Easter Day

Sunday, April 24, 2011
Easter Sunday

I got up and went to church with the knowledge that it would be an extremely long service. To my utter surprise the entire ordeal took about seven hours and involved a sermon that touched on Easter for about ten minutes. It was a nice mass and the service was in English, which is always a nice surprise. But the preacher spoke mostly about himself or about his book that was just released. He also spent over an hour thanking people for sponsoring his book and celebrating his birthday with him. The mass centered around the theory that what you put into life does not control what you get out of it, which seems to be a backward message. It was difficult to comprehend the meaning he was trying to get across, but after analyzing and discussing it with fellow obrunis we came to a conclusion on the central idea. We were greeted by everyone in mass and many of the men were interested in getting to know us better outside of church as they put it. After the service we were serviced a delicious lunch with the entire church community. This made the day feel a little bit more like Easter, although we were eating Ghanaian food instead of my traditional Easter meal. We also got a chocolate chip cookie, which is huge in a country with little to no dessert.
The country as a whole does not celebrate the Easter holiday any further, it is solely a day to worship the Lord in church and the following day is used for the same purpose. Therefore, it is not unusual for people to make plans on Easter night, I of course had dance, so by the time I arrived back at the hostel I had thirty minutes to get settled, dressed, and head off to dance rehearsal. We practiced for about two hours and I feel more confident with the dance then I did before class, so at least I am showing improvement. After practice we walked back to the hostel with a group of people from dance. They were all TAs and on the way we saw a u-pal. The rest of the walk was entertaining because they were arguing over whom I should walk next too. The entire scene was clearly a joke and they did a great job in keeping me entertained the entire walk back.