturally to me, but that is not one of them. Driving my commitment to learn is the feeling that this is important both to show my commitment to respecting their local culture, but also to prove to myself that I can meet a challenge. I know I will be self-conscious about how I pronounce things so I have been really giving myself a pep talk that any attempt is better than no attempt! Let's hope I can get a few of them right!
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