A Rude Awakening and A Scare

It was just after 6am, and I think I had heard Erika get up and go for a run or something, but quickly fell back asleep, only to be awakened again 15 minutes later to the sound of a plastic bag rustling. I had a plastic bag of stuff on the floor in the corner of the room. At first I was confused and thought maybe Erika was digging around in there for something but when I opened my eyes, she wasn’t there. I closed them again. There was the sound again! Finally I opened my eyes and stuck my head out of the mosquito netting and just watched the bag. All of a sudden I saw a frog jumping up against the wall, trying to get over the bag—a fairly decent sized frog. Ugh. How on earth did it get into my room?? So I had to get out of bed to capture it. I got a plate and mug from the living room and when I got back, it was gone. At first I thought it had burrowed into the plastic bag because I still heard rustling noises. So I emptied the bag but no frog jumped out at me. As I was thinking, “now what?” I saw a movement behind me and there it was! The capture was fairly easy—pounced on the thing with the mug, slid the plate under it and dropped it outside in the courtyard. After this I was quite awake, but I have nothing planned for today so there was no way I was getting up that early. I went back to bed for another hour and half. J

Erika also is giving us a little scare today. I heard her go running at a little after 6am, before the frog incident. When I woke up at 8 she wasn’t back, but I assumed maybe she was taking a longer run. I got showered and ready, had some breakfast and started reading my book, and she still wasn’t back. Now it’s 9:45am. An almost four hour run?? Dave and Dee are out looking for her now. Dee called and said they still couldn’t find her and we were just trying to brainstorm what could have happened, but as I was talking to her on the phone Dave called and said he had found her (he was out on his bike).  I guess what had happened was she was out running and got lost, and a lady picked her up and brought her to a part of town. She called Dave to tell him where she was and we were confused as to how, because she didn’t have her phone with her and we know there’s no way she’d have his number memorized. Turns out she got dropped off at an internet café and must have begged to use the computer, because in some e-mails we had gotten before coming to Zambia, we were give Dee and Dave’s number. Good thinking! So Dee is going to pick her up from there. So scary! Pastor Sargent and Dave came over to laugh about the situation; they said this is going to be one of those stories that becomes an urban legend “Lost in Zambia!” Dave also made her a welcome home sign and taped it to our door. J

Dee ended up running some errands after picking up Erika so she didn’t come back straight away. So far she’s been gone 6 hours. Pastor Phiri came over to give me the list of students that need tutoring so I’ve just been working on putting them into the schedule. I think I figured it all out, although it’s complicated looking. We have 19 students and I want to try to keep the groups of kids at 2 each per teacher. So I have five groups of 2 and one of 3. Now I have to double check it with Erika and then show it to Pastor Phiri to approve it.

When Pastor Sargent was here briefly in the morning he told me about something happening here in April. I guess there’s some kind of conference or something held on the campus for 2 weeks, with lots of visitors coming. He mentioned the names Prof. Cherney and President Schroeder. Since there’ll be different workshops and things going one, and the wives will most likely be helping Anne cook, Pastor Sargent said we most likely would not do any teaching for those weeks. We’re also moving out of the guest house so the new guests can stay here. We’ll be moving to the Lawrenz’s old house across the street from campus and right behind Dee and Dave’s house. So we’re excited for that! He also said those 2 weeks would be a good time to get some of traveling in, so we’ll have to see what we can figure out. There’s also going to be quite a number of 4 day weeks for us. Pastor Phiri said we should give everyone off classes when it’s a national holiday, and there are 2 in March (one already next week) and several in April because of Easter and then May 1^st for Labour Day. J

Erika got back finally right after lunch. We teased her a bit but as you can imagine, she was tired, hot, hungry and thirsty. If you want to read a more detailed account of her dramatic story you can check out her blog at www.laetezambianadventure.blogspot.com/  If this link doesn't work, you can also find the link to it on the WELS Kingdom Workers page on Facebook.

The afternoon was pretty lazy. I watched some episodes of Friends and read some more of my book. Erika and I took a leisurely walk to that little shopping area that we couldn’t find the other day. This time we were successful, and there was a really nice little grocery shop where we got another loaf of bread, some crackers, and marie biscuits. Erika got a bottle of guava juice, and I just had to drink a bottle of coke. It tasted just like I remembered—I even remembered to wipe the rust off from around the rim of the bottle.  Oh, and we also had a nice chat with a guy in the store and scored another business card with telephone numbers. I’m going to keep all the ones we get and see what our grand total is by the end of our time here.

At 4pm, we headed over to talk to Pastor Phiri, but he wasn’t in his office, so we played volleyball instead. Every Tuesday at 4 Dave, Dee, the wives and some of the students get together to play. Mrs. Birner was there too. It was tons of fun! Normally I would say I’m not the volleyball type, but playing with these people was awesome. They are at the level I am, and there were so many laughs. Halfway through playing we saw Pastor Phiri walk into his office so we headed over there quickly and showed him our schedule. He said it looked good, so I’m glad that’s figured out. Now it’s a matter of finalizing lesson ideas and routines. We went back to the volleyball game and played a couple more before it ended at 5:30ish. Nathan came at the end with his freezie pops, so we bought lemon-lime ones for K500 each. I’m terrible at the money conversions, but my guess is that that’s 10 cents or less. They were delicious and refreshing!

At 6 we had a delicious supper again. This time it was sausages with chips (French fries) and amazing coleslaw with cucumbers and tomatoes. We ate while watching a few episodes of Friends. The rest of the night consisted of writing out notecards with tutoring times that we can give to each student (because our schedule looks kind of confusing), reading, listening to country music and drinking grapefruit juice. We’re running out of internet, so that’s why I haven’t posted more pictures, but when I do, I’ll include a picture of our schedule. Sorry it’s blurry and weird—I took a picture of the computer screen. J We’re hoping to go into town tomorrow to top up our modems. I pray that wherever you may be reading this you had a wonderful day. Again, thanks for your prayers. Erika and I feel so happy and blessed to be here!!