Just Don't Die

Today, we went out to the GQ (General Quarters) for lunch. Both Kara and I had a club sandwich, and wow were they good! It was nice to get some American food cooked at an American location! Anyways, things have been good over here. It's really starting to warm up outside as the cloudy skies are parting and the equatorial sun is shining bright. I took my Geography kids out GPS'ing the other day and that was a blast! We are just a few degrees north of the Equator, and East of the Prime Meridian, so that's cool! After looking at my GPS all that time in the US, it was funny to see the coordinates actually say, East longitude.

The subject today is, "Just Don't Die", inspired from a bumper sticker we saw on the back of a taxi carrying what looked like 20 people inside. One of the saddest moments we've had here so far happened today when we were on the bridge going from Ikoye Island to Victoria Island. A little girl about a year or two older than our niece Jessica, was running along side of the car and trying to hang on to it as we were in the "Go-Slows". It was so sad because our driver just kept speeding up as she was trying to get us to roll down our windows and give her money. It was pretty crazy how she was hanging on for dear life. Kind of freaked us out a little.

We opened up the morning with AISL's, welcome back bash! I think every parent that has a student came to the bash! It was pretty amazing and we got to meet a lot of really cool people. The Vice-President of Nigeria's kids go to this school, as does his assistants children. Kara and I have two of the assistant's children in our classes as well as a couple big-wig oil execs kids. So we got too shoot the breeze with them today and that was pretty exciting. Other than that, my stomach is feeling a little weird, still trying to adjust to the new food I ate at the function.

Kara is having "ladies night" tonight with some of the girls that work here. She's really enjoying the company of some of the girls here and they are sharing in their home-sickness together. I think everybody is getting a little homesick, but the compound as a whole is very supportive of each other. It's funny, because when we go out on the weekends, you see other expats and it's like an instant bond! It's pretty cool. I played my first game of tennis yesterday and really was not good at all!! I'll get better as time goes on, but it's nothing like pickleball in high school; I used to be so good at pickleball!!

A co-worker of ours got pulled over a few days ago and the police made them get out of the car and they did (which you're not supposed to do unless they have guns). So the cops flattened the tires because they wanted money and our co-worker wouldn't give it to them. So she called the Consulate, which sends what are called React vehicles out. The marines came with weapons and the situation was resolved shortly thereafter. But pretty scary stuff! We gotta make sure we're really careful over here because the initial reason they were pulled over for was pretty bogus!

That's pretty much it for now. We'll be on Skype this weekend looking to talk to some folks, so if you're on, give us a ring! Talk to you all soon!