Merry Christmas, Happy Birthday to me, and Happy New Year!

In response to the people who wanted to know how I spent Christmas, my birthday, which was December 28th, and New Year's, here's a little recap. During the week leading up to Christmas day, I helped my organization organize a Christmas Day event to feed people living with HIV/AIDS, the needy, and the sick in our city. Everyone who came received a free meal, some food to take with them, and there was music and entertainment too. It was a lot of work, so I was really busy before the holidays and didn't really have too much time to miss everyone back home. On Christmas Eve, we cooked all day, and people continued cooking all night as well, but I met up with another Peace Corps Volunteer and we hung out in town with some of our Ghanaian friends, which was really fun. On Christmas Day, I worked from early in the morning until late at night with all of the logistics and details of the program. In the end, about 400 people came to our organization's building, where the event was held, and we took meals to about 400 patients and staff in hospitals. Along the way, we tried to briefly educate all the people we fed about HIV/AIDS. The whole day went really well, and it was really fun too, even though it was a lot of hard work. In the evening, all of us who worked on the program had dinner together at the director's house. It was really nice, and we went out afterwards to celebrate the program's success.

For my birthday, I met up with some of my friends at Axim, on the beach. It was gorgeous. There were beautiful white sand beaches with tons of palm trees and pretty thatch huts. And the beaches were mostly deserted, except for us, so it was really peaceful and quiet. We had a nice dinner on my birthday, but nothing too crazy. For New Year's, we went to Busua, which is also on the beach, and is equally gorgeous, but there were more people there. Most of the Peace Corps volunteers in Ghana meet up in Busua for New Year's, and there were volunteers from neighboring countries too, including Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo, and Benin. It was really cool getting to hear about different people's experiences, and I met a lot of cool people. We had a big party at a resort on the beach, with huge bonfires (30 ft!) and fireworks. I had a great time. Busua is really nice. There's no cell phone reception there, unless it's low tide and you walk to the ocean, and usually if you walk into the water to your calves, you can get service. One of the days we were there, I had to call one of my friends to make plans to meet up, but it wasn't low tide, so I had to go out till the water was above my waist before I got reception. But while I was talking to her the waves kept getting bigger until I couldn't talk to her anymore because I was having to hold the phone in the air over my head while the waves were crashing on me. It was quite humorous.