My Sister's B-Day!

It's my baby sister's birthday today,

And we're having a blast. She's turning four. We went to this general store that has just about everything called Glory 2 Glory. It has everything: drinks, oil, sugar, flour, candy, sweets, cookies, and lots of known brands like Snickers, Pringles, and Kit-Kat. We got about everything on the shelves. I ate half a Snicker bar (my younger sister (8) ate the other half), some strawberry wafers, about half of the pringles, some cookies, some more cookies, and some more cookies! Now I'm feeling sick. But it was good while it lasted!!! We played some Super Mario Galaxy 2, too (my baby sister told us what to do). We had a lot of fun. Our oven isn't working at the moment, so we were going to bake a cake and some cupcake at our friend's house in Osogbo, about a forty minute drive from Ife. We got some cake mixes from the States; our aunt put it in The Package. But, it was raining a lot today, and when it rains a lot, NEPA goes out a lot. It's a fact of life here in Nigeria. And the oven needs electricity. Only if we want a crappy cake, we're going to hold off of that, and try to go tommorow to bake the stuff. Delicious!

Signing off,
The Nauseous Traveler

Awesome Games!

The games are awesome!

I love Super Mario Galaxy 2, but it's wicked hard. New Super Mario Bros. Wii is really good too. Heck ALL OF THEM ARE GOOD!!! And the DSi is really nice; it even has a built in camera!

Signing off,
The Traveler

The Package's Coming Today

Guess what?

The Package should be coming today. I checked the tracking number, and it said it's been forwarded for delivery! That means it's handed over the package to the local mail people, and they're bringing it to Ile-Ife! Super Mario Galaxy 2, here I come!

Tommorow!

The Package is coming TOMMOROW!!!! :):):););0;)

Nothing Happening

nothing going on. you're not missing out on anything right now. we're stranded without a car. good thing is that the package is coming in two days.

The Package 2

The Pacakage is in Lagos now,

I just checked on the DHL tracking site. They say there's a clearance delay right now. But I'll tell you right now, if they try any funny business, we're killing them. One time, they delayed so long, we called them up and forced them to bring it here. They better not try it again,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Won a Prize

Nothing's been happening,

except that we might have won a prize from Coca-Cola. My sister found a bottle cap a few days ago, and it had a code under it. Your supposed to SMS it to 33665, and you can win 15,000, 20,000, or 25,000 Naira. That's about a thousand dollars or a more. We're going to split it 50/50; I was the one who told her what it was. So we might win some cash. It'll go towards my MacBook Pro,

Signing off,
The Traveler

The Package

The Package got sent yesterday,

Now all we gotta do is wait for next week (Tuesday). For some reason, on DHL you can’t just track right away; you’ve got to wait (for us, we have to wait till the afternoon of today, US time). It’s really frustrating, but at least DHL is cheaper than UPS. UPS $667 to ship here! Using DHL, we save about a hundred and twenty dollars. It’s not a whole lot of money, but you can buy two video games and a used one for that. Anyway, I’ve gotten to the ninth book in the Pandragon series (Raven Rise). For those of you who don’t know, it’s a series of ten books by D. J. MacHale, the director of Flight 29 Down and all that stuff. It’s a really good book, and now everything’s hitting the fan in this one. Don’t worry, Pendragon readers! I won’t spoil anything! Nothing else happening,

Signing off,

The Traveler

P.S I wrote this in Word 2010, since we don’t want to waste credit on the internet.

Lifting Out the Engine

Pulley, chain, car engine,

Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Well, actually, it's not. My Dad's working on a car at this very moment, where there's something wrong with the engine. So what they planned to do was to lift it with a pulley and chain. The pulley is hanging from a sturdy cashew tree branch, and all they had to do was tie the chains to the engine and use your arms and legs to lift it up. Then they tied the chains that they used to pull it into the air onto another cashew tree branch. And they work on it that way. It was pretty weird looking. Right now they're lowering it back down into the hood. It's a really good thing the branch didn't break,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Dry Season

It's becoming dry season now; it's not a completely huge change, but things like it's not getting as muggy and humid is a tell-tale clue. It hasn't started getting extremely dry yet (it hasn't gotten very hot, either), but it's getting there. I don't know why, but to me at least, it looks like all of the fruits start becoming ripe in the dry season. Well, we don't have all of the fruits in our yard, but we have a lot, nevertheless. Like, for example, we have almonds, cashews, guavas, limes, oranges, bananas, mangoes, plantains, pineapples, tomatoes, and peppers all in our walled compound!!! The guavas are ripe, and I think pineapples are year round (so are bananas and plantains), so I guess I can't say that all the fruits get ripe in the dry season. We also have a whole bunch of chickens, and three goats. We've named most of them: Chickens-Hen (has six chicks), Bar Jesus Chicken (a character from the play I acted in, see "Visit"), Boldy, Boldy Jr., Black-and-White Chicken, and Other Hen. Goats- Right-Ear, (no name), and Mohawk. We used to have a dog (my friend, who has a dog, is gonna be really mad at me for not telling her) that my sisters named Pud-Pud. He got run over, and I didn't really want to talk about him in my blog because it was too sad. We're planning on getting another one, though. We also have another bout of soldier ants in the yard (again), and they're grouped around the palm tree. They're going for the oily palm kernels, the seeds of the palm tree. They're fairly good, just add a little bit of salt and you're good to go. They don't look edible, but they are. We already got attacked by the soldier ants a few times; we'll try to keep away from them. Trying to keep safe,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Constant Electricity

Guess what?

