Family

Before we came up to the town of Jos where we'll be living during our time in Nigeria, we spent sometime in Abuja, the capital. Uche's brother's family and his sister and her family live in Abuja, so first on the agenda was to visit family. It was amazing to see how all the kids have grown- why does this surprise us... that kids grow and change through out the years?!?! Here's some pictures from an afternoon spent with family.

This was the little neighbor boy who kept wandering over to where we were sitting. He was thrilled with the puppy, but I don't think the puppy was thrilled with him!This is Uche's niece with her husband and baby boy. I think this is a great picture Uche took!

Me with my grand nephew... I realized that day Uche and I are a great uncle and a great aunt. What in the world?? How is that possible, I'm not that old!! :)

Uche with his sister in law and surrounded by nieces and nephews.

Our new home

Our friends here had made arrangements for us to live in a home on a missionary compound for our time in Nigeria. This compound is pretty big with six homes as well as offices located in it. There is a wall completely surrounding the whole compound and there's two gates for people to enter into the compound. Guards are there twenty-four hours a day to make sure that only those who should come in are allowed inside. Our house sits near one of the gates, so from our living room we can see everyone coming and going. The house is a real blessing to us because it's fully furnished with everything we could need while we're here, and one of our friends whom we used to hang out with before lives on the same compound.

This is our cute little blue home.

Here is the fireplace in our living room. We want to use it sometime- maybe just to roast some marshmellows... The red box sitting on the hearth is a stabilizer for electricity. The electricity comes and goes here and at times it'll surge, so you buy this sort of thing to plug your valuable electronics into, so when a surge happens your computer doesn't get fried.

This is the whole of the living room. You can see the light from the open front door to the left. I was standing in the dining room/kitchen entry to take this picture.

Here is the dining room. It's nice to have the two windows there for light and breeze.

Uche was cooking some Nigerian food while I snapped this. He's happy to be back to using local ingredients and the fresh produce here. Our refrigerator is small, but it works so we're happy- you can see it on the left side. To the left side of the stove is a storage room. It has shelves to store all kinds of things and our water heater sits in there which is used to heat water in the bathroom and kitchen. In the Philippines hot water heaters are a luxury, but here it's more normal even in Nigerian homes. We also use the storage room to keep some produce like tomatoes, potatoes and peppers. The floor is cement and it stays very cool, so the produce will last well there.

And finally our bathroom. The shower is great and the hot water is plentiful, so we're happy.

We also have two bedrooms one with a king size bed for us, and the spare room has its own bed as well. The house has a lot of storage, so it's been great to put away all our things and hide the suitcases, so we don't have clutter all around us. We're happy in our little home and are well settled.

Welcome to Nigeria!

Greetings are very important in Nigeria, so we've been welcomed to Nigeria many times over the past week. Tomorrow will be one week since we touched down in Abuja, the capital. We'll be working on catching up the past week in the next few days since we haven't been able to be online until this time.

Some initial thoughts about being here from Sarah:

• It's so nice to be in warm weather again! The cold was too much for me- I'm a wimp now!! This is the coolest time of year here, so it will warm up which is okay with me.
• Even though I've been gone for over six years, it's nice to come back to a place I've lived before. The adjustment period is so much easier- though I'll probably be in an adjustment stage our whole time here.
• Our nieces and nephews here have gotten so big, and while I've been gone I've always pictured them as the little kids they were before. I think only one is shorter than me!
• I always enjoy watching Uche interact with Nigerians because he adapts himself to Nigerian mannerisms and words. He's so amazing at adapting to wherever he's at, so when we're around Filipinos, he acts Filipino, and when we're with Americans, well, American Uche shows up! Now that we're surrounded by Nigerians, he's relearning how to be a real Nigerian!

And from Uche:

• I can't believe how much Abuja (the capital of Nigeria) has changed. Big beautiful houses are being constructed everywhere. There are new and expensive cars everywhere. There seems to be a disconnect between the poverty around me and the riches I see here. I even saw a brand new Porsche the other day!
• We've made it to Jos and I am starting to pick up my Hausa language. I am also glad that the town of Jos is calm and the people are still as friendly as ever. The city is divided into two sides, the different warring tribes are occupying each side respectively. The division breaks my heart.

Packing up and heading out

After months of planning, we're ready to go to Nigeria tomorrow morning. At this point of any trip I always wonder why on earth we would ever travel anywhere when it's so much work, but whenever we stay somewhere for too long I get itchy feet and want to travel. In spite of the craziness, we're ready to go and really looking forward to the next three months in Nigeria.

Once we spread out all the stuff we planned to take with us I thought there was no way it would all fit! But it did. Four bags stuffed full. I didn't get a picture of everything spread out all over, but here's just small bits and pieces that had to be fit together.

Here's the four bags fifty pounds each all ready to go.

Pictures from our trip to New Orleans

St. Louis Cathedral.
This is the oldest cathedral in North America, founded in 1720.

The inside of this cathedral is beautifully decorated.

Bourbon Street, the French Quarter is alive at night with street dancers and night clubs.

Two blocks from Bourbon Street with its notorious night life is this beautiful statue of the risen Christ and it's shadow, with hands spread wide apart, inviting night crawlers to come to him and find rest.

CAFE DA MONDE!

This was perhaps the highlight of our trip. The beignet and coffee in this cafe was worth our trip to New Orleans. We literally went there everyday and we even brought some back to California.

Uche is a happy boy. He couldn't get over how good their beignets and coffee were.

You really don't need to rent a car to move around New Orleans. With a three day bus pass you can ride both buses and cable cars, and it's affordable.

Apples!

Fall is apple season, and we've had apples coming out of our ears around here this fall. A family in our church has quite a few apple trees, so we've been grateful beneficiaries of their apples. One day we went out to their place with a few others to make some apple cider.

Sarah is cutting apples that will be sent through the cider press. We worked a little, had some cider, worked a little more and drank some more. It was a delicious afternoon!

The trees were loaded down.

It's amazing what you can make with apples. It's seems like there is apple in everything I (Uche) eat now. The good thing is that I'm enjoying it. We drink lots of apple juice, eat all kinds of apple cakes and even have apple butter. Just this morning Sarah made pancakes with applesauce and that's when I realized that apple is more useful than I thought. Last night She made chopped apple with green onions on pork chops, boy was it good! I like everything about apples.

Black Berries

Another thing I like about summer is the many different fruit, with different shapes and colors I get to eat. This summer, we rented a house that a many blackberry bushes covered with sweet, wild blackberries growing over the fence. So we made all kinds of blackberry pastries and shakes. The blackberries were so sweet that Sarah made a blackberry pie without adding sugar to it.

This is Uche's favorite of all the blackberry recipes. This is blackberry scones. The best tasty scones ever.

After living here for a long time I'm beginning to realize that the fruits we buy in the shops don't have the best taste. If you want to enjoy good tasty fruits, you have to go to the farmers market. We are regulars at the Saturday morning farmers market. I guess if you can't beat them, you have to join them!

Vanilla lattes, fresh fruit and blackberry scones.... perfect Saturday morning breakfast!

Blackberries, yogurt and granola... this is the life!