Wonderful Christmas Time

We've been having a very low-key holiday since all of the rotating workers (the people that spend a few weeks here, then a few weeks back home), and most of the expats have gone home for the year. Our social calendar has certainly cleared and it's been a nice change from the long-lasting dinners with everyone. But that doesn't mean that things have been quiet around here! The city is flooded with tons of Nigerians coming back home for the holidays and our hotel has been running a special deal to encourage people to stay here for the holidays.  They've also been hosting huge concerts almost every night,  and they chose this time to do renovations, so things around here have been unusually busy (and loud).

I've gotten a lot of questions about how Christmas is here. Before moving here, I had heard from numerous people that Christmas here is "crazy". I can now attest to this.  Lots of lights, lots of Santa hats, lots of holiday themed roadside displays, lots of people, busy shopping centers, and terrible traffic...just like home! Also, lots of fireworks have been happening at all hours of the night which I take as indications that lots of parties are happening these days. It's a happy time here in Lagos.

 The trickiest part of the season for me is figuring out when it's appropriate to say "Merry Christmas," since there are many different religions practiced here (about half of the Nigerian population is Muslim - although they are mostly concentrated in the Northern part of the country). I've been using the new-to-me phrase "Compliments of the Season," which seems to be a popular choice here and covers everything.

Personally, we had a great Christmas until about 2pm when we were forced to change rooms. We even had to change buildings at the hotel. Then we changed again later that night. The whole process took about 7 hours and left us feeling very frustrated, and decidedly not in the Christmas spirit. We are still waiting to make our 6th room change and get back to the main building. We've also been doing a bit of house hunting, though it's unlikely that we'll be moving to an apartment for at least another month. We've found several good options already and are going out to look again on Monday.

Our controversial Christmas e-card this year!