Monday Monday Monday!

Week six.

Ohhh Monday.

I woke up this morning and cleaned my small corner of the house. Oh it feels good to be organized.

The rear view mirror in the taxi this morning was cracking me up. If you looked at the very top of the mirror your face would stretch like a fun house mirror. I noticed this when I looked up and had lips the size of Texas. So, forgetting that I was in a taxi with perfect strangers I started to make faces in the mirror...until I caught the drivers eye and snapped back to reality. In the end I scored a drop off right at the door.

Work went by so fast today! We had the first round of stencils made, so we wrote out some directions for the batikers. Trying to be helpful we tried to make color swatches to give a general color idea. The only problem was that we had a few crayons, so the end result was not as we had intended. Oops.

Before I knew it, it was time for lunch and I was so very excited for my 50 cent goat rice. I went out...turned onto the street...and stood in shock. She did not come to work today. so, I wandered the streets for a good half hour looking for something that would compare, and I ended up with a piece of bread and a bottle of coke. What a let down. However, it was not as much of a let down as Katies lunch, when she opened a packet of laughing cow cheese only to find something brown and crumbly, and my stomach just did a flip thinking about it again.....blah!

After lunch the day went by even faster than the morning. We called the batikers to come pick up their stencils and it was a steady stream of women coming in to get directions on their stamps and carve their foam blocks. The office is a small space to begin with, so when people start packing in, the volume gets 10 times louder and foam bits start flying, and you have to make sure they all give the coveted Shaprie markers back....you need to be on top of your game to survive that room. Its stressful. One of my major projects while I am here is to organize all of the stamps from the past and work on a tracking system for new stamps. Its much more complicated than it sounds...believe me! So, through the commotion I had to make sure I logged information on all the batikers as they were given work.

Because we are about to sample all new designs we thought it would be a good idea to have interns work with the women on perfecting the new colors and the layout. Throughout the next few weeks it is going to be fun working with all of the women in their studios.

At the very end of the day one of the workers went to pick up the mail...I'm not quite sure from where, but I was so excited to find a beautiful pink envelope for ME!!! My mom sent over a few more Clinique bags for the women, so I passed them out to the two who were picking up their stamps when I opened the envelope.

On my way to the taxi today I saw my good friend Sam. He was excited to tell me that I would be here for the festival in September...I don't know why he just thought of that today, but I guess its something to look forward to. I had to sit for a while today until the taxi filled up, and lucky for me I was wedged in with quite a talker. After taking an ear full for not speaking fluent Fante after living here for a month, I (or should I say Wendy) learned all about the photographer who has a shop in Elmina. I also had the pleasure of looking through a large stack of his recent work. I would like to describe it as glamor shots meets clip art. Very impressive graphics added to further enhance the already glorious photos......

After work I went over to the hotel to work out. Where I ran into my former husband and also picked up a new one while I was running. Oh the joys of the Elmina Beach Resort.

Peace. Love. Digital Prints.