The 65th good thing about Lagos: Coming back to settle in for the fall

Well, I've been back for a few days now. Brent originally was going to come back a couple of days before me, then he needed to stay in Houston for a meeting, so he changed his ticket to come back a few days after me (it was pretty expensive to change and the company would pay for his schedule change, but not for mine...). So, I figured, a couple days here on my own, it would be okay. Then he missed his flight and the next one he could get on will arrive on Tuesday. So that's close to a week on my own here. That wouldn't have been my choice, since basically my only purpose here is to make his life easier, but I expect that I'll survive. I've had a couple of nights of dinner and games together with the American LDS couple living above me and a fun single LDS woman who recently came to teach at the school. So it's been bearable. I'm excited to finally get our sea shipment, which has been here for a month. But that will have to wait till after Brent gets back to present his original passport and then who knows how long the customs officials will want to stall. When we get that we'll be able to really settle in. It's been rainy and not too hot. There was a lot of rain overnight, so my driver came to pick me up with the big SUV that's a little more capable of handling the road to the church after a rain than our usual little Toyota.

I like our apartment okay, but I do miss the grand water views from our former apartment on the 11th floor. Here we're on the 3rd floor, and from one side of the apartment (which we christened the "Flamingo Flats"), we have a nice pool and tennis court view and, in the distance, a little bit of a view of the water.

From the other side of the apartment we have a view of a busy street and all of its accompanying traffic noise. There was a big tree shielding some of the views, but when I got back, it was heavily trimmed -- I imagine the pruning was precipatated by security concerns of the possibility of someone climbing the tree and getting over the wall. The company security people have been trying to get the apartment management to get razor wire on top of the wall. There's a bus stop just on the other side of the wall beneath my apartment.

This road can get very backed up with traffic, but when I was taking pictures the other day (from a balcony on the back of my apartment) it was moving very easily. I took a few minutes of video, not particularly for what you would see, but to show you what I hear all day -- and all night -- they REALLY like to use their car horns A LOT here. My driver honks before making any turn, when approaching or passing a car in another lane, when an okada (motorcycle taxi) gets too close. Really just about every 10 seconds he finds a need to honk at someone. I'm already starting to mentally block out the noise, but at times it does get annoying. But I've got to find the good thing about it, right? Okay, it reminds me that when I'm here, I'm not ALONE.