We now have constant electricity! I don't know if i've ever mentioned this, but in Nigeria, don’t expect to get electricity 24/7, even if you pay your bills! You see, Nigeria has only one electricity company: NEPA (Nigerian Electric Power Authority). Well, actually, it’s been renamed PHCN (Power Holder Company of Nigeria) but everyone still calls it NEPA. NEPA’s got some problems: there can be power outages at anytime, anywhere. It gets worse in big cities, and gets better in smaller cities. I don’t know what’s wrong with them, but it’s bad. There are some rare spots that have constant electricity, but pretty much everywhere else has problems. So, a lot of people have generators. Most people in the states don’t know about generators, but all they are, are big motor-looking things that generate personal electricity when NEPA is malfunctioning. We have one too: it looks red and is pretty big, and loud. But generators need fuel, and fuel needs money. Luckily, about a day of generator would drain half of the tank, and NEPA doesn’t usually go out for the long. We also have something else called an inverter, which charges a battery that we have (it weighs a ton, literally) and when NEPA goes, it automatically gives us electricity. And it makes no sound. And it can last for as long as a week! NEPA never stays out for that long. And it only takes about 8 hours to charge! So, in other words, we have 24/7 electricity. My parents want to share this stuff with the other Nigerians who only know about generators. We’re also trying to teach ourselves and them about solar energy and wind power. I’m just glad we’ve got the power!

Signing off,

The Traveler

We Saw A Nigerian Film (Being Made)!

Hey,

 Yesterday, my father and I were driving to this village. I didn't know where we were going then, but we were being guided by one of my father's friends here. We drove one the roads, and I looked up at the tall hills surrounding us. It was a really awesome sight. We drove for a few minutes, getting farther away from Ile-Ife, when we entered the village. Now, most of you guys in the states and UK think a village is a place in the middle of nowhere with five huts and about twenty people, suffering. Well, forgot all that trash. We went to a real village. And it was amazing. There were was a wide, winding dirt road that was the main one, and then side paths branched from there. You could see a giant hill with trees growing all over it, and it looked really peaceful, even though kids were playing and running and screaming everywhere. There were people frying Accra (more on that later), kids smoking gari (look at), other people people drinking palm wine (the extract from the palm tree. It's not really alcoholic), and other people frying fish. The fish looked really, really good. So anyway, it was pretty cool. Then, totally out of context, were these big shiny looking Chryslers and Mercedes that looked like the ones in Victoria Island, Lagos. I was confused, and trying to figure out what was going on. My father and I were being dragged around by his friend, who was introducing us to these people in costume. Some had fake rifles, others had slingshots. I was trying to figure out what was going on. At first I thought it was guerrilla theater, but then I saw a guy who looked pretty ticked off and was screaming at all the supposed actors. The friend of my fathers dragged us along and made us follow the people. Then we saw a guy with a camera. Finally it clicked; it was a Nollywood movie! Nollywood is (duh) the Nigerian film industry. Honestly, the movies are done very poorly, with horrible acting and even worse effects. And each movie is the exact same story as the one after it: there's this guy and his girlfriend. They're about to get married, but his ex-fiance still wants him and wants revenge, so she goes to a shaman dude and tells him to put a curse on them. Then everything goes crazy and ghosts start appearing and several relatives close to the unfortunate couple get murdered. In the end, though, a higher spirit comes and sets everything right. Or there's this other story about a village back in time that has a curse on it or there was a family feud and everything hits the fan. And it's the SAME THING EVERY TIME. I can't take it. But I have to admit, it was kinda cool to see the actors really do it. We watched one scene being made, and then went. I had a really good time,

Signing off,
The Traveler

Visit

So sorry,

I haven't been on my blog for so long cause I pretty much had my hands full over the past couple of weeks. My grandparents, best friend's father, and aunt all came at almost the same time. The day after I wrote to everyone, my father and I had to drive to Lagos and back in one day to get this and find that and just general businessy type stuff. If you remember, Lagos is a three-hour drive, so we really spent all day on the road. And then, my aunt was here and we had to set up a bed and everything, and we had to go back to Lagos to get everything else done with everyone. And when we were in Lagos this time we picked up our grandparents and my best friend's father. I also had to act in a play! Then we went back to Ife with everyone on board, and the craziest thing happened: our car died. It was the worst timing ever in the history of timing. Right now, at the moment we are still without a car, but my parents know what's wrong with it and we're going to fix it. The car's computer died. For some of you who don't know, each car of modern days have computers that run everything. And ours died. Swell. Our specific car computer isn't in Nigeria, so we can't go buy one here. Fortunately, my aunt send The Package, which is filled with all kinds of stuff that we need (or want). It's really sweet: sometimes you can have oreos inside, or books, or even toothpaste. Anything that we can't get here, it gets shipped once every two months. In this one, I'm getting Super Mario Galaxy, Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and a Nintendo DSi (White) Mario & Luigi bundle. Listen, it might look like it, but I'm not a Mario fan. I've never even played it before! But I've heard that these games are supposed to be the best, so I'm trying em out. My grandparents bought all my stuff and got it sent to my aunts house, so she can send it to us. So anyway, my parents are going to order a new car computer (they're actually going to order it today), send it to my aunt, and she'll ship it in The Package. I really, REALLY want this package, since it has all of these awesome games, and it'll fix our car. Hopefully we'll be getting it in a week or two. Don't worry, you'll all know when it arrives; I'll be talking about how cool the games are for days! This post is as long as it's going to get,

Signing off,
The Traveler