Arrival in Lagos

 We arrived in Lagos around 3 in the afternoon (aka the heat of the day:).

View from the plane as we arrived.

After someone somehow had known who we were approached us and took our passports off to be stamped for the appropriate amount of time we made our way to the baggage claim.  While Matt collected our bags and I guarded the our carry-ons one of the flight attendants from our flight approached me and informed me that she was  one of Jehovah's Witnesses too!  She thought we were from looking at us but we had a study Watchtower out to signal our ride and that clinched it.  She was the first class cabin attendant and I just wish I had known that before take-off as there were several empty seats up there!;)  It was so nice to get a hug from her and just have that reassurance that we really are everywhere!

We made our way through the rest of the airport and exited, looking for our brother.  They weren't there yet so we were helped to make a phone call to check things.  After a brother assured us he would look into it then we made our way to some shade and waited for him to call back.  You may wonder how that works when you are in a foreign country with no phone but it's totally simple. All you have to do is stick out like a sore thumb and you will be bombarded with helpful offers and advice from loads of people.  Pick the one that is most persistent in lending you his phone, go down your list of "just in case #'s" and talk to one.  Then the guy will wander off and promise to come back when the call comes back.  He will because you tip him.  Then you will have your information and he will have your money! 

We waited for some time (which never happens by the way) but we enjoyed just people watching and we got caught up on studying our Watchtower.  We placed 5 magazines while we waited with the helpful folks who walked by and just as we ran out of water and Watchtower study articles our ride arrived.  I was rather relieved!  We made our way to the van and waited awhile more as they had to help some departing people pay for their extra bags.  In the meantime however, they bought us a refreshing coke!

Coke never tasted so good! They use real sugar here too, none of that corn syrup business.

When we were on our way to the branch office they were so kind and offered to help us out with a meal.  Perfect timing too because I had just started to really be hungry.  I don't get too hungry while traveling and the heat doesn't encourage hunger either so it had been quite awhile since my last meal.  Many of you may wonder about what kind of food there is here.  I don't have too much experience with it yet, but I'm happy to report my first meal was way out of my ordinary diet.  Guess where we went?  No, not McDonalds. Way too ordinary.  KFC! Yup. Kentucky fried chicken in Nigeria.  You may think that's not too exotic but hey, we don't have one back home in Worland! :D  Normally it wouldn't be my first choice while traveling to exotic locales, but we had missed dinner at the branch by a long shot and it was good! Then it was time for some sleep before the next stage of our journey.

P.S. I'm sorry not having lots of pictures.  It's not that there isn't anything to take pictures of, but we have to be careful of where and when we take them here outside of  Bethel.  Until we know more about whats acceptable we just have to store some things in our memories:).  We will share as many as we can and I'm sure over 3 months we will have some great ones!

Along the Way

We flew out of Salt Lake on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Atlanta.  We decided to have a long layover there, to break up the traveling and include a little sightseeing.  Our bags ended up NOT being checked all the way through to Lagos as we had planned, something about bag restrictions and possible terrorist threats.  So we ended up hauling ALL our bags up the stairs (Matt had an opportunity for a workout!) and onto the public train into Atlanta.  I imagine we were quite the sight.  We had to keep asking our way since we thought maybe it wasn't a great idea to haul out our iPads in the middle of the night in abandoned train stations and downtown big city areas.  Thankfully, the police force was on our side with some directions and our hotel really was quite easy to find.  If you ever have a layover in Atlanta the train is super easy to catch downtown and you just find yourself smack in the middle of all these hotels and around the corner from the Olympic Park and Aquarium.  It really makes for a great mini vacation!  The next day (minus the bags) we explored a bit.  We walked through the park and then had some breakfast.

Then we spent the whole rest of the day at the Georgia Aquarium. We saw the whole thing but it seriously took all day and we could have slowed down a bunch too.  First we watched the dolphin show, which was a-MAZ-ing.  Seriously.  It was so beautiful. I literally had tears in my eyes.  Um, I may have been the only one. I marked it up to the beauty but of course, I was exhausted and a teensy stressed out so that may have had something to do with it.

I crawled through a little tube thing to get up close with some South African penguins.  I was the only adult in there without a kid to be my excuse.  Oh well!

A main attraction of the aquarium is this viewing window:

Behind this 2 foot thick acrylic wall is a football field sized fish tank.  And some amazing whale sharks, which are the world's largest fish. Their mouths are 4 feet wide!

There are 4 in the tank in all.

It was a wonderful way to relax (minus the crying at the dolphin show) and get ready for our long flight to Lagos.  After we collected our bags we walked UPhill back to the train station.  On our way in it had seemed so easy to get to the hotel.  We needed our exercise anyway!

When we got back to the airport we saw a couple with a mobile literature stand just outside, so we visited with them a few minutes.  It made us so happy to see brothers and sisters along the way on our journey!  In order to get as much exercise as possible I refused to take the train around the airport and we walked the whole way to our terminal and then walked the whole terminal up and down. After some dinner I made some final phone calls to my family before we got on the plane and then it was time to take off!

An African Assignment

Well after months of preparation and waiting we are finally in Nigeria.  We hope you enjoy learning about West Africa along with us as we enjoy our 3rd International Volunteer Assignment.  3 different assignments on 3 different continents!  I was worried about the internet here but all seems well and so hopefully we can post regular updates.  The biggest obstacle to my blogging here will be the heat I think, it wears you out and so sometimes you have time but no energy to post.  We'll do our best though.  3 months will fly by!  As always we hope to hear from you if you have time, although we know you will all be just as busy if not busier caring for things back home! :) To make it more accessible to our friends and family we have continued to make it public or "googleable" :D Feel free to show the blog to anyone or help them to find it, we just ask again that in order for our experiences not to be taken out of context that anything (text or pictures) we post not be reproduced in any way.  I'll get to work on my posts right away!