Update #2 (out of order, but this is from March 9) Enjoy :)

Sunday morning I will be on my way to see where I will be living for the next two years here in beautiful Zambia!! I am beyond excited! This past Tuesday and Wednesday I had a conference with my Head Teacher whom I will be working with at my new school. His name is Danford Siame and he seems like he will be really great to work with. We are on board, supposedly, with a lot of issues including corporal punishment and teen pregnancy/marriage. We will see if he holds to his views once it is just the two of us in the village and there isn’t Peace Corps and other volunteers/Head Teachers around. I am very excited to be in the classrooms though and see how things work. There are apparently two blocks at my school with 3 classrooms in one and 4 in the other. There are 7 teachers, but one is on maternity leave currently and just under 300 pupils. This is a pretty good ratio considering Jonathan who is living about 60 k away from me also has 7 teachers but has over 600 students! I will be spending most of the 5 days in my village at the school getting to know staff and observing various classrooms, but I will also have time at my hut to get used to the area and spend time with the family on my compound. We have all been waiting for this for the past 6 weeks and it’s crazy that it’s finally here.


It’s also crazy that I have now been in Africa longer than ever before. At this point in South Africa I was packing my bags and heading home. That trip flew by but also seemed like it had been forever since I had been home. I can only imagine how I will feel after two years! But it honestly feels completely normal that I am going to be here for another two years. There was a point about a week ago that I felt like I should start wrapping up my time here so that I could head home, but now I can’t wait to get this life here started! Establishing my hut as my home is something that I am really looking forward to. Learning how to get water from a spring to drink, bath and wash clothes/dishes, figuring out which pieces of furniture I want and learning the best paths to take to get to the market and various fields are only a few of the things that I am looking forward to. But most of this will be done during my three months of Community Entry after swear-in and not during my 5 day visit.

Although I am really looking forward to second site visit, I am sad that when I get back I will only have 4 weeks left with yamayo. My yamayo (host mom during training) and I have gotten very close and I am really sad to have to leave her. I love coming home to spend time with her every evening and laughing with her as we cook and practice mambwe. We have gotten into a very good routine and I can only hope that my yamayo in my village will be just as great. She even gives me hugs all the time now after I mentioned I missed hugging people from home. And she has been SO good about adjusting the food to make sure that I don’t get sick (I was having a hard time with all of the oil in the food so she uses very little in cooking now). But I will just enjoy the time I have with her and make the most of it before I have to leave.

Rainy season is definitely upon us and with it has come much needed cooler temperatures. There are certainly days that are hot and I come home dripping, but the nights have been so much cooler with all of the rain and I am beyond thankful for that. Trying to sleep as you are still sweating is not fun and not easy to sleep. Though the rain also brings difficulties as you never know when it will come, unless you’re my yamayo who always seems to know when it will come. Trying to dry clothes and charge a solar charger is impossible if it rains on and off all day. But I’m making do drying clothes in my room and charging things at the center when we meet there for sessions.

Sunday mornings have become one of my favorite times during training. Kate, Megan and Sharon come over around 8 and we sit on my porch making homemade pancakes that often have bananas and/or chocolate in them and are then topped with a syrup made from melted peanut butter and jam. It’s a great time to just relax on our day off, eat American food (Zambian style), and be around American people and their stories. My other favorite activity during training has been yoga. I did a lot of hot yoga back in the States and though I can’t really do that here, I have gotten into starting most mornings by spending about 30 minutes enjoying some good, relaxing yoga. I was doing it in my bedroom with the window open as the sunlight poured in, but lately I’ve taken my chitenge outside and done it as the sun rises. Not a bad way to start my day at all!

I realize this is getting really long so I’ll try to wrap it up. I’m still loving my life here, although I have had my days when I wish I was home and I’m ready to throw in the towel. That feeling thankfully doesn’t last long before I’m back to loving Zambian life. A big help has been the letters and finally a package! Being in the middle of African can make one feel quite isolated as you can imagine and getting letters and e-mails from home has been a life-saver! It really does feel like Christmas ten-fold every time mail comes and there is a letter in there for me. I’ve also started listening to podcast sermons from Mars Hill that I downloaded before I left and that as well has been a huge help. It always seems that I randomly pick one that manages to speak right to my heart. Reading on my Nook has been great too, especially after a rough day when I just need to escape into another world.

That about wraps it up, other than me asking, what do you want to hear about?! I ramble on with what I think people want to hear, but I would love people to let me know more specifics of what they want me to update on. Thank you all again for your continued prayers and support. It means so much to me to have you all still a part of my life as I live out my dream here in Africa!