One year already?

Hey everyone, I’m back!  I can’t believe I haven’t updated my blog since October. It hasn’t been entirely all my fault though, our provincial house has been without wifi since Thanksgiving.  I have a lot to catch you all up on.  Here we go…

November

The main highlight was of course Thanksgiving.  It was my first Thanksgiving ever away from my family so I was a little nervous that I would get homesick but we were all so busy that there was no time for homesickness!  Thanksgiving week we had our semiannual provincial meeting, which meant that all the Peace Corps Volunteers in Luapula were in Mansa already. The day before Thanksgiving, after the meetings were over, we PCVs had our annual Thanksgiving kickball game. Kickball is definitely a game foreign to Zambia (baseball too for that matter) so we attracted a small crowd of people wondering, I’m sure, what we were up to. We spent most of Thanksgiving day cooking. I was in charge of making the stuffing.  Nobody however told me how much stuffing I was supposed to make so I  spent the entire afternoon making two industrial sized trays of stuffing.  was a stuffing-making machine.  For our for dinner we had all our Zambian staff in Luapula come as well. That meant that there were over 50 people at Thanksgiving dinner in our house.  We ran out of forks so I ended up eating Thanksgiving dinner with chopsticks! Eating traditional American foods, like mac and cheese and apple pie with chopsticks was definitely an interesting experience.  I have to say though, it was a wonderful way to spend my first Thanksgiving away from home.

December

               School was out for the month long Christmas holiday.  I spent most of the month hanging out at my site and visiting a few friends. My friend, Kara (another PCV) , also came to spend a couple of days at my site  before we both traveled to Mansa for Christmas with some other volunteers- we even had a Christmas tree!  For New Years we headed down the Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. Victoria Falls is set of waterfalls on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Falls are one of the 7 natural wonders of the world and spectacular.    

Also, my cat, Scout had 4 kittens  (though one died after a few days) while I was away. Watching them grow big enough to give away was great, they are so cute!

               January

               School started up again on the 14^th of January and after a month of traveling, I was definitely ready to be back at site. This term I’m going to be teaching grade 9 and grade 6 English. This year the grade 9s take their big examination which determines if they continue into grade 10 or not. No pressure right?

It’s hard to believe that I have already been in Zambia for over a year!  Where has all the time gone? Things are going to be picking up in terms of projects so I’m sure that I will have lots to share with y’all!

Until Next time!