One Year Later

I’ve always loved to fly. I think your problems seem much less consuming when you’re that high above them all. I also like to look out the window and pretend I’m Miley Cyrus in The Last Song. So maybe it’s a combination of both.

Almost a year ago today I woke up on a plane flying above Ghana into the Accra airport. Neither of the above reactions to flying happened that day. I remember staring at the views outside the window, holding my breath, and thinking, “Well, here goes nothing.” You get a weird feeling when you’re 6,000 miles away from the people you love most in the world. You know that throw up feeling, but it’s also kind of cute at the same time? Hopefully someone knows what I’m talking about. I think that feeling describes this exact moment the best. I was craving the people I left behind, but reaching for the people I was going to meet. It was like happy tears.

I am forever grateful for what those two months in Ghana taught me, and I have happy tears for the group that will be on their way soon.

You think you have all summer, but you’ll be back in the U.S. before you even notice the absence of brand name Nutella. So here’s my advice to you all:

• Don’t kill yourself looking for the wifi password. I wish I had been more present with the people around me and less concerned with catching up on Instagram. Honestly, they’ll rarely load past 97 percent, so you’ll be liking them based on the caption anyway.

• On the rare occasion you find yourself with decent wifi, look up music videos of Ghanaian songs. It became one of our hobbies.

• You don’t need to roll up squad-deep everywhere you go. There’s a tendency to do everything as a group when you’re in a foreign country, but you can get so much more out of the experience when you just go places on your own.

• Go to church! If no one invites you, invite yourself. If you’re not religious, go anyway. I never got the chance to go to a mosque, but you should add that one to the list too.

• Do not plan a thing. Your bus will probably break down on the highway, but the cool part is you’ll get to play Frisbee with a kid on the side of the road for two hours.

• There are times to talk and there are times to listen. I think people ask too many questions without really listening to the answers. You might be surprised how much you can learn about yourself by learning about what makes others get out of bed in the morning.

• If you’re not a fan of the Obama administration, consider keeping that to yourself. Ghanaians idolize Barack, and I had to try really hard to dodge 30 questions about the United States’ public policy while at the tro tro stop.

All jokes aside, Ghana changed me. It made me grow. It made me really believe that people are good. I think you’ll see that without having to look for it. And that was my favorite part.