What's Next?

Wow! I am home! I have actually been home for a little over a week now, and it is so wonderful! I miss Ghana extremely, but it has been wonderful to catch up with friends and family!

 

Lunch when I got home! Love them all! 

I feel like everyone I talk to seems to have a couple of the same questions.  One of the biggest questions is what I am going to do now. As most of you know I will graduate from Utah State University, May 4, with my undergraduate degree in International Business and Economics. For a long time I didn’t have anything planned for when I returned from Africa and would graduate. I figure I would figure it out when it happened, and now it looks like it is happening. I have come to a sort of cross roads in my life.

For a while now I have been toying with the idea of serving and LDS mission. I have gone back and forth on whether or not I was going to serve. While the recent age change helped many with the decision, it seemed to make my decision harder. It wasn’t like I was going to leave any sooner and when I left there would be lots of younger people serving with me, I didn’t particularly like that idea.

However, during my time in Africa I pondered and prayed about my decision. The Lord has blessed me in so many ways throughout my life.   I feel that serving a mission is just one of the many ways I can try to repay him for all that he has done for me. So with that I am very happy and excited to announce that this past week I started working on my mission papers. I am aiming to get them turned in as soon as possible! So I guess that is a little update on my life.

 

Yay! So excited!! 

Ashley P! 

Goodbyes Suck!

It is official I hate goodbyes. Over the course of the last couple weeks we have been saying our goodbyes to all the wonderful people that we have met during out time in Ghana.

Stephen and Margaret are wonderful individuals and threw us a great going away party. Margaret spent all day in the kitchen making all sorts of wonderful Ghanaian food. It was a most wonderful feast. Earlier this week we traveled make to Cape Coast to say our last goodbyes to all our wonderful friends there.

 

The yummy food!! 

I do not like goodbyes at all. I wish I could stay here, but at the same time I miss my family and friends like crazy! I can’t believe how fast the past three months have flown by! I swear it was just yesterday that Rachel and Summer were driving me to airport!

My flight leaves Accra tonight. I hopefully will be landing in Utah at 10:50 PM Friday!! I can’t wait to see all my family and friends! See you all soon!

Ashley P! 

Elephants!!

How can you go to Africa and not see any elephants? We decided that seeing elephants during our time in Ghana was a must. After some research we learned if you want to see Elephants you go to Mole National Park. Excitedly we started planning our trip to the north to see our elephants.

In all honestly Rachel is the one who pushed this trip forward. Her dream was to touch an elephant! We all thought she was a little crazy, but I decided to hop right on board with this trip. After making some phone calls we got the important aspects of the trip booked and set out.

Our trip started Monday night, when we left our home for the past three months Abomosu on the midnight bus. It was bitter sweet saying goodbye to Abomosu, there will also be a place in my heart for Abomosu. After arriving in Accra we took a small nap before setting out on our long journey up north. We has reserved ourselves seats on the “luxury” VVIP bus that left Accra at 3 PM and would arrive in Tamale at around 4 AM. Needless to say we were all super stoked for the travelling!

 

Rachel and I stoked for the bus ride!

After arriving in Tamale in the middle of the morning, we set out on the task of getting to the park, which is approximately 3 hours away. This is the part that I may not have researched as well as I should have. You would think it would be much easier to get to a National Park than it was. However, eventually we made it to park. Once again we realized our lack of research as there was a swimming pool that we didn’t even know about.

Our first elephant sighting came that night from the viewing area by the hotel. Wow, I have seen elephants in a zoo before, but seeing them in the natural state was an amazing experience. We were excited for our safari hike the next morning, hoping that we would be able to get closer to the majestic animals.  

Lucky for us the elephants were out and about when we started our morning safari hike! There were at least ten of them and they were so so so close to us! We were not going to miss an opportunity to get our picture taken with them. Here are just a few of us with the elephants!

 

I was just a little happy! 

Elephants! :) 

Us with our tour guide, Moses! 

Stoked on life! 

There were also a number of other animals that we saw, but I have to say that the elephants were my absolute favorite! We saw some crocks, antelope, warthogs, and a few monkeys! Wildlife is so much more amazing without the zoo cages.

Our trip up north was superfast, as shortly after our safari we set back out to Tamale in hopes of making it there before 4 PM to catch our bus back to Accra. Luckily, we were able to and rode the bus back. The trip was short, but the elephants made up for the crazy travel time!

Ashley P!