I miss Portillos

I have decided that transitions are lame so I am going to number my thoughts again. I hope you don't mind.
1. The heat is becoming unbearable. The sun is twice as hot and I sweat 8 times as much as I did when I arrived. The temp. is reaching in the 100's at some points during the day. However, the past two nights we have had lightning!!! No rain, but lightning!! And this morning the sky spitted rain for about 3 minutes. The rainy season is coming and I can't wait. Water has become almost impossible to come by. Pretty soon here I am going to have to start wearing dirty clothes because I have no water to wash them in. I smell. I long for the days when I was a shampoo girl and my hands always smelled of soap! haha
2. I have started to walk home a lot more. It used to be a twenty minute walk home but then one of the boys from outside the home (he is a friend that always comes to the home to play soccer) showed me a shortcut to my house so now it is about a fifteen minute walk. Walking home is the one part of my day when I can just unwind and think about everything. It gives me a chance to tackle my racing mind and breathe a little bit.
3. I realize I haven't talked too much about meals so I will tell you a little bit about that. For breakfast every morning I get a slice of bread with jam (We bought the jam from the market). For lunch I get crackers and a juice box. Then for dinner we have a lot of different meals throughout the week. We get more meat than I thought we would but also a lot of carbs. Some nights we will have yams, meatballs, and this spicy tomato sauce. Yams here are very different from Yams in America. They are more like potatoes. The meatballs are very small and dry but taste pretty good with the tomato sauce and yams combined. The tomato sauce we get at most meals. It is super super spicy but adds a kick to the bland. We have a lot of rice and then some nights we have this spinach dish. It is spinach mixed with different kinds of nuts and seeds that you put over rice. Sometimes we will have chicken. On Saturday nights they try and make us veggie omelettes with chips (french fries). Some nights we will have noodles with a veggie, meat sauce over it. The food is not bad at all. I really enjoy it to be honest.
4. I miss Portillos and milk.
5. Sometimes when I am walking around I find it hard to breathe. The fumes from burning garbage and cars can overwhelm me a great deal and it can be hard to take a deep breath.
6. I found a fried rice stand that I love!!! It only costs 1 cedi 50 pesewas for a huge thing of fried rice and chicken!! That is about $1.50. It is right by the orphanage so I can get it for lunch.
7. Yesterday was Ghana's Independence Day. There was a parade but there was too much traffic to get to the actually parade. It didn't seem too much different from an average day in Ghana because Ghanaians are always showing their pride. Sometimes I almost feel as if I am on a college campus because everyone is always wearing their Ghana T-shirts and colors.
8. I feel so blessed for everything in my life especially my family. I watch these kids fight for love and I am so grateful to be so close to my parents and brothers as well as all my extended family. Being here makes me miss my brothers a whole lot more than I did at home because some of the kids in the home have siblings and I get to watch them take care of each other. I hope everything is well back home. Pray for rain! We need rain so badly.