London ... Hens Parties ... Ghana...

So.. I'm up to February with my blog... being back in London after having been on holiday for so long in Mexico and Australia was rather tough, although I'm not sure you'll be feeling that sorry for me though considering I'd had a very easy start to the year!

Crutches and top floor apartments don't mix!
This good run of holiday luck grinded to a halt back in London where, in my first fortnight, I had the painful experience of tearing my calf muscle while playing netball. The annoying thing was that it was just a freak accident as I was running up the court, not even involving any contact with anyone else, but it did feel like someone had just hurled a big rock at the back of my leg, and infact I was looking around for the rock when I hit the ground! The netball girls were so good and looked after me so well, helping me back to my flat, and up 4 flights of stairs, and even bringing back a few bottles of wine to us share while I got the ice-pack going! And so it was that I was on crutches and out of action for a week and forced to sit on the couch and catch up on '24' episodes for a few days and get some 'physioterrorist' sessions (as my physio sister Lizzy says some people refer to it, due to the pain inflicted in each session!). A special thanks to my sister Felicity and Rosey who came over so often to cook for me and bring me whatever I needed, as well as my flatmate Rae who was constantly there to help me with getting things I needed around the flat! I couldn't have done it without you guys, thanks:) Anyway, it wasn't too long until I was up and at it again, and in the meantime it was great to have some chilled out weekends in London, particularly catching up with an old college friend, Tania Zappala, visting London down from Liverpool for the weekend. We had a great brunch at The Electric cafe in Nottinghill, where I'd been dying to go for ages. It was so fun catching up and at one point we were laughing so hard we were getting funny looks from other patrons...

Julia's Hens weekend in New Forest
It was on the 14/15th March that a group of 17 girls headed to a massive house in the New Forest for Julia's hens weekend. We got the weekend off to a good start with some champagne on the way down, and it wasn't too long before we were asking the young conductor to blow his whistle as we were getting off at Brockenhurst! One of the girls cooked up an amazing meal and it wasn't too long before we were playing games, drinking more wine and getting into one of Jule's favourite pass-times - Singsong Karaoke! I was in heaven those of you who know we well would understand! The next day, we went to 'High Ropes' in New Forest, involving climbing up extremely high and often unstable poles and trees... incredibly unnerving and I was convincing myself not to cry on a couple of occasions! Of course Jules did it in style, particularly as she was all dressed up in a leather cat-woman outfit, which secretly I think she quite enjoyed!!

Rosey's Hen's Night - Pole Dancing in London... and a sad farewell...
In the season of Hen's weekends, I was attending my next Hen's event, my old flat-mate Rosey, where the main event was Pole-dancing!! I had great visions of myself impressively moving around the pole by the end of the session, however the lesson surprised me in that it was more a dance class, whereby the pole was there merely for decoration and balance, then any great swinging around the pole action!! However i definitely was NOT disappointed and absolutely loved the lesson, it was definitely hard work and infact something I'd take up purely for the exercise factor!! We then kicked on with a very entertaining dinner, in a restaurant that conveniently had a pole in our room, great for Rosey to perfect her routine in between courses! All in all a great night, but a sad one as it came time to say goodbye to Rosey, one of my oldest and closet friends in London, she is already very sorely missed... Sorry there aren't too many photos of pole dancing for you... didn't want to get kicked off the website!!

Heading back to Ghana...
So I was also lucky enough to head back to Ghana for work again at the end of March, this time for 3 weeks! I was out there working at Vodafone Ghana, and although the working days were long, it was great to enjoy the sunshine and also have the weekends to get out and about to see more of the country.

I was able to dust off my ‘African dress’ outfit that the team had given me last time in Ghana. It hadn’t got much use since my trip out to Ghana so I was very happy to get back into it for Friday ‘Africa day’ at work.

We had a couple of great days at the beach on the weekends, drinking great wine in the sunshine with the cool sea breeze providing a reprieve from the oppressive heat back in Accra. We were able to buy fresh pineapples from a young girl walking past and the guy who had rented us a shelter for the day made us pineapple juice. We had freshly grilled fish and rice for lunch and played with some cute kids on the beach for the afternoon, before heading back to Accra extremely relaxed!

I got into the R&R on the weekends, as I also spent another day discovering an amazing day spa where I enjoyed a wonderful hot stone massage, followed by a manicure and pedicure!! It was pure luxury and I felt very relaxed and ready to head back out into the manic traffic and heat after a few hours in the day spa! The temperature was in the high 30s during my visit, making it difficult to hang out outside for long periods of time, or inside with no air conditioning as I found out the day we visited the National Museum which was unbelievably hot. We had the whole museum to ourselves which was probably a good thing as we were absolutely dripping with sweat as we left!

I also had a fantastic night out in Accra dancing salsa outside under the stars, next to the swimming pool at my hotel! The people I was dancing with were brilliant, and turned out to mostly be full time dance teachers. All in all, it was great to have such a vibrant salsa night right on my doorstep at the hotel pool!!

And so it was that I had another really enjoyable visit to Ghana, the people are so friendly, happy and welcoming that I really hope I can get there again soon!

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