two full weeks gone by...

so i really don;t have much of anything to say tonight. we went for pizza for dinner and it was good but not like home (obviously). and they had a coffee shop and i got all excited but apparently there are no to-go (or "take away") cups for it so i didn't get any because i would have had like 5min to drink it. poop. but today was another fun day. we went to the airport first thing because our tickets for tomorrow were at the wrong time. then we got lost going to the other navy base. but eventually we found it and this place was way more community-based with a lot more baracks and markets and tons of kids around. then we walked through the streets of lagos which was totally insane, so much so that dooshima was actually worried about me and shared the fact that her reaction times are faster than mine so she needed to watch me. i still don;t know what was different here; more people, more cars, more motorbikes, more people wanting free condoms but that's it; just more. i had a blast. she didn't want me flashing my camera around either which was too bad becuase i really wanted to get a short video of what we were doing and what it was like;total insanity. i mean we were on these market streets with cars zooming around us and motorbikes careerening by and just totally chaotic with our music and their music and muslims scrambling for condoms during their fast (for some reason everyone thought it was weird but i never figured out why) and bread for sale on my left and an auto mechanic/phone card guy on my right and some bystander who made his way into our crowd to try to score some more freebies. and of course i got more sunburned which now feels as miserable as it looks. and then there was the usual round of snaps except this time i was constantly called "auntie" which, here, is an address of respect and familiarity, like ma'am only less sterile. but epopel were actually paying a photographer to have their pictures taken with me! i couldn't get over it. and a lot of them wanted just me and them and told me they would tell viewers that i was their friend from america. it was weird. but overall very fun. and then i talked to the regional hospital commander for a while (who is like an admiral or something) and learned some more about their prevention and outreach programs which was very interesting to me but would probably make for boring fodder in this setting. and then we came back and napped a bit and i read and then we went for pizza and came back to watch movies in the room with dooshima's friend, tessa, who works for USAID, an NGO group here doing hiv/aids stuff as well. we may even be able to squeeze in a quick trip to the market before we leave tomorrow. but we decided to pass on clubs tonight because we were all tired and didn't feel like it. and at least gayathri will go with us to abuja market tomorrow so we can get fabric for dresses. and that's my first two weeks. and tom has now finished taking his step 2 so woo-hoo for him! now he can celebrate his birthday for real!