Seth and Mariah

So I guess everyone wants to see some more pictures from Africa and hear some more stories. One place we stayed was in Elmina at a resort called Coconut Grove, right on the beach. Our little room was about 100 feet from the ocean. They had a little restaurant on the beach was quite good and really the only option for food, so we ate there almost every meal while we were there. Every time without fail, Seth ordered the beef kabobs, he couldn't get enough of them. And the fried plantain was pretty good as well. The picture above is one we took sitting at our table at the restaurant. We spent a couple nights there to celebrate our 2-year anniversary. Time flies! It was very peaceful and relaxing there. We really enjoyed it in contrast to downtown Accra where we stayed the majority of the time. It is a city always busy and full of people. And lots of people trying to sell you stuff since you are an American. So this was a nice get-a-way.

While staying there we saw lots of crabs and got to see them in action on the beach. They were quite entertaining.

These were some on the rocks on the shoreline and literally about 50-60 crabs on this one rock.

Below is one of the castles we visited which actually eventually served as a 'slave' castle. When the slave trade became big, this was the place where they were exported the slaves from Africa to the US and Europe. It was a very beautiful castle.


This is Seth up on the lifeguard tower. I never saw a lifeguard on the beach, but I liked the little tower.

This is me enjoying the nice clean beach. In Accra, the beach is full of trash so you actually cannot (and do not want to) swim or walk around on the beach. The have no sewers so it all ends up in the ocean. Sad, but true. So it was nice to see a clean, beautiful beach while we were there.


Below is a view from the Cape Coast Castle overlooking the fishermen at work: I loved all the bright colors.

We didn't get to see too many fun, safari-type animals since they were way up in Northern Ghana and about a 15 hour bus ride away. We just didn't have time to fit it in and there was plenty of other things to see, so we will just have to go back to another part of Africa to see the animals sometime. But we did get to see some crocodiles! They are scary-looking creatures. But friendly enough, as you can see I got to pet one. It was pretty weird to feel their hard skin, they aren't very soft. :)

Seth got to feed the crocodiles....(He didn't want to touch them though!)


This is a picture of the Ghana Temple at night. We were able to do a session and also some sealings for some Ghanaian names, that was a neat experience. The temple reminded me of the Newport Beach Temple, the smaller kind, but they had incorporated some artwork that gave it an 'African touch'.

Another cool thing we did while in Africa included going on a 'canopy walk' up in the trees in the rainforest. We basically were up in the trees walking on a little boards from tree to tree.



Below is a typical sight, women and girls carrying things on their heads and baby tied up to the back. ALL of the women carry their babies like this. I never saw one variation. No such thing as strollers or carrying them on your hip. This was the only option. I felt bad for the little kids that had to straddle some of the heavier women, I think they must be very flexible or something. They all must have very strong neck muscles as well in order to carry some of the heavy, large loads I saw on occasion. I never could quite get my camera in time though, and usually you have to ask before you snap a picture of someone. You just have to be careful what you take pictures of.

The girl below is carrying cut watermelon (covered by a large bag) that she sells on the street. You can see the knife sticking up out of the watermelon. She was just cruising along, just like it was normal, because it really is normal. It was quite amazing!

Lastly, we went to a bead shop where we could watch them make these beads. They are made from old glass bottles, the ones below obviously coming from blue bottles. So we watched the whole process, so much work goes into these little beads. The colors were so vibrant, I had to get some!

Since several of my (Seth) more recent posts have been rather lengthy with small-type I figured I'd do one a little more easy on the eyes. So, here are some cool pictures from our adventures thus far. Mariah snagged this first picture on one of the little islands we visited along the Volta River as we were walking back to the boat after visiting the island school.

(Melissa's little girl Eliza drinking from the water hose)

Well Seth said he would post more, but I guess the internet connection is slow and it takes forever to upload photos. So I guess we will have to wait. I am just finishing up packing for the big day tomorrow. I hope I remember everything. I am pretty excited! It was crazy trying to finish things up at work, I didn't think it would be so difficult. Well I will try to have some good stories for when we get back. In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a good summer! Stay tuned...

(This is a picture of the semi that side swiped and took out the whole highway on the way to Kumasi. Rather than wait, we drove off the road, up onto the grass, and around the truck. Don't get in the way of a good lawyer in Africa. He's going to get there.)

Well, to start, I’m in Ghana, and that is a good thing. I was supposed to have arrived last last Sunday morning, but there were some difficulties in New York. Because of some misinformation, including the woman at the check-in desk specifically telling me that you didn’t need a Visa to go to Ghana, I hadn’t acquired one and got on the plane in Salt Lake. In JFK, the check-in at the gate saw that I didn’t have one, took my ticket, tore it up, and refused to let me on the plane. That was at 5 pm, and after hours of arguing at desk after desk and trying to figure things out, I caught a plane for D.C. and spent the weekend with my parents working out the Visa. On Tuesday morning I ran to the Ghana Embassy in D.C., picked up my Visa, and ran and caught my flight back to New York and on to Ghana.

