Life is good in Ghana!

April 29, 2016
        Well after a long day full of traveling, I made it!! It feels like a dream but I love it! Everyone is so welcoming!

        There were a lot of bumps along the way which only helped me to be even more grateful to be here. My suitcases were a little too heavy so I had to fix that, the flight was a bit rough, and my second flight from New York to Accra was delayed over an hour so that was a pain. However, I made some friends during that time. I had a great conversation with the guy sitting next to me as he told me all about how wonderful Ghana is and how everyone there is incredibly kind. He is originally from Ghana but moved to Boston 4 years ago. There was also a four year old girl behind me named Beverly. She was adorable. She asked me my name and age and all that good stuff and told me it was nice to meet me. Then before we even took off she asked me if it was time for the food yet, so I gave her some goldfish and fruit snacks (I knew it was a good idea to bring lots of extra snacks). She then said "wow thank you Kiera! You are such a great friend!" Needless to say, I love the people here already and I think I am going to fall in love with this place pretty fast.
        Before I left the plane, all the Ghanan people around me gave me a list of good tips and things to do and gave me their numbers in case I have any problems or questions haha everyone is so nice! Don't worry, I'm being safe about it!

        Well more about Ghana!! It is green and beautiful and all the little shops are so cute! It's as humid as ever. Although they fed us a ton on the plane, I think I have already sweated it all out. Literally there is no hope for even trying to look cute these next six weeks, so bear with me. Other than that, i love it!! We have walked around a bit and of course everywhere we go we hear "hey white person!! How are you!!?" Everyone carries everything on their heads and it is so cool. I've seen people do it before, but literally everyone does it here. Also everywhere you go there are people walking around on the streets selling, so if you get thirsty you just stop and they run some water to your car and you give them 1 Cedis. Also, the driving is insane. Especially the motorcycles. They drive wherever they want. On the sidewalks, on the wrong side of the road facing oncoming traffic, through small openings, anywhere. I'm surprised more people don't get into accidents.

        My group is awesome! There are 13 of us right now, all from BYU and then the last week or two there will be 4 others from random places. We have done some exploring and what not so it has been good. Right now we have wifi every now and then at the hotel thing we are staying at so if you iMessage me to my email then it should work! I'm keeping my phone on airplane mode and just leaving the wifi on so that's probably the best for now. There is air conditioning at the hotel sometimes. The power goes out a lot and then the air stops working for a while. When we went to bed last night it was 90 degrees in our room but luckily the air kicked on and by the morning it was pretty cool.

You can see the church from the bridge across the freeway.

        We also got to go to church today! It's just a short walk and the ward is solid. It was cool to once again see and hear that the church is the same all over the world. I was impressed by how loud they sang the hymns too. The spirit was so strong so that was cool. Church was SO hot though so through all the meetings if you looked around at our group then we all looked exhausted and half asleep haha. I think it will be fun getting to know them. Sometimes it's hard to understand them but luckily church is in English. There are about 10 official languages in this area I guess and so it's easiest to stick with English.
        Anyway, all is well! I'm alive and loving it here, well besides the heat. Life is good in Ghana!

Just one of the market places that we passed by on the way to our hotel 

This is like the White House of Ghana. 

Just the view of Ghana from the plane.