As of late

Ok, I know, I am doing a terrible job of keeping up my blog. I promise I am going to try to do better starting now. It appears that I haven't updated this since September and I have actually done some quite exciting things in the past month.

In the middle of October about 20 teachers from the school (and me too!) hit the air and landed in Lusaka, Zambia for the annual Association of International Schools in Africa's conference. Surprisingly enough I attended some really great seminars that were both interesting and helpful on Child Traumatic Stress, Asperger's Syndrome, and Special Education. After the conference Adam, Sarah and I took a bus to Livingstone to check out Victoria Falls. Despite the lack of water going over the falls (it was dry season) the view was still quite impressive. During the dry season visitors can swim in the Devil's Pool which is about 1 meter from the edge of the falls...and of course we did! No african travel is complete without a safari so we drove into Botswana to visit Chobe Park which is famous for elephants. At one time we saw over 200 elephants! Our trip home was quite an adventure as we took a bus from Livingstone back to Lusaka (7.5 hours) boarded a plane and flew to Harare, Zimbabwe, then to Nairobi Kenya, then to Brazaville, Republic of Congo, then to Kinshasa, DRC. We were relieved to finally be in Kinshasa but little did we know that it was graduation day across the city and so it took us 2.5 hours to drive home from the airport, a drive that normally takes 40 minutes. What a trip!


Back in Kinshasa we celebrated Halloween at the Marine House Halloween party, where a friend and I dressed as Tembo (the best beer in Congo). Just this past weekend the students put together a haunted house and other activities on campus as a fundraiser (yes, it did take place two weeks after Halloween).

This past week Adam, Sarah and I finished piecing the quilt top we are making for the baby and now are ready to start the actual quilting. This is my favorite part so I am eager to begin the process.

The days are getting hotter here and so most of my weekends are spent lounging by the pool, especially when we don't have power. I thought that the power would get more regular when the rainy season began but so far this hasn't proven true. Yesterday I think the power went on and off at least six times! Oh well, it makes life so much more interesting.