Birthday, and Homestay!

I just had the best birthday in the history of my birthdays! I have known my group for all of 2 days, and they gave me the greatest day ever. First we began with Twi language lessons (which we will all have to learn quickly for our next homestay in Kumasi) and for breaks we learned West African dancing with live drumming...! West African dancing is incredible, you move to the beat of the drums and tabla, and you hunch your body towards the Earth. All dances tell a story. I picked it up quickly! Then for my birthday we all went to the beach, and Kwame (one of the younger staff members) came with us. The ocean was like a bathtub, and everyone was playing music and dancing on the beach! The only difficult thing was getting proposed to by many men on the beach... a bit fast I would say! I may need to start saying that I have a husband. On the Tro Tro ride home, everyone sang Happy Birthday to me for a longgggg time, led by Kwame.  Then, after dinner my friend Jake brought tequila for all birthdays on the trip, so a few of us took shots for my 21st.   A bunch of my friends walked to the store and bought boxed sangria and chocolate, and they surprised me with this and with a birthday card signed by everyone on the trip.  My friend Rachel gave me a birthday massage, and Kwame and Papa Atah brought me wine.  It really was the best birthday I have ever had, and I couldnt believe I had such thoughtful friends by the second day of my trip.  I showed Yemi our program director the card in the morning, and he told me that he already had a feeling that our group was special, especially since we always tell the staff to come eat with us and join us in all of our activities.  The main saying here is |Enjoy your life| and that really is what everyone does here!  I\ve gotten used to saying it, it feels so simple and so wonderful.
Today I recently met my homestay family, and my homestay mother, Auntie Mellisant, has been a homestay mother for 9 years and has won best homestay mother awards.  Her daughter teaches at the University I will be going to, and she has adopted 2 girls who I hope to play with! I just finished a political discussion with a member of the family who I think may be Jennifer\s (Auntie\s daughter) boyfriend.  He sat down to eat and he said I was invited, meaning I was invited to sit and talk with him.  Normally in Ghana you only eat together on the weekends, which is interesting but is also nice because we don\t need to feel badly about missing dinner. We just eat when we\d like to. We just need to communicate about coming home late. Auntie made me a delicious dinner tonight and asked me everything about what I like to eat. She made me pasta with vegetables, and I ate cooked egg too (its hard to get protein here). She told me that I need to be safe, and that it is safe to walk around just not to be too friendly with men who want to marry me.  I have a huge bed, a toilet and shower to myself... nicer than our hotel! I  think I lucked out, because it won\t be like this for my other homestays.  And the University is only a short shared taxi ride away, 10 or 15 minutes opposed to the 1 hour Tro Tro ride many will have to take. I lucked out! Auntie said that many of her children (which she said I am one of) bring their families to Ghana to visit her.  I am so excited for everything, and I am loving life!
Love!