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!