And so it begins....

Hello again!

It's strange to think that I'll be heading home tomorrow... in some ways it feels like just yesterday that we left, but in other ways it feels so long ago.  Because I wasn't able to update while I was in Zambia, I'll start from the beginning and try to post every day or two as if I was there, for those of you who are interested.

So I shall begin from the beginning.
After about three hours of sleep, four hours of driving, three hours at the airport, a three and a half hour flight, a three and a half hour layover, an eight hour flight, a seven hour layover, and a ten hour flight, I was finally in Zambia!  Local time = 6:30 am.  We didn't slow down much that first day, either.  After breakfast and some grocery shopping, we drove the few hours to Chikankata, in a Salvation Army van with holes in the ground and our luggage on the roof.  It was a little strange arriving in Lusaka, the capital city, and going to a very westernized shopping mall, and then seeing the transition from urban to rural.  It was not uncommon to see people walking along the side of the highway, in what was to us the middle of nowhere.  We soon learned that the people of Zambia who cannot afford a car will walk distances that we in North America would never dream of walking, often with baskets on their heads and/or babies on their backs.

Our accommodations at the seminar centre in Chikankata were a little small, but more than comfortable.  Although I was surprised at how awake I was through all my travels and that first day, it was so glorious to lie down in a real bed for a good night's sleep, all tucked into my bed and mosquito net. Being almost winter in Zambia, it got dark around 6:30 pm and light around 6 am.  This, combined with how exhausted we were each day and the fact that breakfast was served at 6:30 almost every day, forced us all to become obligatory earlybirds... our usual routine involved going to bed anytime between 9 and 10 pm and getting up around 6 am.