There's no snow in Zamiba

Hello again. So it was 3 weeks ago that we left for Zambia probably by the time i upload this it will be 3 weeks exactly. So far all has gone well, we've now done 2 weeks of teaching and have settled in really well.

So to update you with what has been going on, it turns out we're not stuck for things to do! School is from 7:30 - 3:30 so, by the time thats finished we're a little tired, add in to that prep supervision and any sports clubs lucy is doing and our day is rapidly over.  This does mean that we don't have as much time to spend on lessons as we would like, especially for Lucy who is teaching things that she's not taught before as she's not taught before so she is spending a lot of any time that she has spare planning lessons hopefully soon that will calm down and she'll be able to spend less time on each lesson.

Lucy's Trip to Chengelo went well, It was a long journey (5hours) in a packed mini bus (26 people thats not really a mini bus but its not a regular bus) enjoying the delights of Zambian roads and driving It was a good trip and a good opportunity to get to know the pupils. On the field it was slightly less successful. Chengelo are the school to beat sporting wise, apparently some of their teams play in adult leagues and often travel to lusaka (the capital to play) so its not a huge surprise that they beat Amano in every game, another disadvantage for amano was they had 1 team who played every sport being only a small school where Chengelo have a seperate team for each event. Any way, enough excuses it was a good trip but tiring one.

Girls under 13 Football (Amano in Grey, Ref Lucy in White!)

This weekend we had a sporting fixture much closer to home, infact it was at home, there were teams from 2 or 3 other schools playing under 13 girls football, and under 19 girls netball and boys football. Lucy was in charge of the girls football games and ended up having to ref 2 of the 3 games played, The girls had not played a game before so it was hard work to watch to start with as 12 girls all ran to where the ball was not even where it was going, but after half time and a team talk from Lucy or Amanda Kirk they were a lot better and the 6 Amano players at least kept more in their positions and started to play more like a team. Of the 2 games they played one and lost one, and improved a heap.

Discussing Tactics infront of the ant hill

Outside of school we managed to eat last week after Rich had to do the shopping, he went in with Amanda Kirk and a few others which means a slightly longer shopping trip than if you go with Andrew Kirk so  i sampled the delights of Chingola market, I decided against the caterpillars and fish that didn't seem very fresh and seemed very appealing to flies and made my decision at potatoes and beans! going back this week we managed to get 4 mangoes and an avocado for less than 50p, which reminds me we need to eat then before they go bad. Main shopping is done in shoprite where things are closer to prices in the UK.  So i guess we should be eaating a lot of fruit in our diet, we both want orange, lemon, mango and all sort of other trees outside out flat but think we may been to be here longer than 18months to see the fruit from that endeavour so, we'll see if that happens!

Oh in other news, we have our 3G dongle thingy, which was a remarkably simple affair it wasn't even stored behind glass cabinet so i really don't know what the fuss was about when i tried before but hey T.I.A.  

The Road to town still has a huge pot hole in it, mostly its a fine and straight road but now the pothole that was a few feet across is now probably 4-5 feet across and right in the middle of the road, in daylight its easy to see but at night its not and you often see cars just past it with hazzard lights on as they've just hit it and wrecked their types and suspension, there is talk that they are going to start building a dual carriage way so hopefully before they start the other carrige way they'll fix this one!

The View from our house in the Rain

We had a great time last sunday at Steve and Muriel Studds at their youth meeting, Lucy was able to meet and talk to friends she used to play with when she was here before, unsuprisingly they're all slightly bigger now than they were 13 years ago but it was good to get out of Amano site and meet different people!

We've been informed that its been cold back in the UK, while its not snowed here i thought you should know that its not just sun, when it rains you ought to make sure your inside as you'll be drenched in about 5 seconds. If you think about the heaviest its ever rains back home you'll have an some kind of idea of the average severity that happens a few times a week, and most days it will rain at least a bit so its no suprise that it isn't great for roads and is good at washing them away.

View From our House in the Sun

One thing on our to do list is to get a Zambian Driving license, it seems this is a procedure that is down almost entirely to whether the instructor likes the look of you so i'm sure that will throw up an interesting story or 2. We're thinking about whether we should look to get hold of a car on our own, there is a vehicle on site which can be used for going to town but to get further we will need to rely on others so, we're looking at whether the other options make any sense or if we're best just making do, so if you know anyone with a second hand and ideally vaguely off roady car that they're desperate to get rid of let us know as we may be able to ship it out to Zambia (not all the way obviously as Zambia is land locked).

