May 18th

D: "Oh please don't shave your hair!"

M: I won't, cause I want to see how long it can get. "It's a love/hate... curious/hate relationship" I have with my leg hair.

Update: All three of us are still holding out with the shaving contest-- Michelle wins for longest leg hair, Deidre is in second and I'm in third (but I swear it is only because a lot of my hair is blond so you cannot see it). One thing I'm coming to LOVE about Ghana is the rain.... "I miss the rain down in Aaaaa-frica....... I don't know the rest of the song.....". It has rained 8 out of the 14 days we have been here, and I am loving it. The sound of the rain tinkling on the tin-roof, or the sound of the rain hitting the inside of the buckets we put out to catch the rainfall; or how it cools the temperature down magically; or how everything becomes quiet, even the roosters stop crowing.

--------- WEEKLY UPDATE------------- CORRINE'S SENIOR PROJECT------------------

So I'm in Africa to study dance right? Well, it is all turning out to be somewhat different than what I imagined-- not in a bad way though. My bishop (or church leader over my congregation) back in Utah gave me words of advice before I left. One thing he promised me, no doubt inspired by God, was that the hiccups and bumps I meet along the way will be for the better. I keep reminding myself of that as I try to get my game plan situated for my project. I've been thinking a lot about going to Kumasi and visiting the university there-- to talk with their "cultural studies" people about dance-- good idea or bad? What do you think? I think it is worth a shot... particularly since, according to Esther, they don't teach dancing here in the schools.

Besides that, I am learning a lot about what it means to be an ethnographer, and how to go about actually documenting my experience here.

ethnographer: I think it depends on who you ask what this actually means but from my understanding-- it is what you call a person doing field research (basically, it is what an anthropologist is called when actually doing research... and anyone who isn't technically an anthropologist can be called this as well). Here are several other definitions from a book I've been reading, Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes, of what an ethnographer actually does:

a. "the ethnographer seeks a deeper immersion in others' worlds"

b. "anthropologists [and/or ethnographers] are those who write things down at the end of the day"

c. my personal favorite::: "the ethnographer's task is to write description that leads to an empathetic understanding of the social worlds of others"