Long Weekend!

So, Thanksgiving turned out to be quite the adventure. One girl went to get her hair done, so another girl and myself stayed back to wait for her while everyone else headed to the restaurant on the beach. We were supposed to be there at 5 and the place was supposed to be 15 minutes away. Well it took Rachel longer than expected to get her hair done and we left pretty late. We get a cab but the cab driver does not know where the restaurant is. Some guy walking down the road tells the cab driver where we are going. That should have been a warning to get another cab, but we got in anyway, thinking we could find this place. It can’t be that hard, right? Well first we got stuck in traffic. During this traffic, we started talking to the driver. Eminem came on the radio and we asked him if he knew where he was from. He said yeah. I told him we live near Eminem in Obama land. He understood where we live. The cab driver decides to take short cuts and such down some other roads and eventually we hit Beach road. As we come up to Beach road, there is a big sign for the hotel we are going to eat at. It said 3 minutes ahead. Great, we found it. So we start driving but we are still in traffic so we didn’t expect to make it there in 3 minutes. After 30 minutes, we were starting to get worried we had to driver pull over then we told him to continue and during this time the ocean is getting farther away. We call Sandy and she tells us to look for ships. Thanks for the landmark, but Tema is a shipping port, so there were lots of ships. After driving around for an hour, we learned we need to turn the other way and it was about a minute from the sign. The cab driver wasn’t too thrilled with us. He may never pick Americans up again. We were got to dinner; it was after 7 so it was pitch black. We couldn’t see the rock, but we did see it another time. We tried Octopus, which was great. I tried to order pizza but they were out, which was a big letdown, so I was stuck with a burger on Thanksgiving. Not my ideal Thanksgiving dinner, but I was sitting basically over here the ocean while eating my burger. After dinner, we were informed that taxis do not come to this hotel since it is basically in the middle of nowhere. We were with Osei, who is our go-to person for this trip, so he informed us. We did have “Uncle T’s” phone number so he said he would try to find other cabs and come get us. Well, he couldn’t find other cabs so he said he would do trips. There are 11 of us and we wanted to do this is 2 trips. We fit 7 people in the cab. Never knew cars we so spacious. Finally, we made it back and relaxed and went to bed. As Rachel pointed out, “If you see a crowd of white people in Accra, chances are a Harry Potter movie just got out.” After the movie, we headed back because we knew Saturday would be an early morning.
Saturday, we got up and left about 6:30 for our boat trip. We left a little late because of our professor and her husband. Who would have thought 9 college students could be up and ready to go before the professor. We had to beep the horn so they knew it was time to go. We were going on a boat ride on Lake Volta to Dodi Island. We had some miscommunication or we were misinformed, but we arrived about 2 hours before the boat was supposed to leave. Now remember, this is Ghanaian time and being on time is not such a big deal. Lucky for us, there was some shopping. Just what we need to do when money is getting tight, but prices were good and I checked some more things off my list. After shopping and waiting around, we boarded the boat and waited. We went to the third deck and sat behind the captain. Then we sat some more. We were told the boat leaves at 10, but 11 rolled around and we still sitting at the dock. The captain did blow the horn around 10:30 for a solid 45 seconds and every 10 minutes after that. Don’t forget we were sitting behind the captain. I am pretty sure the whole country knew we were about to leave the dock. Finally, we backed out of the dock and headed towards this island. The lake we were on is something the country is proud of, but this boat trip was not anything special. It was very relaxing. There was not much to look at. It was all the same, hills/mountains with lots of vegetation. I didn’t mind, but this was a long boat ride. It was 2 and ½ or so hours to the island 2 and ½ or so back with the same scenery. The food was not that good either. It was confusing and they kept running out of food, but the boat did not seem that full. When we got to the island, we were told we had 30minutes. We got off the boat, and there are a bunch of groups of children playing music on jugs, using sticks, and using the ground to make music. It was really interesting, but they really want money. There was an older group of people playing and some of the other passengers just started dancing and singing. It was cool to watch them just jump in. There new the music and how to dance to the music. There are also lots of kids on this island that want to show you around for tips. A few of us had some kids come up to them, but not all of us. We were starting to head to the top of the island, but 3 of us realized that we would not be back in time so we turned around and headed back to the boat. As we were walking back, I had a little boy grab my hand. I wasn’t expecting it so I jumped back, which scared him and he jumped back. We looked at each other and just walked around. Very awkward, but I am glad he left because I would have come back broke. It is very sad to see these children, because they cannot read. There was one girl who was about 10 years old and asked my professor to read something to her because she did not know how to read. It is very hard to walk away from those children. I am glad my professor did not tell me this story until we were on the boat. After everyone finally bored, we headed back to the dock. There was a lot of dancing happening on the boat because there was a live band. One of the guys from my group decided he was going to dance. Let’s just say he is a unique dancer. I love how this culture dances. It is very energetic and makes you feel good. Once the boat docked, we got back into our van and headed back. We did stop and do some shopping on the side of the road in the rain. Always fun to shop on the side of the road. It did rain on Saturday and we have heard it only rains during the say on Saturday, which we have noticed that, very weird.
Sunday, we were able to sleep in. For lunch, we were given a traditional dish. It was fufu and it was great. It is a dough-like consistency that you get in a bowl and a soup in poured over it. We had peanut-butter soup, which we have had before with it. The soup has whole pieces of chicken in it. This meal, like many meals, is supposed to be eaten with your hands. I first started with a spoon but tired the hands things. It was fun to eat like that. After lunch, we headed out to a soccer game. We met one of the girl’s teachers, Prince, and got a tro-tro to Accra. We all went, so Prince got us a nice tro-tro. We loaded into the tro-tro and made a small shopping stop before heading to the stadium. It wasn’t a big game, so the stadium wasn’t packed but we still enjoyed it. After the game, we went back to the tro-tro station in Accra and got an even nicer tro-tro back to Tema. This tro-tro was better than the van we have taken on our trips. As we were driving back, we looked out to window and seen so many bats. It was crazy. It probably went for a mile on either side of us and probably went from a mile both forward and backwards. There were so many bats. We got back late, so we did not have the lady cook for us. We decided we would be on our own. A few of us went to get pizza at a place just around the corner, Emily’s. The owner was there and was very nice. The pizza was great and we got a sample of the ice-cream which was also good. One of the owners was Sunday born, so he was celebrating and he was really c-e-l-e-b-a-t-i-n-g. He was having a grand ole’ time. He invited us to hang out with him this Friday, because it is a holiday. Of course, we already have plans to go shopping, so we will see. This week is going to be very busy. There is still lots to do!