Soccer game & Festival

Wow it's been over a week since the last post. I'm really slack about this. Anyway, this weekend was pretty neat. I went to my first international soccer game ever (never even seen the US team play). Ghana played Swaziland and won 2-0. It was really exciting. The soccer atmosphere here is so different. The game definitely has much more appreciation than back home. It wasn't completely packed but it was plenty loud. I don't think there was one second with the absence of the sound of one of those plastic horns you hear at the world cup. And it was so funny when our group sat down because from that moment on vendors came swarming around us trying to sell food and drinks and souvenirs. But by this point I'm not surprised anymore when that happens.
On Saturday I went with a group on a bus to a festival in Cape Coast. I feel really dumb because I can't remember the name of it, but it was so much fun. There were lots of costumes and music, which was paraded down the streets. On the end of the parade people were carrying the 'Queen Mother' on a massive chair under an umbrella. I can't remember exactly her role in the town but I'm guessing she is some sort of political or spiritual leader. What I find funny is the fact that most people and Ghana are either Christian or Muslim and they have a festival that celebrates the indigenous beliefs. Guess it goes to show how much they hold strong to their traditions. Cape Coast is a pretty interesting town. The first time we went there we just took a tour of the slave castle (which was mind blowing) and didn't see much of the town. This time we definitely got to see the downtown area. It's so different from Accra (the capitol). Accra is so mixed because there's areas of poverty while there's also huge modernized American style buildings for phone companies and resorts and other things. Cape Coast is still very colonial and not so 'in your face.' And from what we experienced on Saturday, it can be very festive and colorful.
If there's one thing I've really enjoyed about culture outside the university, it's that at events like these everyone is generally in a very happy mood and pretty friendly. It's so unlike America where on holidays families might kind of do their own thing. Sometimes it feels as though I'm observing one big giant family. Definitely a more communistic culture.