Thanksgiving Break

We finally got a couple days off from school, so we made the most of our time.

Thursday:

A couple of us from school had some fabric that needed to get made into dresses and skirts, so Dusty Rose had her tailor come over and fit us.

For Thanksgiving dinner, all the staff made a dish and brought it over to the Saleem/Borodenko (Kristel, Khalid, Lauren and Chris) household. About 40 showed up, so there was quite the spread. We enjoyed eating and conversing. We thought we would be able to get a turkey from the US Embassy, but at the last minute they changed their minds and wouldn't let us buy one from them. So, instead of turkey, we had a lot of roasted chicken.

Friday:

Deanna, the other first grade teacher, and her husband Bruno, invited us to play poker at their friends house. For our first time playing poker, we didn't do so bad. We ended up losing $14 dollars or N2100.

Saturday:

The last Saturday of every month is Sanitation Saturday which means no one is allowed to drive from 6am to 10am. Once we were able to get out and drive, we picked Chris and Lauren up and drove out to Bwari Pottery. Bwari is a small village, 45 km outside Abuja. Bwari Pottery is known for having wonderful pottery. In fact, Katie, Jordan's CC advisor, knew about Bwari and had told us to visit whenever possible. We finally made it up there this weekend. Bwari Pottery is truely Nigerian. The clay and the paint pigments all come from the village. Chris and Jordan have been molding holds for the climbing wall, so we brought them and gave them to Stephen (owner of Bwari Pottery) to fire in the kiln.

Chris found his perfect drinking mug

The kiln

A potter's wheel

Later that night, Kristel, Lauren and I went to the Berger Bazaar.  We enjoyed shopping and eating bratwurst flown in from Germany.  The boys decided to skip the bazaar and stay home to watch Watchmen.

Sunday:

The last day of our Thanksgiving break was very busy. This break from school was also to celebrate the Muslim holiday, Eid al-Adha, so our friends, the Blazeks, were able to get some meat from a sacrificed ram. They invited us over to have curried ram. We were a little leary of the whole thing, but it ended up being a delicious meal. Sunday night, we invited Coach Emmanuel (the other basketball coach) and his family over for dinner. It's always nice to talk to local Nigerians. We always come away understanding a lot more about the culture.

We are back to work, but only three more weeks until we're home and on vacation!

Radomness

The sun during the Harmattan

Chris' birthday at Chopstix

Just finished his climb around the wall

 holes are filled in with big blocks of concrete

A Little Piece of Heaven

This weekend, we found a little piece of heaven...right here in Abuja!  A few of us decided to catch an afternoon movie at the new theatre in town.  Amazingly enough, Abuja has a couple movie theaters and they are not to shabby.   The movie theatre is located on the fifth level of an almost completed mall.  Once we arrived on the fifth floor,  we forgot where we were.  The Silver Bird looked just like Tinseltown...the crazy carpet, the smell of popcorn and even an arcade.  Khalid, Chris and Jordan decided to go see Inglorious Bastards  while Lauren and I went and saw Julie and Julia.  Even though Nigeria is known for their power outages, the movie was not interrupted once.  We all felt very rejuvenated after our stint at the movies. 

After the movie, we walked around the mall and we were amazed to come across a book store.  The best part was that is was open.  Abuja has no bookstores, so this was very exciting to us all.  The store was amazing.  It had a wide selection and had reasonable prices.  All it was missing was a coffee shop. =)  

The afternoon turned out be a very pleasant experience and left us feeling hopeful of Abuja's future.  

Out with the Rainy, in with the Dry

The dry season has come! We knew it was just around the corner, but we were still not ready for the heat. The harmattan, small grains of sand from the Sahara Desert, has come and the heat is rising. On Saturday, Jordan and I helped out at the school Halloween carnival. We were lucky enough to be stationed at a booth outside. When we arrived at the school it was 97 degrees with humitidy.

These pictures don't do the harmattan justice, but if you look close enough, you can tell that it is very hazy