For starters, here's how we celebrated New Years here in Ghana!
Don and I are not huge New Years celebration people. I'm usually too tired by that point to plan one more thing. We're kind of "watch movies in our bed until midnight then roll over and go to sleep" sort of people. We put our kids to bed at their normal time as they had had lots of late nights the previous week. Then we laid in our room nostalgically watching home videos of our kids when they were little. We also marveled at the celebration going on over the wall outside. Here's what it sounded like from our side of the wall! :)
On New Years Day, Don and Libby took off in the morning on an excursion into Tema to retrieve a surprise package that had come in the mail for us. They had a Ghana adventure of taxis and tro tros and roasted plantains...and yes, they had success retrieving our care package from home! (Libby wrote her first blog post about her day's adventures so I'll let her fill you in on the details.) After a week off of school, we were feeling the effects of no routine in the house so while Don and Libby were gone, the rest of us started (lightly) school again. (I know! I'm such a party popper...but you would have done the same thing, trust me!) However, in the afternoon, we all went to our little neighborhood church to celebrate the New Year with our friends there. They served a meal...we sang...we shared communion together...we prayed...it was a good way to welcome 2013!
A couple children in the church run around every Sunday and gather as many neighborhood kids as they can to join the service and celebration. The church blessed these kids today with a meal and their own bottle of Pop!
The lovely ladies in the church who prepared and served the meal
When we got home, we all gathered around Daddy to open our box of LOVE! It was filled with all kinds of goodness -- mac n cheese, peanut butter, bottle caps & honey roasted peanuts (for Daddy), heath bars (for Mommy!), Sun Art Paper, notes of encouragement, washcloths (we briskly scrubbed some little feet that night and I think they were actually clean for the first time since we've been here!), 8.5x11 paper (they don't sell this here so anytime I have to put something in the kids notebooks, I have to cut the paper down to size with a pair of child's scissors. So this paper made me HAPPY! :) ), family movies, jelly bellies...so much FUN!!! We took showers with our new washcloths then cuddled up with some snacks to watch The Lorax. It was such a great way to end the day and start a new year!
Welcome 2013!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment