Everyone has their morning routines.  Mine has always been pretty typical.  I press snooze too many times before finally dragging myself out of bed.  Take a shower, throw on some scrubs, feed my fish, rush out the door with a cup of tea to go, and then ultimately drive a bit too fast down the highway as I try to make it to work on time.  Here things are much the same except for a few things.  I now race away from home on my handy orange bike and I have the pleasure of not feeding my fish, but having an entirely different animal encounter almost every morning. 

Not in a million years did I think my morning routine would ever include chasing geckos around my bathtub before taking my shower, but here I am in Ghana setting my alarm clock just a bit early everyday to give me enough “get the gecko out of the tub time.”  My house is full of geckos, which is nice because they eat all of the other bugs.  Not so nice because they try to walk on the tiled wall in my bathroom and end up in the tub because they can’t stick to the wall.   Most of the time it is just a little guy and they are pretty easy to chase around a bit and then ultimately scoop out of the tube.  I have one large gecko that lives in my house though and when it makes its way to the bathtub it is always a chore to get out.  One night I went to take a shower and chased the large gecko around for a good 20 minutes before finally getting it out of the bathtub.  Right after I rescued it, I received a phone call from the hospital and ran up there to see a patient.  When I got home later, tired and just wanting to take a quick shower and hop into bed I found that pesky gecko back in the tub . . . I have never been so angry at a stupid reptile before.