12th day of nigeria...

so today i came to lagos, the old capital city. wow. just, wow. so it was crazy starting off; i had to check out, then no one picked me up so i had to call. then we didn't have plane tickets. or money. so we got the money when the accountant got in and then drove to the airport and bought tickets there. so we only ended up about an hour behind schedule. the plane ride was only about an hour and they even served a meat pie for breakfast. then we went to meet our driver (in his armored embassy suburban) and went off to the kenyan embassy so dooshima could get her visa for another training out there. and it was totally nuts! the rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was blowing so crazy and the cars were just driving wherever. and the roads were horrendous! there were humongous sections just gone and it didn't even matter because the water was so high from flooding and poor drainage that you couldn't see anyway. i think there were more cars broken down than not! but the guy was annoyed about all of the traffic and took like zillions of back roads and kept doing u turns near jams and spent a lot of time stopped at turn-offs with his hazards on "deciding" if he thought there'd be more or less traffic one way or another. it was total madness. but we went to the embassy with no problems and then off to see the site of the health fair, which is at a naval hospital in ojo, part of lagos. and that was relaxed. there were a lot of military med people and everyone had lots of questions about how the us med training programs are set up and how it's different in the military and all. mostly the actual meeting was terribly boring because it was just logistics about who's soing what where and all. and it sounded like they were just really unprepared. like, they didn't even know if they had a tent to set up (which they would need) or have a back up plan for the rain (since it IS the rainey season and rains every single day). but we got out of there ok and headed back to check into our hotel. and it took 3hrs to get there! it was not very far; maybe 30 miles but it was really torture. sometimes the traffic would just sit for like a half hour and not move even a tiny bit. it was the absolute worst on victoria island and got much worse the closer we got to our hotel (we're staying at a place called camelot). and so dooshima and i checked in (after we threatened to leave because they had no reservation for me, didn't want me to stay without my passport and then i had to count out N70,000+ in N500 notes. i had to have dooshima help me because i was too flustered. and after dumping our stuff off (i have to climb 3 flights of stairs...) we had the driver take us to a "mall" for dinner and a movie. i had an egg, cheese, chicken bun with fries and lots of spicey hot sauce and then we went and say "the legion" which was very entertaining. then we called a cab and came back and i found out i have free ethernet in my room! horray! but i'm really tired right now so may wait until tomorrow to really write about stuff. now it's time to get some shut eye...