Two adorable children I live with. Ann and Andy.
Ann with me in the car - headed to the mall on my birthday.
After staying up late to talk on skype and gmail chat (for any who have both, gmail chat seems to be pretty awesome) .. (and for any who wish to meet me on chat, I would love to! Email with me about when! (I would generally be available between 1 and 5 pm, Utah time.) I woke up to Elizabeth telling me she had breakfast! Ghana has a special meal that is eaten only on birthdays, and Elizabeth had prepared it for me. It really isn't a 'breakfast' kind of food, but it is supposed to be the first thing you eat on your birthday. (It is served to the house, not only to the person being celebrated.)
The food is .. mashed yams. Sort of. Their yams here are totally different than yams at home there. They are actually the driest kind of starch/grain food that I ever had. They're kind of like potatoes, but very very dry. Usually when we have them, the are cut into pieces and boiled. The more surface area available to have been sitting in water, the better that particular bite will be. lol. For this breakfast version though, it is more like mashed potatoes, and you add palm oil. (A red oil that is in everything here. I got an entire bowl full if it! With a hard boiled egg. Which seems to e a semi-special food here. Not super unusual per say.. but certainly not a food you eat every day. So, breakfast was alright. :)
Since it was the holiday and we had the day off, I decided my desperate laundry situation needed attention. I did two batches of laundry - this is a couple hours of work - and got them out on the line to dry just as it started sprinkling rain. Fortunately, it only sprinkled for 15 minutes or so. Laundry is a lot of work! The hardest is just trying to make sure you've rinsed out a reasonable amount of soap, without using too much water.
Straight in from laundry, I started heading to my room - nap time!! Free time!! Not to be so. I talked to Elizabeth about preparing food for dinner, including brownies! But apparently this was going to be a lunch affair and needed to be started immediately. I was basically handed the kitchen. Which was kind of fun as an idea, and less fun as a reality. Working in someone else's kitchen, in another country, is hard! Finding the items you need to use, not knowing if all those things even exist here, etc. is its own task! Elizabeth helped me a lot, and she kept me on track, and straight did a lot of it. Using her stuff, timing 3 foods being made at the same time using the same stove, oven, utensils, etc. After learning about, and gaining more appreciation, for Elizabeth's cooking, we had pesto spaghetti, mesquite chicken, and brownies. Good day.
After eating plenty of lunch (I'm looking forward to more brownies when I get home today) I made it into my room for a nap! Which was very nice. I was again woken later by Elizabeth, and told we were going out! So I got ready for the day, lol, finally. (its roughly 4:30 by this time..) I got ready, and even had my hair dryer!!!! I have now been able to blow dry my hair twice in my 6 week stay! My outlet adapter didn't work for it, and last weekend when I stayed with the mission president and his wife I was able to use one they had in the house. They also had another adapter for me to try. I used it for the first time yesterday and it worked!! So I dried my hair, put on blush and mascara, wore my cute hat, and looked a bit more like my American self. :)
Our venture was out to a shopping mall, in an area I haven't seen yet! Turns out we were going to a bridal fair that was being hosted at the mall. It was apparenlty 'full' and we weren't allowed to go in.. which was kind of sad. It would have been cool to see what weddings here are like, how they advertise and get people's attention, idk, all sorts of stuff. We went instead to the Accra Mall, got sugar popcorn (very good) and went grocery shopping at Shoprite! Yep, grocery store, in the mall, and its actually a very very American feeling mall. Its definitely a central location for any foreigners. At Shoprite we saw some missionaries! From Nigeria and Oklahoma, and they're apparently the office elders. They almost came by the house last weekend when I was with the President! Awhile later, actually while we were in line, they came and found me again, and introduced me to another girl who had come to talk to them. Katie! Katie is actually a BYU student here teaching preschool and kindergarten age kids! She's only been here a week and a half, and is looking for a ward, so they missionaries figured we could maybe go together. I'm excited to have someone to be with me! She lives pretty far from me.. on the other side of Accra. The good news though is that I go to church everywhere, so wherever she is will probably do.
Finally, we went to a Chinese restaurant and had some good dinner! It was getting to be very late at night though, and we were all so tired! We didn't get home til 12:30, and everyone pretty much just went to bed. Except me, who wanted to get online and read some happy birthday greetings from home!
So thank you for any who sent birthday greetings!! I am very loved and have been blessed with amazing family and friends. Thanks again!
No comments:
Post a Comment