the fun we had...

For me it was one of the most fun weekends in Ghana, yet this time not because of some traveling or something like that. It was a very fun weekend with good friends and good food:) And I’m sure you don’t appreciate the importance of the second part, but when you keep having rice over and over again, the moments of good food are really precious:p So how did it happen:

Saturday day we were invited to barbeque to a house of a very friendly Lebanese couple. The occasion: THREE birthdays – the Lebanese girl, Cristina and Stevan (24, 25, 26). We were really royaly treated with grilled chicken, fancy salat, some lebanese food and a chockolate cake! Four hours spent there were really relaxing, fun and full:p And yeah, they have some very cute dogs:

Saturday evening was THE most fun party I’ve been to in Ghana and I don’t remember when I was laughing so much! Of course it’s hard to tell all the stories and all the funny things that happened. Short summary – it started at APL house with some drinks, some pasta, some singing, some playing golf, some “dancing” with a fan (ask Martin what was that about:p) and ended at Tantra (of course:)) Anyway, pictures speak louder than words:

I failed with my "blue steel" expression;) Wanna know, what "blue steel", check out this perfect example (could be on the cover of the magazine;)):

Ech... this was SO romantic... Lars would be perfect for some boys band. He was very convincing singing to Cristina something about love with such tenderness and sweetness in the eyes and in the smile... every girls dream... :D

Sunday day went by very quickly after Saturday evening, but in the evening we gathered together again for “family” dinner. Cooking took longer than expected, but nobody questioned that after it was served:) At 10:45pm Cristina blew the candle for her birthday and we stayed a little longer discussing various issues, the biggest one being Lars’ magazine for men, which was full of pictures of men looking very similar to girls. We were worried…

Other news:

- Lithuanian invasion in 13 days!!!

- I drove a car today!!! It was SO much fun:) Passing a crossing with no traffic light was a bit of a challenge, but a few honks here and there did the trick:p

Evolution and other stuff

I promised to write about it a long time ago, so here it is:
EVOLUTION! I have always been quite comfortable with the idea that the species mutate and a long time ago humans were monkeys and that dinosours lived happily until the climate changed drastically, so they all died and we find their bones now all over the world etc. Honestly I never really questioned it, as it all makes perfect sense for me and it’s been proved by science so many times.

Now this is totally not true for Ghanaians. In some schools they don’t even teach this at the biology or similar class. According to them all is created by God, of course.

For me it’s one of the biggest findings on what difference it makes the environment that you are brought up in. I think it would be quite hard to find an European, who wouldn’t believe in evolution. And even if he didn’t he would have a very different explanation to it than “God”. Whereas here you cannot find a person who WOULD believe it. Not even those who are not that religious.

I don’t know why I find it so surprising, but I’m determined to find a person, who believes in evolution:p Saulius suggested I should check the prison:))

I’m getting close though:p Habib, AIESEC director for Africa region, who’s Cameroonian was here last week. He thinks there are flawds in the theory, but in general he believes it:) One step forward;)

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On a more practical note:
A little more than two weeks are left until Lithuanian invasion, I have my sister, my cousin and her friend visiting:) Ghana has never seen so many Lithuanians on it’s ground at the same time!:) I’m very excited about it;) And nervous as organizing something logistically has never been my strength. But people say that after two invasions of Lithuanians (my parents are coming in January!!!:)), I could be openning my travel agency: “Ghana for obrunies”:) If you’re traveling by, please use my services;)

Highlights of the week

I have been accused of being biased towards Ghana and ghanaians, but what can I do? I feel happy here at least for now… In a way it’s weird, because when I came to Ghana I’ve met a couple of people, who have been in Ghana approximately five months. And I’ve heard A LOT of bad things about Ghana. So now I’m kinda waiting when will it hit me? For now, here are the highlights of my week:

1. Serbian saint day:) Every serbian family has a saint and one day in a year they celebrate the day of this saint. So this Wednesday was Stevan’s family’s saint’s day. Luckily for us this meant a wonderful dinner. The kind that you don’t get here that often. Stevan slaved in the kitchen for half a day and it was all gone in less than an hour. It’s nice to have some “normal” food from time to time in a very sweet family-like setting;)

