The second phase has begun!

Howdy folks, it has been a while I have been active here, how have you all been? I have been quite busy since on Monday, the second phase of my field practical training (FPT) has started, and it's taking place in Lagos!

My classmates and I have been looking forward to the trip because that's the first time some of them will be traveling to Lagos which is the second-biggest state in my country in terms of population, so yeah, it is a Mega City.

We were supposed to leave by 8am on Monday but I told my friend @Aimure who was rushing me to get ready early so we can get to school before 8am that the bus is going to leave by 10 or 11 am because a lot of people are going to come late (don't mess with Africa time 😆)

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We finally left home by 8:15am and we ordered a ride; bolt (it's similar to Uber) to convey us and our luggage to school where we will meet up with the rest of our classmates and then board the bus. We got to school by 8:30am and not up to half of the class has arrived yet, even the bus isn't even there also! I looked at my friend with that face of "I told you so".

After a while, the rest of my classmates started arriving, and then the bus came around 9am and we started loading our bags into it. We finally left at about 10am (turns out I was right about the time) and the journey to Lagos officially began with a prayer to God for journey mercies.

There were about 33 of us on the bus and it was kinda fun as one of my classmates was entertaining us with jokes and also pointing out interesting places on the road. After a while, we started watching a movie on the television equipped in the bus (it's a luxurious bus 😁).

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We finally got to a small town (Ore) where we took a break. I bought some bottles of water and a bunch of bananas and my seatmate in the bus bought a lot of African star apple (agbalumo) and I told her she will be the one to finish all of it because I am not really a fan of that fruit, but at the end, she still forced me to take one 😆.

We finally got to Lagos at about 3pm, we could have seen the beauty of Lagos if we had taken the 3rd mainland bridge and driven across the ocean but we already know how crazy the traffic in Lagos can be, so we had to take a shortcut. We got to the institute we are to stay in about an hour and we were introduced to the manager in charge.

We were told that we will be shared into 2 groups and the first group will be going to the headquarters at Victoria island every day for about 2 weeks to receive lectures (I am in the first group). The name of the institute is Nigeria institute for oceanography and Marine research and we were told that a bus will be available every day to convey us to and from the HQ.

The bus will be coming by 5am which means we have to be ready before that time, which equally means we have to be waking up as early as 4am to start getting ready 😩. The lectures are supposed to start by 9am but we will be leaving very early because like I said earlier, the traffic in Lagos can be really crazy and a journey of 30 minutes can take as long as 3 hours.

Right now the time is 5am and I have gotten ready and just waiting for the bus to arrive. I started writing this article last night but I had to sleep because it was already getting late and I need to wake up early, this means I have to adjust my routine and start publishing my article probably around this time every morning.

This field practical training is going to last for about a month and so far it has been a fun experience. We stay in a hostel which is owned by the institute and the girls and boys each have their block, and we are 4 in a room. I guess it's still too early to say it will be a fun experience, but let's see how today goes, I will update you guys later on 😁

Thanks for reading 💖💖💖

Wednesday February 23, 2022