I arrived Wednesday morning, and took the day to unpack, go shopping, and sleep. On Thursday morning, I went into the Church Offices next to the temple with a senior missionary couple (the Stubbs) and met with my supervising attorney, Mr. Goh, there. He told me that a witness that his opponents had been looking for had been found so he needed to leave for Kumasi (which is over 200 km away) as soon as possible. So, I packed my bags and jumped in the car. Roads in Ghana aren’t like roads in the U.S. At their best they’re like a small, two-lane highway with lots of pot holes. For the rest, they’re dirt roads with even more pot holes. And it was pouring rain, with extremely heavy traffic, and it got dark. In Ghana, because there aren’t lots of cities with lots of lights, when the sun goes down, it gets really dark. Anyway, after a harrowing journey, we arrived in Kumasi Thursday night at 10 pm and quickly found a hotel and went to bed. In the morning, we rushed to the court house only to find that the witness that had been found was sick and therefore the case would have to be rescheduled. So, they rescheduled, we stayed in the court room to observe other proceedings for a bit, and then we got in the car and headed back to Accra. We didn’t get back until 6 pm.

(I'm inserting a crazy story here.)

Because I packed up so fast I forgot my shoes when we got to Kumasi in the morning we drove down to the market to get me a pair, and we didn't park. We're driving down the street, and Mr. Goh sees a shoe salesman so he rolls down the window and just yells at the guy. The guy runs up with some shoes, and Mr. Goh starts yelling at him, and the guy starts yelling back, and all of a sudden I'm trying on shoes in the passenger seat and there's people honking at us because he never pulled over. So, I got a new pair of shoes in downtown Kumasi on my way to court. Not a whole lot of people can post that in a blog.

So, hopefully that isn’t the typical work week that I’ll be having here in Accra. I thought it was very interesting, and I’ll write about what I’ve learned so far, even though it’s not necessarily connected to what would be a more ordinary work product for an extern.

What I’ve learned:

1. It definitely pays to have a cool head, in any situation. In JFK the last desk I had to work with to figure out my flight and Visa had only presented me with two options, either stay in New York with no car, clothes, or money until Tuesday on my own dime, or buy a new ticket to Salt Lake, and buy a whole new ticket to Ghana. Instead of rashly deciding between two very expensive and not helpful choices, I decided to not decide right away (which the man at the desk did not appreciate at all, and his name was Charity (really, it was)), call my wife, and figures things out. She actually suggested I call my parents, and between calling her and them we figured out that flying to D.C. and staying with them for the weekend and getting the Visa would be a much better option. That night in JFK was a high stress situation, but I was able to come away with the best outcome because I didn’t cave into the stress. I did feel very close a couple of times. But things worked out.

2. A relaxed attitude (but still hardworking) about things is probably the best attitude to have in order to walk away from this externship having enjoyed it. The trip to Kumasi was a prime example. I could have gotten really upset because the case was rescheduled, I mean, I wasn’t happy, but I decided to make the best of it, and enjoyed getting to know Mr. Goh and seeing the African country side. The trip itself could have been stressful, because the driving here is insane. We haven’t even really worked things out because Mr. Goh has explained only roughly where his office is (in downtown Accra) and what he wants me to do. Part of me would like to stress out because I’m in a foreign country, I don’t really know what I’m going to be doing for my externship, and tomorrow I’m going to be walking in downtown Accra looking for his office. But I decide not to be stressed. I’m going to work hard, do the best I can, and enjoy the experience. Getting stressed about it would be a waste of time because it wouldn’t accomplish anything. I think the culture is just different here.

On a final note, I think one doesn't realize how much they miss someone else until they find themselves halfway across the world, eating yogurt with Arabic labels, reading up on an African country's legal system late at night, which isn't really late at night to their body but actually noonish, and cursing blogger for erasing a first try at a post because of horrible African internet. I mean . . . one . . . yes . . . one would probably realize that under such hypothetical conditions . . . Just kidding, I'm talking about me. Yeah, I miss you, Mariah. I think I finally get why people say, "distance makes the heart grow fonder," and that's a great saying and all, but I'd be okay if the two weeks melted away in hard work. Anyway, life is good, life is good. Living the great adventure, eh?

So Seth is safe in Africa and enjoying all the new experiences. I am hoping he will post some of the unique things that are happening to him soon, he says hopefully he can tomorrow, so look for the update. I will try not to share all his stories before he can. What an adventure! I have finalized everything, so I am going for sure. I have had all the many shots taken: polio, yellowfever, malaria, typhoid, and two other ones I can't remember because the names are really long. But I should be set. I am just waiting to get my Visa and then I will just have to wait until May 23rd. I am pretty excited about it.

