half term already.....

Hello again

Decided that seeing as half term is over now i should update the blog and let everyone know how we're getting on. firstly after a 2 week christmas holiday that involved, moving out of a house, christmas, and moving to Zambia it was nice to have a week with little that had to be done and we do feel a little more relaxed and rested now than we did 10days ago which is really good! Having aid we feel rested we haven't been sitting down wondering what to do or playing computer games all day although we have managed a few hours here and there!

Bethel Youth in the ipusikilo chota

On sunday night we were at ipusikilo street kids home with bethel youth, which was a good evening it was great to see the former street children singing and dancing away when we were singing song out of mission praise! While it was going on we had a huge thunderstorm which lead to power going out so we had a few torch lit accoustic songs while steve found a generator and gave us power back.

On tuesday we went to Ndola to go to Picknpay which is a south african supermarket chain if you're not aware, i'm fairly sure they much be owned by wal-mart or tesco as it seems very asda/tesco ish it was nice to be there as you can get hold of a lot more stuff there than you can in chingola although it wasn't as exciting as shoping in shoprite in chingola where you never know what you'll find. Another benefit of this trip was that at the same mall there is a debonairs pizza so it seemed rude not to get one, especially when pizza and coke was only about £5.  Rumour has it that there is a shoping mall to be built in chingola, i like the idea of debonairs being there as well but similarly being able to get hold of take away pizza to easily can't be a good thing. Luckily this being Zambia its unlikely that a mall will be built very quickly so, we'll probably be long gone before it actualy happens.

Wednesday we moved the School Library, it only seemed a small library until we started moving the books, fortunately there were lots of people on hand, a lot of books were moved and i think mainly ended up in the correct place, i guess we'll find out shortly when pupils try to find things! It took us from about 8 til about 1:30 so were glad of lunch and a drink when we finished, in the afternoon we went to Musenga to go swimming in lucy's old pool! which is deep!

Our new and clean car

Thursday we went for lunch at musenga and phil grove picked us up after having looked at a car which he mentioned we might be interested in so, we went and had a look in the afternoon. We went back on friday with Steve Studd and decided that we should get it! so, we now own a car, all we need to do now is to do all the paperwork and get ourselves zambian driving licenses! which we still haven't managed to do. Exactly what paper work we have to is another thing we have to figure out!

Tomorrow we get back in to routine, school wise things have been good we have had more challenging classes than i think we were expecting, behaviour of the pupils while good isn't quite as you might expect and a few homeworks have not been handed in! Hopefully punishments handed out will mean these problems go away, like always with pupils they are pushing the boundries and seeing what they can get away with. Its still hard to get used to no one wanting to answer questions, being very direct with who you are asking questions of helps but doesn't make the problem go away.

Grade 8 is also causing trouble with constant questions and most of them with rather obvious answers, they are only just a month in to secondary school so i guess its to be expected they'll find thing hard as its a big step up. A stupid question tally has slowed the rate of them down as after 3 have been asked in a lesson the class has a chore to do!

As has come to be normal there are plenty of sporting fixtures coming up and as a result of this lucy will have a busy time. A few primary footbal fixtures one against the boys from ipusikilo. as well as this qualifiers to the ISAZ (international schools association Zambia i think) tournament in lusaka at the end of march. So as is normal in a school it will be a busy 7 weeks until easter. we do have a long weekend early in march which is why half term is so early.