LSAT and Shopping

Yesterday morning we took the LSAT at the US Embassy. There were another 2 peace corps volunteers and about 6 Africans. There really isn't much to blog about the test, but it went well and I'm glad it's over. After the test we went to Champ's... yes... the American franchise sports bar Champs... and had buffalo wings, nachos with guacamole, and celebratory beer. We continued the celebration by hitting the street and trying everything that looked good along the way. Everyone says Ghana has amazing street food so we had some grilled corn and some grilled bananas. We saw amazing looking grilled meat but were full from Champs. (A side note, I realize it sounds stupid to be eating street food in Africa but chances are it's prepared no differently than the food I eat daily.)We walked around and saw downtown Accra and then came back to the hotel. We ended up hanging out with a returned peace corps volunteer who now works for a micro-finance institution and his co-workers who are all at our hotel. In case you're visiting Ghana, while their beer "Star" is good, I would highly recommend the cider, "Savannah."
We slept in this morning and then hit the markets. Rumor is Ghana has excellent shopping and I have not been disappointed. We wandered through their main market and saw all of the crabs, fresh vegetables (including avocado which we can't get in Senegal), and pigs feet. Ghanaians are definitely different than Senegalese. Aside from the fact it's odd to hear people speaking English, they are calmer and way less aggressive. I didn't feel like anything was a fight like everything is in Senegal. Then we went to the market when Alyssa remembered the top souvenir on our list: Obama fabric. Within 10 minutes we had each bought 6 yards of fabric with Obama's face. It's amazing and I'll get pictures up after the trip. After the big market we headed towards the artisan/touristy market. We wandered up and down the different stalls and finally found a good jewelery stall. A lot of the jewelery is similar across West Africa and we were looking for Ghanaian pieces. We both bought a fair amount of glass necklaces and some metal pieces before heading to the fabric stalls. While looking around we passed a woman who said, "hey sister, come by wooden spoons for you mother." I actually almost bought spoons from her because I thought the marketing pitch was great but, sorry mom, I was on a mission for fabric,not spoons.
Ghana is known for kente cloth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kente_cloth) which is fairly expensive but we each found colors and designs we really liked. Sure I have no use for a heavy scarf now but once I'm out of Africa I will! Armed with successful purchases we headed back to the hotel, first grabbing lunch at a seafood restaurant near the hotel.
After a few hours of hanging out we tried to venture into the rain to see Iron Man 2. We jumped in the first cab we saw who then told us he had no interest in taking us to the movie theater because there would be traffic and made us get out. We were both soaking wet from the heavy rain and returned to the hotel within 5 minutes of leaving.