School

I attend Simms Senior High School in Faowade and I am enjoying myself immensely. I was put in Form-2 which is the Ghanaian equivilant to sophmore year, which amounts to extremely boring classes due to the rudementary subject matter. Although the subject matter in most classes is extremely dull, I am learning many things from being and observing students here.
Here in Ghana, instead of choosing each individual class, one chooses their "course" and each course has it's own group of subjects that the whole class takes. I was put into 2A2 which is the General Arts course with a Religious Studies Class, Language Class, and Literature class. Each track, or course as they are called here, has one class per grade which results in extremely large class sizes. My class has around 70 students all crammed into the most uncomfortable wooden desks imaginable. I share a desk with my friend Priscilla which I really appreciate although my butt does not.

One thing I love about school here are the uniforms which although unflattering on me, do look nice on the Ghanaians. My school has 3 uniforms for the week, all of which I do not possess yet. The Monday & Tuesday wear is a cute maroon 50'seqsue dress while the Wednesday & Thursday wear is a pink blouse with a maroon pencil skirt. Friday wear consists of dress made out of a pretty blue print with the schools name & emblem on it. The other two uniforms also have the school's crest sewn onto them. There is also a maroon vest with dimonds on it as well as a warm up jacket and an house uniform, all of which I have yet to receive.

My school not only has it's own emblem, it has it's own motto, and school song which we sing during morning assembly which occurs on Monday, Wednesday, & Friday. Assembly consists of saying the Lord's Prayer, the Ghanaian pledge, singing the national anthem & the school anthem, and mainly is teachers telling about all the rules that were broken and other rules that need to be followed which is then preceeded by threatening the students with caning. During my first assembly, one teacher who was preaching about the need of baggy non-form fitting uniforms, said that he was going to come around for inspection and threaten to strip anyone naked who was not following the rules. He then preceeded to rant how he didn't care if the purpetratior was a female or not, he would still personally strip them naked stressing that being a girl was no way of immunity to the punishment.