Hopefully everything back home is good if a bit chilly, 

Our first week

Figured that it was about time we did another blog, after a rather busy 8 days!

So, start off last sunday after the last blog, drove to beck's loaded the cars up, then to weatherspoons in bury for breakfast and then to church. After church we headed straight out to Heathrow we allowed our selves plenty of time because we were heading out on the M25 and we figured it'd be handy not to miss our flight. As is often the case we had heaps of time and ended up a few miles outside of Heathrow with well over an hour until we could check in.   So we headed up the M40 and stopped at some services before heading back checking in and saying goodbye to both our parents then headed through security.

While waiting around in departures we bumped in to Hillary Millard who is the primary head teacher at Amano and taught Lucy in grade 1 and 2 at Sakeji.  Also on the flight were Jon and Kerry Rass who also work at Amano. Jon teaches science and Kerry is one of the youth pastors and works in the dorm. It was nice to meet some people we will be working with and gave us something to think about other than being scared of leaving everything behind in the UK or scared about how we'll get on in Zambia!

Flight was all good a few difficulties such as too much hand luggage (we weren't completely responsible for this but, we may have added to the problem and also some people found it very difficult to sit on the correct seat not quite sure what is so difficult about finding a seat on a plane but for some it was just too much to handle. We landed in Lusaka at about 7(local time) in the morning, we lined up for immigration and somehow managed to be the last people through. While we were lining up Phil Grove came along, so he helped us through immigration knowing what to put where made things a little quicker. We then flew up to Chingola with him in the plane that was tiny only had 7 seats I managed to fit just about but there wasn't a lot of room and, thanks to Steve and Muriel Studd, they took some of our bags.

We had lunch at Phil and Valerie Grove's next to the Cornelius' house, we popped in to see how it was. It hadn't changed a lot but it was empty and I imagine quieter than when the Cornelius' were in residence. We then headed back, unpacked, a bit slept a bit, went and had dinner at the Kirks house with a lot of the other people who work at the school then as the party animals we are we headed to bed about 9 on new years eve.

The next few days we unpacked a bit, and explored a bit as we continued to settle in. Found out more about what we were teaching that we did not know before, as well as most of the work needed to be done from scratch. On Wednesday we headed in to town, where it was quite a lot busier than it was 5 years ago when I was here last and a lot busier than 12 years ago when Lucy was last here. We dropped in at the Studds and had lunch (which was kind of them as we just turned up at lunch time and said we were hungry). We then went and had a look at their plot and saw what www.missionsupportzambia.com were up to as well as Ipusikilo street kids home next door. This was just at foundation stage 5 years ago and now had 26 kids living there. I don't know their web page but i'm sure Google will let you know what it is add Chingola if it doesn't .

Friday was the staff meeting,  which was good to get a better idea of what we should be doing and then were able to get planning for our lessons and stuff.

Saturday we headed to town in the morning to go shopping, we were surprised to find how much was available in Shoprite it was small (think 2 or 3 Tesco expresses stuck together) but had everything food, socks, pencils, kettles which is great but they didn't have any milk as the lorry hadn't arrived yet. Then we went to try and get a 3g USB modem thingy which was behind a glass case in the MTN shop, but we couldn't buy it as the person with the key wasn't in on Saturdays!

Today was the big day where we got started teaching, I had a full day (7 lessons), Lucy  just had 1 as her normal lessons would have been swimming and they obviously didn't know until today. It was very weird being at school that wasn't Cornard, sorry Thomas Gainsborough school, after being there 3 years you're known by everyone and pupils will all say hello and have a chat. Here we're obviously new and so we don't know the pupils so they aren't as friendly that will obviously change with time as we get to know the pupils but is a weird feeling at the moment.

Later this week Lucy is off to Chengelo school (about 4 hours drive) to help the girls sports.  This means that I will probably have to do the shopping on my own at the weekend which could end up with us having an interesting menu next week!

We arrived

Just a quick post to let people know that we've arrived, we'll update later with pictures and more details of how we got here but for now i'll jjst say we're here and connected to the internet. Also its hotter here than it was when we left home! Hope you all had a great new year.