happy valentine's day weekend!

Sorry for not updating in a few days! It’s been a good weekend, and by the end of Friday and Saturday night I was just exhausted. So I’ll pick up from Friday. Gillian and I had nothing to do on Friday, so we tried to sleep in, which really only meant sleeping til 9:30 or 10. We both usually can’t sleep any later even if we want to. Oftentimes at night I find myself waking up once every hour or so, checking my phone in a panic, thinking I’m late for something. Either way, we spent most of Friday at a hotel pool with some of our friends. This wasn’t the same pool we went to last time (the one with the umbrella in the bottom), but a hotel much closer to us and much nicer. The pool temperature was the PERFECT pool temperature, especially for a really hot day (every day). We just laid out, swam, and even watched about 5 local middle school boys have swim practice with their teacher for about an hour in the pool (we were tanning at the time, which was kinda awkward/funny, but really fun to watch). Friday night we made popcorn and watched Ocean’s Eleven. Someone in the house has Ocean’s Twelve, so we plan on watching that one soon! That’s pretty much all for Friday—nothing too extraordinary happened, but we definitely relaxed and had a good time with friends.

Saturday was VALENTINE’S DAY! Aside from the fact that my Eric wasn’t here to share the day with, us girls had a great day celebrating each other! MK, Gillian and I first got pedicures and manicures at a place our director, Christa, recommended. This place was so nice, and we felt like we were back in NY. Even better, a mani/pedi was 13.5 Cedi total!! I got my toes painted neon pink, and my fingers bright red, in honor of the holiday! It was really nice to be pampered and get our feet all smooth and fixed up, after being a little worn from walking in flip flops and on dirt roads for 5 weeks. It was a really great morning, and the day had just begun.

Afterwards Gillian, MK and I went to the Accra Mall, which I talked about in an earlier post. It’s the crazy shopping mall that reminds me so much of malls in America. Anyway, they have a cinema, so we went there and watched Bride Wars (the chic flick starring Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson)! It was SOO cute, but even if it wasn’t, we still would’ve probably loved it just because it was a movie, at a movie theatre, in a mall that reminded us of home. We all left the theatre completely thinking we were gonna step outside onto the New York streets. Ha, alas, that was not the case, but it was a really nice escape and a great girly movie to see with my girls. After the movie we came home and got ready for dinner at Mamma Mia’s! A bunch of us went, and picked up the cake on the way. We sat outside, but shortly after getting our wine, it started to lightning and rain, which was totally unexpected, since it’s the dry/draught season. BUT, we moved inside to a big table and drank wine, ate cake, and listened to the heavy rain outside. It was a great dinner with lots of laughs and celebrating of just being together. We came home and just read and talked. I watched almost 6 episodes of Entourage and fell asleep to the sound of the rain rather early. (Totally irrelevant side-note: Speaking of Entourage—I’ve seen all the seasons and am bummed season 5 isn’t out on DVD yet. I’m in love with Ari Gold.)

The girls at our Valentine's Day dinner at Mamma Mia's!

Today we had a really lazy morning. I got a lot of reading done for my classes this week (it’s gonna be a BUSY week), and did some homework I needed to do. At 2:30 we started making dinner with our RA, Julia, and didn’t finish until 6!! It takes a LOT of time to prepare a typical Ghanaian dish, and I guess I learned to appreciate it (and cooking in general) a lot more. We made red-red (different than mine, not sure which I like better), fried plantains, chicken sauce stew, and coconut rice. The coconut rice was SOOO good, and I think everyone I know would love it (and that’s saying something, since I know a lot of picky eaters). It’s just got a hint of coconut flavor. It’s boiled/steamed/whatever in a pot just like normal white rice is cooked. But instead of water, it’s cooked in coconut milk. I guess in the states we’d use an artificial or packaged kind, but here we used straight up real coconuts that we milked and shredded. Really cool and really good! We had a great dinner with a lot of the house, and have TONS of leftovers for the rest of the week.

I got to talk with my mom and sister on Skype tonight, which has become our Sunday tradition. I love talking to them and catching up on all the Houston news. Good to hear Nana’s doing well and walking around! Hope everyone else at home is well. I have a busy week ahead of me, as I’m sure we all do, but let’s try to be stress-free and happy. I get to go to Togo next weekend with my friends--we're really excited!!

Be blessed.

love love love