Weekend!

Hiii

This was a really nice weekend!!

Friday night was the Miss Teen Ghana competition. It was a very interesting experience, quite different from what I was expecting though. On the ticket it said that it started at 6pm, so we got to the theater right at 6, actually a little worried that we would be a tad bit late. Ha! They didn’t let us in the building until 9pm, and the show didn’t start until 9:40.. the first time we saw the girls was 10pm, I think! It was so crazy!! We were just sitting outside waiting and we tried to go in maybe around 7:30 or 8 and the guy at the door told us that they were having some “technical difficulties” but everything should be fixed soon.  So we kept waiting and a little while later a truck pulls up with a ton of plastic chairs!!! I guess the technical difficulty was that they had no chairs…. Hours after it was supposed to start! By that point we just thought it was funny! We were really glad when it actually started, until we realized we couldn’t understand anything!! I don’t think the people were speaking Twi or anything, but the sound system was pretty bad and combined with difficult accents, we had no clue what anyone was saying. We ended up leaving early, even before we cast our vote. It wouldn’t have been that bad if it had started on time, but 12:15am we had been there for over 6 hours already and it was time to go! I’m taking it as an interesting cultural experience!

On Saturday I went to a part of Accra called Osu. There are a lot of stands with souvenirs and is just a happening place! We found a store called Global Mama’s that is based in Minneapolis in the States, but sells handmade things from women here in Ghana! There were some really cool things!! It was so crazy to be on the other side of these fair trade enterprises, since usually I’m in the US looking at stuff that seems like it was made so far away! After we looked around a little we went to that really nice restaurant with the pool and all the trees and the nice tables! I went there originally with my dad’s old colleague but last night I went back with a few other international students! It was amazing!! I had lasagna and it was phenomenal! They gave us Italian bread and bruschetta while we waited and it was beyond delicious! After dinner we went to a bakery and I had a strawberry cake type thing for dessert! It was all so so nice! By the time we left the bakery it was already dark so we were a little hesitant but we were in a group of 6 so we decided to go ahead and try to trotro home! We made it back to 37^th station in a trotro whose ceiling was literally caving in! It looked like a canopy was hanging down on us! Then we got on another trotro to come back on campus. We told the mate, who is the person that takes your money and opens and closes the door, that we needed to get off at the next stop a few times and he was like yeah yeah….. and then the trotro didn’t stop!! We watched our stop go past even though we kept telling him no we need to get off, we need to get off! After all the ladies in the car started yelling at him too they finally let us off somewhere far from our actual stop. Thank God we were able to call one of the Ghanaian students that lives in our hostel and he knew where we were so he came to pick us up. We crammed six of us in his little car, but made it home safe and sound!! Whew! It was a really nice time and ended with quite an adventure!

Today I went to Mass at 9, like I have all the past Sundays here. When my friend Rachel and I got there, though, they were already into the petitions!! There were so many confused people! Apparently today Mass started at 8:30 or 8? We don’t really know. But we asked someone and apparently there’s a church not too far from campus that has Mass in the evening so that’s the plan for now! I think that was the first time that anything in Ghana has started earlier than I thought!!

The rest of today is just going to be used up with homework! The power is out, so our fan doesn’t work in the room and it is getting really stuffy! I came all the way over here to the International Programs Office so I could use the free Wifi, but it’s not working because the power is still out! I’m going to post this with my modem and I’ll upload the pictures later when I can get free internet again!! Hopefully soon!