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!