do what you want to do!

remember when my friends and i were extras in an african music video?  the beginning of last year, a friend took several of us to a rastafarian friend's farm which we were supposedly just going to check out... we were so, so wrong.  while we did get a tour of the farm and some samplings of the delicious produce, we were also included in the filming of a music video that he was making.  we went along with it, not really knowing what would come out of it, but here it is!  (our friend who brought us there, a fellow teacher, ended up emailing the video to our whole staff.  thumbs down!  but one of my coworkers was like -- you're so smart, kept the back of your head to the camera at all times.. just what i would do haha)

rain and helmets

today the rain fell so hard.  against the tin roofs, it's nearly deafening.  a man standing two feet away spoke to me, but i couldn't hear him, so he had to shout in my ear so i could hear.  scary, but amazing.

also... today while on the roads, we saw a taxi driver with a helmet on... maybe like a hard hat or armyish type helmet?  when we passed him, he looked up and to the side like this O_O.  haha.

nigeria is a special, special place.

round 2, ding!

back in abuja for round 2 of the crazy life, and not any better at keeping tabs on this blog, but i'll give it another try.

my summer was pretty wonderful.  relaxing, but not so relaxing that it became boring.  immediately after leaving nigeria i wandered around frankfurt for awhile.  saw a lot of the beautiful buildings and was reintroduced to the civilized world.  also took a tour of the rhine river valley and saw/heard a lot of the history behind the old castles.  one oddity: during my trip, i never saw a place to show/give a bahn (subway) ticket and was also never asked for one... and i used the bahn often enough.  weird.  couldn't get away with something like that in ny...

how i knew frankfurt liked me... a local shoe store.  :)

after a day in jersey, i jumped right back on that plane and spent a week in hawaii with my family & adrien.  beautiful, lots to do, need to go back.  had a few weeks with friends and family, and then roadtripped to wisconsin with a nice stop to explore chicago.  another week and a half later, and i'm back in nigeria.  i'm not sure if i was necessarily ready to come back, but here i am.  it was embarrassingly easy to just fall back into the good life and it feels a liiiiiiittle good to be deprived of some of those conveniences.

sunset in hawaii

a woman got into a little tiff with me while on the plane because i put my carry-on right above HER seat since the one above mine was full.  after she boarded and was ready to load in her luggage she would not let up that it was HERS even though some others in front of her had room... so alas, i moved mine.  "welcome back!" said my roommate sara who was sitting a row behind me.  all our bags came through just fine and no problems with immigration or customs this time around.  when we got back to our apartments we lost power mid-unpacking/catching up with neighbors.  it came back on, but only in certain rooms (the living room and my bedroom were not the lucky ones...).  it fixed itself later in the night, but oh... how quickly we were reminded and welcomed back into the country.  people driving the wrong way on roads this afternoon when we picked up groceries was another pleasantry i had quickly forgotten about.  i'm sure i will get reacquainted with many of these wonderful reminders of how easy my life is when i'm in the States and to not take all that for granted.  be thankful for what you have, my friends.