There are two things I can’t go a day without at home – WiFi and hot showers. Seriously – I’m constantly connected. I admit it isn’t my finest trait, but it’s true. WiFi aside, the other guarantee is that I will take a very long, very hot shower.

Both – yes, both – of these things I don’t have here in Ghana. The first 24 hours here I avoided taking a shower. I hate cold water – I rarely swim in lakes, oceans or rivers. The avoidance technique couldn’t last very long – we are lucky to have ample heat and humidity and plenty of time walking around outdoors coupled with a lack of air conditioning takes that idea right off the table. I quickly got accustomed (no – I don’t love them, but they are actually good for cooling down) to the showers and quickly encountered another dilemma.

At home when I’m bored I jump online, watch YouTube, Netflix, and generally spend way too much time on computers and iPads and iPhones. While our house here does have ‘WiFi’ it performs about as well as the dial-up connections I (barely) remember from childhood – on its best day. This presented some issues. While a great deal of time here is spent at internships, exploring Accra, and on weekend outings around Ghana, with the heat (and my admitted dislike of hot and humid weather) there’s definitely some time where you want to lay in bed and watch Netflix.

My solution quickly became reading – something that since roughly the start of high school I have more-or-less pretended not to like. Growing up, I was the kid whose parents had to come in and take the book away and check to make sure I wasn’t staying up until the early hours of the morning reading. That’s definitely coming back in full force now.

Since taking off from Eugene, I’ve read 12 books, over 5,000 pages, averaged nearly 200 pages per day and become a bit addicted to Clive Kussler (thank goodness for the Kindle store!). We’ll see what that total climbs to between now and my arrival back in Eugene on August 13th – I have more time here and then 20 hours on airplanes with a 7-hour layover in the middle.

The best part of all of the lack of WiFi has definitely been getting back to reading. It’s something I stopped doing enough of – and made a series of terrible excuses why. I’m happy the internet struggles have pushed me back to it!