Look at me, all diligent and blogging more than once a week :) Biggest news to share is that Jess & I will be taking what they call R&R in diplomat terms... a vacay for about one week to Paris! We will be taking a red eye flight out from Abuja to Paris Monday night and taking advantage of the Sallah Muslim holiday here in Nigeria. Officially, we have Monday and Tuesday off as Nigerian Holidays, and then we also get Friday off as a US Federal Holiday (Veterans Day). To top it off, our CDC country director decided to allow people to take leave on Wednesday and Thursday, so essentially the entire office is taking a week off. This of course messes with our deadlines (which in true Nigerian fashion, we have already missed), but hey! At least everyone gets a whole week off. We've decided to be extra hardworking, so we went into work today, will go in for a full day tomorrow and then work on Monday as well; I actually have been fielding a whole bunch of conference calls, and Monday will be one of them, so three extra days of work on the weekends and holidays should make up for the 6 day vacation we're going on. Yay Paris! We would have tried to go somewhere in Africa for cheaper airfare, but it turns out it's more expensive to fly within the continent than it is to fly out 8-10 hours and hit Europe. O_o Go figure.
Unfortunately, with the timing of Sallah, Boko Haram (our local "Nigerian Taliban") decided that they wanted to wreak havoc--they already have killed a few dozen people in states up north. Why would they want to bomb and shoot and kill on their own holiday? I don't understand. :( With threats of attacking more government locales and population gathering places like the Hilton or the Sheraton hotels in Abuja, the US Embassy decided to cancel the Marine Corps Ball tonight out of security concerns. Was very much looking forward to it, but I'd rather be safe and working overtime than... dead. Jess and I even went shoe shopping at Wuse market to get her dress shoes for the event (I ended up befriending the local shoe vendor and bought a pair of shiny-ish Toms for cheap)! Hopefully they will be able to come up with an alternative sometime soon.
For now, work at home, laundry, reading up on travel guides and catching up on this week's tv shows, if time allows. Any tips on traveling in Paris would be much appreciated!
Happy Sallah and Eid! Do me and yourself a favor, and go find a goat to sacrifice for the holiday. ^^
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