Tomorrow will mark 2 months sense Matt and I left to come and live here. It has gone so fast, but it also seems like so long ago. In many ways we both have changed and grown so much as people and teachers that it has been truly amazing. I also find myself growing more and more homesick as the days continue on.

The dry season is rolling in and with that it is becoming SO hot. We have a pool at our compound, and without that I am not sure that I would get much exercise at all. Matt will sometimes teach outside, but the weather makes that difficult as well. I am spoiled in my classroom with two air conditioners. And then I think of back home, with the fall colors and the cool air. Matt and I made chili the other night to remind us of back home. But the meat here tastes a lot different, so we made Chicken Chili and it was definitely not the same!

Last Friday was Nigerian Day, they are celebrating 50 years of Independence so it was a pretty big deal. For a town that is usually filled with litter, they started cleaning up about a week before the big event. They even patched some LARGE pot holes in front of our compound and painted the sides of the curbs throughout town. We were told to generally stay away from the celebrations on the actual day because of the large crowds. We tend to stick out, and this could cause a scene because we are seen as rich. The advice was fortunate for us because there were bomb threats and bombs that actually detonated in the area of celebration. It is scary to think of something like that happening so close to where we live, it is a little surreal. In most respects, we don’t feel afraid while we are here because we live in a secure compound with a guard. And security at school is very extreme. They even search our car every time we come to school. Danger just feels closer now that something has actually happened in the city.

On Sunday we travelled to our school electrician’s house. It was a little ways outside of the city near one of the large rocks in the area. The landforms here are so amazing to look at. There rocks are hundreds of feet tall, and flat all of the way up. It is so different when we get outside of the city. People live in conditions that we would deem uninhabitable in the U.S. The man that we came to visit is working to build a house. Right now his family lives in two small tin shanties. There toilet consists of the bottom part of a toilet and a piece of tin roof that you place around yourself when you go. To flush they pour a bucket of water down. The power supply in the city is so sporadic and people go days and sometimes weeks without power if they even have it at all. The 4 hours that we were there, they had power for about 10 minutes and that was impressive. Pretty ironic for the electrician to not have electricity! The generosity of the people here is so amazing. Even though they have so little here, this man went way out of his way to see that we enjoyed our visit. He bought us garden eggs (they are like cucumbers) and oranges, and peanut sauce. His wife cooked us an amazing meal, and they even sent us home with leftovers. We felt so blessed to be there in the company of such giving people.

Today was one of my hardest days of teaching yet. My students have French class two or three times a week in the classroom, and this teacher died in a car accident this past weekend. It was with sadness that I needed to inform my students of this tragic event. This is something that I had never prepared myself to face as a teacher. After a long morning of crying a grieving, the students put together a memorial outside the classrooms. This teacher was a light in our school. He was always positive and went out of his way to greet you each day. As a staff we mourned his loss, and vowed to keep his positive energy alive in the school.

As we move through the weeks, they all seem so busy and packed together. I am hoping this is just the combination of living in Nigeria, and a first year teacher. Even now I have way more free time than in the beginning of the year. Next week marks the end of quarter 1! ¼ of my way into my first year of teaching!