September 4, 2011 – Accra, Ghana Homestay – Madina Old Road
This was our first weekend free in Ghana! On Friday night, Terrin and I stayed at home and played with our five and two year old host sisters. They are really fun to play with, and they love hanging out with us in our room. On Saturday, almost the entire SIT group met at Legon (the University) and took a couple tro-tro's to Labadi beach. We were all super excited to see the ocean or Gulf of Guinea. The beach was beautiful and really big. We were definitely able to see home similar this beach was to the Caribbean. I literally had to keep reminding myself that I actually was in Africa. There are restaurants, umbrellas, chairs, drinks, and tons of people. The weather was gorgeous and very sunny. There are a lot of people selling things on the beach, as well, and I bought a Ghanaian flag and painting to take back home! The ocean was warm and very fun to swim in. Unfortunately, the beach itself is quite dirty as there is basically litter everywhere. In the ocean, the waves are so big and the tide is so strong that swimmers are not allowed to go much past their chest. Apparently, many people have trouble swimming out far with such strong waves. And the litter in the ocean hit your legs in the water, which made me kind of sad. I think all of us got a little sunburned too because we all literally stayed at the beach from the morning to around six p.m.
For dinner, eight of the SIT students took a tro-tro to Osu. Osu is closer to downtown Accra, where there are big buildings and the lifestyle is a bit more westernized. We found a restaurant called Mamma Mia, surprisingly an Italian restaurant! There was pizza and chicken nuggets and French fries. I ate a delicious pizza with eggplant, olives, and mozzarella cheese. The area and restaurant were definitely the most tourist-y place we have been to so far. It was kind of nice to be in a more familiar type of restaurant and sneak a little Americanized food. After dinner, we were all exhausted and came back to our homestays.
This morning, we were supposed to go to church with our family but our family is having visitors over so we ended up just eating breakfast with them. Our host mother said she would take us to church sometime this week, which would be a really interesting experience. Terrin and I decided to go explore a little bit. A lot of the other SIT students are going to church, so I think we only have a small group of three students exploring today. We are planning on taking some tro-tro's to Jamestown. Apparently Jamestown is near the National Museum, the National Theater, Osu Castle, and Nkrumah's Mansion. Since today is Sunday, the area itself shouldn't be too busy and it will be nice to explore a different part of Accra. Hopefully our afternoon plans work out and we are able to see some museums or something. Tonight we are going to try to visit an Internet café near our house for the first time, which hopefully goes well too!
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