Woah! Here's a ton of pictures! We'll see how this goes... I'm hoping to have captions above each one, but if the layout doesn't let me... then well, it'll probably be a bit confusing for you to figure out... These are pretty random pictures from all over. My house, work, surprise dress up parties... (but we'll get to that later). Enjoy!

A bit of an update first: I'll be travelling most of May. Monday to Thursday/Friday next week, several days the week after and most of the week after that as well. I'll be visiting some of the promoters (people who teach HIV/AIDS awareness in their respective church/youth groups) and seeing how the program is running. That way I'll be better able to see where improvements can be made... I hope to have another post up every weekend I'm home. We'll see. No promises!

Now for the pictures...

This is what I found in my freezer one day. It confused me. I can't figure out how it would have happened. How does an icicle grow upside down?? Is it an ice stalagmite? *shrug*
Every year, the CRC mission has a spiritual conference. Everyone who can in the mission from Nigeria (some came from Niger as well) spends 3 days at a place called Miango. It's a resort (in African standards) and we have sessions by a speaker almost every day. This year it was the week before Easter and was very interesting. The speaker (Dan Walcott, a teacher at Holland Christian in Michigan) spoke. He was very interesting. Taught a lot about context. Pretty interesting stuff. This was during one of our worship moments.
This is Kyle Apts, missionary here with his family (wife Ann and kids Zion and Gabbie). Kyle's practising guitar for another worship moment. He sometimes also plays at the church I usually attend.This is a random picture of the fireplace cover at Miango. Jos Plateau (plateau that the city of Jos is on) is apparently the only place in Nigeria with a temperate climate. It can go below 20! Therefore fireplaces are actually in some homes. Like mine. But you'll see that later... *suspense*
Not all bees in Africa are African killer bees...
We went on a hike one day at Miango to see a water system that brings water to a couple turbines from a dam. Very interesting and apparently took about 5 years to make. All dug by hand, the turbines brought in by hand... pretty crazy. And the turbines were made in 1908! And still going strong! Pumping out power to nearby places. Not to Jos though... anyway, this was a neat flower I saw on our hike.This is the view we saw along our hike. There's a trench beside us on our left that we were following that's about 6 feet across and probably more than 6 feet deep as well that brings the water all the way from the dam, through these hills to the edge of a very large hill, down a giant pipe and into the turbines. It still being rainy season (the first rain of the year is about to pelt us in a half an hour) the dust is still in the air, making seeing long distances a bit tough.A couple times there are some 'bridges' to carry the water across some valleys. This is one of them.Near the end of the trench/aqueduct, there's an overflow. If there's too much water in the trench, it flows over into here all the way down. It would also make an AWESOME water slide...
Not sure what this flag is for, but this is the end of the trench, where the water flows into a pipe down to the turbines. You can see the pipe here. We walked down this part of the pipe (ON the pipe, to be exact). At the edge (you can kinda see it here) it gets SUPER steep and carries down even farther and steeper to the turbines.Looking down the pipe.The view from the edge. Down there are the turbines and the house for the controls or something.
Me looking cross-eyed and creepy at the edge. Selfie!Walking back along the trench.
We had a 'Family fun night' at Miango. Lisa and Rachel, a couple of nurses from Canada, held a Jeopardy game (with Nigerian trivia). I helped them out by being 'Vanna White'
This is my office. I'm pretty sure I'm one of a very select few people who've moved to Africa from Canada to work an office job. I've moved the desk since I took the picture, but you get the idea.
We had a surprise party for Dana (also in picture). It was costume party with the theme being "Animal Kingdom". Costumes included zebra, faun, mouse, dog, rabbit, toucan and crocodile. Costumes are a bit hard to come by, so they're all homemade. I went as Tarzan, using a borrowed bean bag chair cover as my costume...Micah, one of my housemates, went as a crocodile. Pretty sweet costume. Here he is eating Dana's head. Note his actual mouth being open. Apparently he thought he could operate the cardboard mouth with his own...Next we had a scavenger hunt. The person who could find the most hidden animals would be the winner! I won!! Woot! The prize ended up being a piece of chocolate cake shoved into my face by Kari. But I got her back... Here I am about to get her again by distracting her as I take a picture...These are the test strips. They require a drop of blood and 15 minutes. Then you have the result. It's very accurate and fairly cheap. We don't charge them for doing tests, but each strip costs about $2. We tested more than 250 youth and had only one positive! Praise God!!Some test strips after they've had blood put on them. Waiting for the result to show.Gideon putting a drop of blood onto a test strip.This is a fly.This is my hammock. It sits behind my house. I spend some time in it almost every day.This is what I see when I'm in it. ahh, hammocks.... You can tell the rains have started as there's green on the ground! It's pretty cool to see everything going from brown to green! Already it's a LOT greener since I've taken this already.This is the leaky shower ceiling I talked about in my last post. Piping doesn't really get hidden much in Africa...What's more fun than a barrel of monkeys?? A barrel full of me!Eggs. Occasionally they come with a free chicken feather.Nasco is a Nigerian food packaging/manufacturing place just a few minutes away. They make cheap stuff (some of it's actually good!). They make a ton of stuff, soaps, cookies, cereals... Here's their regular Corn Flakes and the brand new FrostyZ! They're basically Frosted Flakes and not bad. Real name-brand cereal is pretty pricey. Like 10 bucks for some Rice Crispies. So we stick to the Nasco stuff.We don't have a paper towel holder OR a banana holder. So I made both in one. Out of a clothes hanger.As a nice snack every now and then, we make trail mix. Delicious!This is what I make coffee in. It's actually not bad. Coffee makers are a rarity, as well as real coffee. Most is instant. gross... So I stick to this guy. Makes about 2 big mug fulls of coffee. And cream's another 'not-gonna-happen' kinda thing, so I took powdered Coffeemate. Almost like having a Timmies in my kitchen! Ok, not even close, but it'll do. I get to take one of these guys every week for malaria. There's no cure for malaria (mainly transmitted via mosquitoes) but medication lessens the effect if you were to get it. Malaria is a HUGE killer of Africans. More than AIDS, statistically, but many people who have AIDS end up killed from malaria because their immune system is shot from AIDS and can't fight it off anymore.This is my bedroom. Pretty classy, I know. The mosquito net is pretty awesome. In a non-awesome kinda way. Quite the pain in the butt to sleep under. The bed is 6 feet long. I am 6 feet. This means my feet hang over the edge, tangling in the net.Grass is growing!! Woo!!Trees are blooming!! Okay, this kind of tree actually blooms in the dry season, but it's still really pretty!My 80GB paperweight...Power here is 220 (110 in Canada) but tends to jump around above 220 sometimes. We use these regulators on things like fridges, TVs and laptops so they don't get fried if the power ever spikes.Our living room. Not too shabby. Could use some decorations, though. If the walls weren't brick, it would make hanging things a lot easier...The fireplace! I thought it was just a wasted space since we won't be using it anytime soon... so I put a lamp in it!Pac-anapple man.Two of the Strydhorst girls, Kristen and Andrea. They had just asked me to take a family picture of them all in the tree... looked pretty neat.A flower on the tree with the sunset in the distance.That's all!

Thanks for checkin' out some of my life in Africa!

Feel free to come by anytime!