So right now I'm sitting in the corner of our living room with Maddox and Josie while they watch a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving on the iPad and Robyn, Tina and three ladies from Lincoln have an African Dance lesson with Ema. All the furniture is moved aside and Asanti is singing away and lighting up the drums. Nice.
Its been like this a lot lately. Those I can't believe we really live here sort of moments. Last weekend we had our British friends over for dinner. The kids played and watched movies, and we talked and played music. The night ended with us on the porch, enjoying drinks, playing old school tunes with lightning in the distance and the guards sitting down below listening in. I couldn't help but smile.
(That was Wednesday and it is now Sunday. I never got around to publishing the post and apparently lost a little of what I wrote that afternoon so I'll pick it up from there).
One more only in Ghana moment though before I continue. Maddox and I went to Marina Mall Wednesday to get ourselves a Christmas tree and some lights from the grocery store. While we stood around waiting for them to find our tree in the warehouse, a random middle aged man walks up to us and takes Maddox by the hand and starts talking to him. He asked Maddox if he played football (soccer for you Americans) to which he of course replied "yes". (Oh, Maddox still had on his cleats from his afterschool soccer program). He then went on to ask who he played for and what his favorite team was. This time Maddox replied his favorite team was Chelsea. I love that this answer rotates through about five or six different teams by the way. The whole time Maddox just stood and talked while he held this man's hand. In NC we both would have freaked out a bit if things had gone down this way, but here, we've both learned to just kind of accept it.
Alright. Thanksgiving. We'll leave out the early morning parts here, since there were some slammed doors, tears and general uncomfortableness that goes along with a strong willed five year old. Eventually, we got Josie off to school and us on the road to Tema. We took Maddox to visit Community Eleven School Complex so that he could see the place and meet the people we've been talking about for the past several years. It turned out super cool and although he was nervous to join us, I think he had fun and it was definitely a good experience for him. We got there about 9:00 and carved the turkey about 9:30. Yep, they had a turkey for us. Turns out Mr. Atta had called and reminded them it was Thanksgiving and suggested they get one. It was actually pretty good, and really cool to share a meal with our friends. It was more or less the staff of the primary school. Which, now that I think about it, makes me wonder what all the kids were doing. Funny.
I then took some time to talk to Habeeb, the guy that helped us get the network installed, while Robyn and Maddox read a book to the first grade class. Then we played a little football. Well, kind of. We got a ball out, Maddox punted it and about 100 kids swarmed it. It was kind of downhill from there, but it was still fun.
From there we headed to Josie's school where I got to read a story to her friends while she hung onto my arm with the proudest smile plastered across her little face. She then gave us a very animated and excited tour of the playground before heading home for the afternoon. (They won't let us into the classrooms. Ask Robyn about that sometime). It was really cool to spend that little bit of time there with her though. She was so excited to show us around. That was the first time I had been able to visit her school since we got here. That's been a little change for me after dropping both kids off everyday for the past several years.
We then had a giant Thanksgiving feast that evening with about 50 of our friends from Lincoln. A couple from the school set up a bunch of tables in their driveway and everybody brought something to share. It was a fantastic feast and fun to have some time just to hang out with a bunch of our new friends and some people we are still getting to know. All in all it was quite a fantastic Thanksgiving. Filled with lots of things to be thankful for.
01 Dec	This entry was published on December 1, 2013 at 9:35 am and is filed under family, Uncategorized.	Bookmark the permalink.	Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.