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!

BTW

Hey everyone.  So I have been trying to blog but there is this tiny problem of my laptop not turning on.  My pictures are on my laptop. So........there will not be a post for a couple weeks.  Plus I am going to be visiting family and moving for the next couple weeks so there is lots going on.  Wish I could just go ride an elephant or play with a tiger.  Seems like a long time ago!  It's fun blogging though, because I can enjoy my memories again and reminisce as I share them with you!  Anyways, we are doing well back in the US of A right now.  Keeping very busy but thats ok!  We just found an apartment to move into March 1st and we hope to settle in and keep trying to simplify as we wait for what adventure may happen next!  We have some dreams but we will see if they become realities or not.  In the meantime I will try to blog ASAP.  TTYL!

(You can tell I got my cell phone back on and have been texting again!)

Elephant Camp

Well, here we are, safe and sound back in the States.  It seems unreal that only 2 er 3 weeks ago (takes me awhile to put together a post these days, real life dontcha know.) we were in Asia.  ASIA!!! So far away now.  And as I sit here, and look out the window, instead of palm trees and heat there is snow, and freezing cold.  Apparently it has "warmed up" significantly, from unbearable to just the normal freezing variety of cold.  Good thing too, because I'm cold enough!!  However, we still have lots of photos to share and I think you will enjoy seeing our photos of the elephants.

 After the Bamboo rafting adventure we saw an elephant show.  This little elephant was our favorite.  All the elephants were trained to bow but she did it whenever she felt like it.  She would just do this little bow and make a little sound randomly during the show.  She was perky!

 The elephants showed us the inside of their mouths! Big molars!

They need them too, because we got to feed them and they will just take a whole bunch of bananas and stuff it into their mouths.  Also sugar cane and corn on the cob.  With the corn though, they don't like the husk so they will husk it themselves before they eat it.  We also saw some talents these pachyderms have:

Suda painting.

That's right, I said pachyderms.  There is a first time for everything!  And yes, elephants can paint!  Their trainer gives them the brushes and they know the order of things and what to do.  Very clever I say!  Matt's mom bought the painting so if you are interested and in the area of.........Utah.... you could see it :D.  I can't paint an elephant like Suda can!

They can also play football, er, soccer that is. So confusing, one sport having more than one name.

We took an oxcart ride.

It looks so cool but its kind of boring.  The scenery was nice though.  Now I understand a little bit what it might feel like for those people on the Oregon Trail.  That would be quite the adventure going all the way out west in a wagon.  No thanks!  I prefer those newfangled machines they call cars.

Aren't they way more fabulous than our cows back home?

However, I wouldn't pass up an opportunity to ride one of these on a long journey:

So cool!  Matt said he was uncomfortable, we had to sit in the basket and the elephant dude sat where Matt is sitting in the photo.  I didn't find the basket uncomfortable in the least, but that's because it's built for us normal sized folk, not super tall giants like Matt.

We got to ride in the river.  That was my favorite bit.  We don't have a picture of us in the river, but check out these folks we met:

Matt's parents cruising along!

I think they have the picture of us riding the elephant in the river. :)  That concluded our elephant ride!

After seeing all those elephants, you are probably wondering this " So Lazuli, what do they do with all the elephant excrement?"  I knew it!  After all it's a totally natural question.  Elephants are huge so it stands to reason...uh...anyways.  Well, never fear, the people at the camp have come up with an eco-friendly solution. 

 The process is explained above but they use DRY materials.  Then they put the pulp in these screens:

I will admit it looks gross.

 And then they set the screens out to dry in the sun.

And there you have it, elephant poo paper!  It's a pretty neat way to get paper I must say, and saves the trees too! (You need those to grow food for the elephants so you can make paper down the line.)  If anyone is interested in purchasing their own elephant poo paper I think that I have seen journals made from it at Barnes and Noble.  Just in case you are curious.

As we left  we saw the parking garage:

We aren't in Kansas anymore!

 Then it was off to the next adventure.

Bamboo Rafting

Well, nothing can really top the tiger post. Nothing yet anyways. However, we still had fun the next day in Chiang Mai. We had booked a "safari" day and first on the agenda was a sedate bamboo raft river ride.

Our Guide, whose family origins are Myanmar.

The raft had 2 people guiding us down the river.

Then, Matt and his Dad had a chance:

Just like being in a Mark Twain novel, except we were in Thailand. The scenery was lovely. So amazing, and surreal to be floating through the jungle. Saw an elephant getting a bath.

As we passed this piece of greenery I got super excited and was elbowing Matt saying "look, its just like an elephant, see, SEE???" He didn't seem all that impressed and then when I saw the picture on the computer later I could understand why:

I mean if you really use your imagination................uh........

Anyways. Who cares about supposed imaginary greenery elephants when you can see the real thing as you float down an exotic jungle river in northern Thailand?

See how huge this one is?

About halfway through there was a floating snack station:

We brought snacks and water but if you ever float down the river in Thailand, know that you can stay hydrated with coconuts and bottled water on the go!

It was a beautiful ride and another first for all of us!

Check out the size of some of the bamboo!

Til next time!

Brief Update

Hey everyone, I tried to post a couple weeks ago and the Internet was being dumb so I couldn't save or post my last one. Then we were so busy that I wasn't able to re do it. I will do it ASAP.

Today we said a very tearful goodbye to Myanmar and our amazing friends there. It was so extremely hard to leave, words fail. We are so grateful to have had this fantastic experience. I know that when we post on our blog, it's mostly the fun adventures we have shared. However, the day to day rhythm of working with our friends is what we will cherish the most.  (Even more than the Tigers;) Many of you have received the yearbook for 2013, it reflects the friends there perfectly.  We started it, and then we saved it for when we left, it will be such a treat to read it and reflect on our time there. Many of the friends whose stories appear in it we have had the privilege to know and work with.

We hope to continue relating the last two months of experiences, we still have many photos to share, so I hope we can continue to make you smile if you wish too!