Eid-El-Fitri

Well, we're not sure what to say about how long it has taken us to update our blog - we've been working pretty hard and pretty non-stop lately. We finally have a long weekend, longer than any we've experienced in our careers to this point. It is the end of Ramadan, a holiday known as Eid-el-Fitri and because of that, we have 5 days off in a row.

So with that, we figured there was no excuse but to update our blog with some of the recent things that have been going on over here. I think it is safe to say that Kara and I are pretty used to Lagos now. We find ourselves much less in a hazy reality and more in an acute state of awareness when we go out now. It's amazing what kinds of things we are noticing now that we are past the whole culture shock deal. We have noticed that the stores carry some awesome candy that we never noticed last year. We've also been able to do things that we didn't do last year, like a take a boat out to the harbor right before entering the Atlantic Ocean. That was quite the experience and on a number of occasions, we thought we might not make it out alive!! Don't panic, it was just a small boat and big waves. We also just had Nigerian Culture Day a few weeks back, and we'll have pictures uploaded as soon as we get copies of them for ourselves from our friends the Rainbolts and Teagues.

I have uploaded a few of the sounds we are used to hearing around here for you guys to listen to. I highly recommend putting on a decent pair of headphones before listening to get the full stereo effect. Before I get into the Lagos sounds, I want you to hear this storm I recorded in Cinque Terre in the middle of the night. The thunder isn't as spectacular as it gets in Lagos, but I have yet to capture the Lagos thunder in its fullest splendor.

Because Ramadan was going on for the last month, I decided to go out and record the mosque. I'm still working on trying to embed the sounds into the site, but until I figure that out, here is the link. This recording was taken at about 9:45 at night, and it proceeded to go until well past 11:00 PM that same night. I walked around out in the playfield, so if you hear the audio shift from ear to ear, it's because I was moving. Also, on a side note, while out recording this, I saw my very first firefly! I didn't know we had them here, so I ran back in and got Kara to come check them out with me, and we ended up finding a whole slew of them in the corner of the field. It was pretty awesome. Here is another recording I took of one of the dances at Nigerian Culture Day, it's called the Atilogwu (At-ee-low-goo) Dance. I was backstage when they started the dance so that's why they sound so close and then kind of fade out. It's the same story with this dance as well, the Igba Ndieze (ee-bahn-deez-ee), here's a snippet of it. You'll hear people screaming in the background, that's because there were these guys doing flips and crazy acrobatic stuff on stage, it was getting the little kids all riled up! Finally, there's this clip of when I was wandering around during the actual event and ran into a group of drummers. That little sound recorder that Kara got me for my birthday last year is pretty amazing huh?

Anyway, like I said before, we will upload some recent pictures when we get them on to our computer. Until then, we'll talk to you soon!