2. Mangoes. The tree in our yard finally is giving us mangoes. You just go out, take one and eat:) I think this week I ate more mangoes than I’ve done in my entire life!:D We should schedule a trip to Smoothy’s for “Number 1”, right, Katrin?;)

3. Yesterday was quite a fun quiz night (after a horribly boring one last week). I’m sure the team name had something to do with it: “Center for kids that can’t read good and want to learn how to do other cool stuff too”:) I was lucky to write it 7 times;) Luck was really on our side at least twice yesterday:

1)After a movie round (for not locals – movie round is when they show a small clip from a movie and then ask questions about the things you were supposed to notice, like what color was the guy’s socks:)). One of the questions was: “How many times was the f*** word used in the clip?”. Dialogue:
Stevan: “write 563”
Me: “that’s too much” And I wrote 16, just because 56 or 63 seemed way too big numbers…
Stevan: “563 is closer than what you wrote”.
Guess what was the right answer? 16!!!!

2)Tequila round was that you had to write what disease the person in the picture has. One of them was Cybil Shepard and we didn’t know what to put to her, so Stevan wrote some bladder disorder or something like that. I said that it’s mean to write something like that:) You might have already guessed that was the right answer!:)

Moreover, we won the tequilla round!!! Got 18 diseases right out of 20. I was really surprised by that, though they accepted all answers to the diseases of “Michael Jackson” and “United nations” and they accepted “Scientology” as the disease of Tom Cruise:D

I guess this is not very funny for ppl, who were not there, so this post is more for me to remember:)

Weekend report

I bet you are wondering what I was up to last weekend;) Saturday one of the LCs organized “integration trip” for its members and trainees, so we spent a wonderful day at prampram beach:) Unfortunatelly it wasn’t a very swimming kinda beach, but I enjoyed it none the less, especially playing volley-ball which I haven’t done for quite a while. And just being with people of course… I didn’t take pictures, so just let me share a couple of Maryna’s;)

Me and Enoch (Legon VPPD:p), I have that weird look on my face, because this was taken as a big wave was comming on to us (half of the dress was wet after this;))


Maryna in the desert:D Just a cute picture...

Other than that last weekend was a party time. Those who know me know that partying is not my strongest feature, but I came home at 4 am after Friday party, woke up at 8 (to go to the beach), after the beach was home at 7:30pm and by 9pm we were already heading “downtown” for dinner and extended fun:) I guess I don’t have to mention how dead I was by 11 o’clock:) Yet, human body is an interesting thing and after 15 minutes of sleeping (yeah, I did manage to sleep at Monsoon’s:D) I was dancing at Tantra till 4:30am:) On normal circumstances I wouldn’t mention such things, but it’s for my more partying friends a hint that I’m not totally hopeless:p And more importantly it was a way to say goodbye to Patrick, a person I learned a lot from in a short time we shared. Thank you for that! Labanakt:)

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For those who don’t like my little theories I wish sunshine and you may stop reading. For the others, I have one more theory or observation rather. I was looking through some blogs of people who were on traineeship in Ghana, but left before I came and I started thinking that generally traineeship is a small version of life itself:

You come and don’t know anyone, don’t know the culture = you are born:) You start meeting people, learning about the environment you live in etc. The first months are very fun and full of surprises, just like the first years of your life. Then you become comfortable with your life, know what is going on, have a circle of people you spend most time with and your life becomes some sort of routine with occasional trip or event. By the end of your traineeship you look back to your experience and the first thing you try to do is to catch up with all the things you didn’t manage to do though wanted to: oh, there’s this place I want to go to, oh, there’s this thing I need to do before I leave… Well comparing the end of the traineeship with death is a bit too drastic, but in a way it does mean the end. Circle of life:)

Maybe that’s why it’s so sad when somebody leaves. It’s even sadder when somebody close to you leaves. Though I’ve been told more than once that I shouldn’t get attached to people so much, somehow I don’t think it’s the right way to go. Firstly, nobody could tell how to do that;) But more importantly, I think it’s better to let people you like close to your heart and store the memories of them there after they leave than have your heart blank though not have to miss anybody…