The other exciting event is that I finally got a camera after looking and looking. It is a Canon EOS 40D. What some of you may know and some may not, I usually take a very long time searching for good deals when I am making a big purchase. My first car I bought was a 1999 VW Jetta. It had to be silver, have a sunroof, be a stick-shift, and have automatic windows AND the most important, it had to be in the budget! So I started looking when I graduated high school and about 13-14 months later, I found it! On autotrader.com. So I didn't tell any of my friends and I went with my Dad on a road trip to Arizona and drove it around and bought it and towed it home that night. When Shalyse and Cody stopped by that night, they saw a silver jetta up on the trailer behind my Dad's truck and they were like, "no way....is that yours?" It was a fun surprise. I loved my little car. I sold it to my cousin when I went on my mission, so I still get to see it occasionally. So back to the original story, I have been wanting a camera, and have been saving my money from the bonus I got from work when I passed the CPA exam. That was back in February 2008. And so now it is May 2009 and I finally found one that fit. (Half of the problem this time was figuring out which camera to get. There are lots of options!) I got it used off of KSL.com classifieds. It is one of my favorite places to shop!

Well all these pictures are some random shots I took my first day with the camera. Hopefully I will get a little better, but so far, I love it! I want to take some classes or something.


Below is my niece Megan playing in the semi-finals of her soccer league. She scored a hat-trick in this game. She played awesome! She actually scored off of this kick. They went on to win first place! It was fun to watch her. She is a good little athlete.

And little Tavish!


It is now later and I am adding more pictures to my blog. I took these pictures below on Saturday:

Busy season is over and spring is here, could life get any better? I just love spring! Well I have been looking at some blogs for the past half hour or so and I just have to say I have some amazing friends. First of all, lots of your blogs are really entertaining/thought provoking and fun to read and/or you have cute pictures of your kids that are always so fun to see. So I guess I am trying to write something that I have thought about since mostly what I do is report on what is happening. That is how my journal is, forget about all the 'feely' stuff, it is more what happened this past month (slight exaggeration). Lots of you know how well I do with expressing my feelings! I am not the best, but Seth is helping me get better at that. Still a struggle for me though.

Well Seth leaves for Africa next Saturday so we have one week after his finals are done to spend together. I have been going back and forth if I am going....weighing the options, but I think I will go for the last two weeks of his internship, which would be May 22-June 5 or somewhere around then. So that is the tentative plan. I have to go and get all my vaccinations on Tuesday which should be lots of fun.

This picture is just getting me excited to hopefully be able to go to Lake Powell this summer. I hope with everything that we can plan it right so we can go. I know I will miss one trip because it is the end of May and I will be in Africa.


So I am sure you women all share the same love I have for shopping for pants that fit right. Then when you find a brand/style that works, somehow it gets discontinued or your body shape changes and then they don't work for you anymore. Or they are just too expensive and not in the budget. Well we went to the outlets at Park City yesterday and I found some work pants at Banana Republic which were in the petite section so they are actually the right length. They were 30% off but still more than I like to pay for pants, but the last 3 pairs I have bought have been really really cheap and they start looking bad soon after you buy them. One pair only made it through the wash once before they had little balls all over them, so I decided one pair of really nice pants will out-live the 3 pairs of crappy pants so I consented. And I really like them, hopefully they last a long time.

I have never been a TV watcher ever in my entire life except for a couple a seasons of the Bachelor back in 2003 when Becky would tape the episodes for me so we could watch them together on Sunday since that was the first year of the accounting program and I lived at school. What a year. That was the season with Trista and Ryan (I think those are their names). Well sad to say, I have broken that tradition, although I don't really watch the episodes on tv, I watch them on hulu.com. But we have been watching the latest season of 24, even though we haven't watched the other 6 seasons. It is pretty good. And we actually got started on Lost because Seth's cousins have all the episodes on DVD. And now I know why it is a good thing I don't watch TV because can easily get sucked in.

Lastly but not least, my brother Josh is a stud. Well he won Senior Ball King, was voted 'Most Preferred' and is captain of the Varsity Soccer team, I mean, could you be any more studly. And he was in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" production put on by the high school as one of the brothers. He did a fantastic job. And he is in Madrigals, so he has a really good voice. I mean he is a stud!! And he is not cocky and stuck up, which is great. He is getting ready to serve a mission as he is turning 19 in June! Isn't that crazy? Well I am excited to find out where he gets to go. I know he will be an awesome missionary, I have no doubt!

So the big news is that Seth heard back from a Law Firm in Africa that has given him an internship opportunity this summer. So looks like he is on his way to Ghana! I know crazy. It is a long story how we ended up choosing Africa, but here we are. For a little while, we thought he was on his way to Venezuela but thank goodness BYU intervened and said that it was too dangerous so then he put Africa on his list and it came through. He will be over there for 5 weeks or so most likely during May.

So the next question, am I am going? I am not sure about that yet. If I did go, it would just be for a week or so. We haven't figured out all the details yet, but we thought we would let everyone know our big news.

Well tax season is rolling in and it has not hit my work load as early as it did last year, so I haven't had too much overtime just yet, but it is on its way I am sure.