Weekend!!

Hey everyone!!

Let me catch you up on this weekend, it has been a full one!!! Well first I need to tell you about Thursday! Two other American friends and I went to the Miss Malaika thing on Thursday. We didn’t really know what to expect, but a van came and picked us up from campus and took us to a restaurant near the French embassy in Accra. There was a really nice outdoor area where all the participants were getting ready. It turns out that this competition is actually a TV show where viewers text in to vote for their favorite contestant and as it goes on some girls are eliminated! They were down to 10 girls and I think there were 20 to start off with. This week’s episode was the cultural one so what happened is that each girl gave a presentation on her specific region of Ghana. They were all dressed in their traditional clothes and they each did a dance. Some of them sang a song or brought food to show or talked about the history or customs, stuff like that. It was so interesting!! I learned  a lot, especially about the differences between each region of the country. It’s so cool because each region historically belonged to a specific tribe or group of tribes, so they have different customs, dress, even language!! This country has so much diversity, but they are all so proud to be Ghanaian! It's beautiful how everyone comes together! I really enjoyed all of the presentations. Afterwards, the host asked us what we learned and which girl impressed us the most. It was so cool! They said it will be aired on Sunday at 8:30pm, so I definitely plan on watching it!! At the end we even got to go up and the girls were teaching us how to dance!! It was a blast, I absolutely loved it!! The director said she’d give each of us a DVD copy of the episode, so I really hope that’s true! My big TV debut in Ghana!! :)

Later that same day I went to the dance show called “Dances of Our Time”. It was GREAT! There were some of the popular dances like azonto mixed in with deeper more interpretive type of dances. It was so beautiful and powerful! All of my friends and I agreed it threw us through a whole roller coaster of emotions as we watched all of the performances. There were a few Michael Jackson numbers, it was all really fun! I didn’t get too many pictures because it was dark and the flash wasn’t working very well, though. Besides that, it was perfect!

On Friday I went to dinner at a restaurant called Mama Mia’s. It has really good pizzas, but I ended up having some pasta instead. It was so delicious! I really miss food from home, so it is great to be able to go out on the weekend and eat something a little more  familiar than wakye, for example (pronounced wah-chay, it is brown rice mixed with red beans and usually served with spicy stew)! It was a really fun night and this time we crammed 6 people into a taxi instead of taking sketchy trotros that might not let us get off.  Lesson learned!

Today I went to the Black Stars game!! (The Ghana national soccer team is known as the Black Stars!) It was so fun!! Ghana played Malawi in one of the African Cup of Nations qualifier games. It was a really great atmosphere! We were sitting next to a huge section of people wearing matching shirts and they were having a PARTY! There was so much dancing and cheering and drumming and singing! It was so fun! The people didn’t really pay too much attention to the game, though. The referee seemed to call one foul on Ghana for every 15 he called on Malawi! He carded so many Malawi players, one of them even got two yellows and was kicked out!! Anyways, Ghana ended up winning 2-0! It was really exciting!! I had a great time! I even bought my own Ghana jersey so now I can officially support the team!

Well that’s about all for my weekend so far! It’s really been a lot of fun! I’m going to upload the pictures I took tomorrow when I can get free internet again. Hopefully we don’t lose electricity again! Apparently the water went out this morning, but only for a few minutes in my building. A girl from the other international hostel said theirs was out for hours! Definitely don’t want to be in the middle of your shower when that happens!! Well, I’ll put pictures up as soon as I can! Have a great rest of your weekend, everyone :)