We've had a busy last few days! It seems to be that our weekends are always the busiest here. Sunday was church in the morning...about 3 hours this week. We taught the kids Red Light Green Light last Saturday and when we broke for Sunday School that's the first game they wanted to play. They've all really warmed up to us in the last couple weeks and love to stroke our hair and skin..

Sunday afternoon we went to the other congregation for our youth activity. We got there about on time, but no one else showed up for about 20 mintues...When we first got here we used the taxi that Catherine's family owns. They employ the driver, so we've had a taxi to call whenever we've needed it. But a couple weeks ago he got arrested..for a reason we never fully understood...something to do with the car and running from the cops after breaking a traffic law-we think...so we've had to scramble to find drivers a few times. Our driver is supposedly working again, but I don't think he'll be having a job with this family much longer...

The youth activity went ok. We had a presentation about cultural differences ready but during the exercises we had planned they tried to answer the way they thought we would answer..so the differences didn't show up as dramatically as we had planned..but it still went ok. When we were done they played soccer for the remaining 30 minutes. Ashley played goalie..but in my skirt and flip flops I just watched and journaled until the taxi came to pick us up.

Monday is usually our emptiest day, a lot of movie watching happens on Mondays, but this past Monday we went to Kitwe with Catherine and Bunda Chibwe to get the car fixed. Someone had tried to steal it at the border I guess and the cab was all messed up. We did a lot of sitting at first, and then ended up going to Ndola to check on Bunda's passport, we had a less than divine lunch at a place called Divine Foods, and then headed back to Kitwe where the unexpectedly dropped us off at a market. We knew we were going to the market, but not by ourselves. We spent the next hour and a half our so bargaining with many people to get some really cool stuff. After the trade fair we were very practiced on how to get these guys down in prices..and we also knew what stuff should be, so we knew when they were majorly taking advantage. They were really quite friendly to us, they helped us find a dvd stand after we were done in their area and talked with us briefly while we waited for Catherine and Bunda to come back. (they had gone to pick up the fixed part of the car) We drove home from there, but on the way I had requested we stop and get a watermelon. So. At this market we always pass where there are dozens of fruit and vegetable stands we stopped. We were instantly swarmed with people, pressing their noses against the window, holding up every fruit and vegetable you can think of. And once you roll down the window even a little bit they are shoving it in the car trying to get you to buy it.

Bunda's mother was in the hospital so before we went all the way home we stopped to visit with her. It was interesting to see their hospital, not quite what we would see in the States, but it was really quite nice.
We finally made it home around 7:30 and ate dinner and went to bed exhausted.

Tuesday was decently busy too. We had survey training in the morning for the Chewimpala congregation. We got there around 10 am..the starting time we had given, and one woman showed up around 10:20...another around 10:45 and then a few more a little after 11. So we went through our training and they decided to go out into the community on Friday, so that went pretty well.

We came back and watched a movie, then made lunch..sort of. We're never quite sure if we're supposed to fix our own lunch or eat what the maid prepares. And they don't fix lunch until about 2, so we get quite hungry waiting around to see what we're supposed to do. I waited until about 1:30 and decided I was going to eat- Ashley had already eaten. Sure enough about 2 she put a bowl of nshima and beans out on the table with two plates and two glasses of water...So we had our second lunch. It's become a bit of a joke -we get hungry now when we don't have our second lunch..

We walked into town to do some shopping. We decided to try ice cream at this place, Nono's Ice Cream parlor and supermarket. Ice cream parlor here means an ice cream machine with two flavors of soft serve. We both got banana, and it was pretty good..tasted like a banana laffy taffy.
We finished our shopping and then walked home.

We have been eating dinner later and later it seems, sometime past 8 o'clock, and last night we thought we would actually eat before 7:30-Catherine was in the middle of making dinner when we lost power. But it ended up being really fun, we made a charcoal fire and cooked everything outside over the fire. Catherine kept saying, "Now you're experiencing the REAL Africa..no electicity to cook...this is the real Africa."

Today I did laundry-probably the last big load of the trip and then watched a movie. Catherine is gone for the day so we're mostly just hanging out and then we have our Bible Study this afternoon that we're not sure if we're supposed to plan or not...so we'll see how that goes..

More soon :)