We made it!

The hours of traveling are behind us and we are settled into the Seeds of Hope guest house in Ndola. Neither of us slept so well on the flight to South Africa, even with the help of sleeping pills. Instead we watched movies and eventually the sunrise over what we figured was the Zambezi as our plane parallelled a long windy river. On the way to Jo'burg we actually saw a little snow on the ground below and getting off the plane that morning we could see our breath! Not a bad trade for Boise at 105F the day we left. Here in Zambia temps are 70s in the daytime but temps dip to fleece coat weather by morning. Its great to be in Africa. The smell of diesel and charcoal smoke, the smiles of children, and the sight of sunrise through the limbs of an acacia tree are a few moments that have brought memories of my experiences in Kenya a decade ago very near. On our bus ride I found it amusing to think about the new things I am noticing - mainly latrines. Driving through the countryside some communities seemed to have them and others not so much. The other new item is the cell phone - everyone seems to have them and every shop sells pre-paid minutes for cell phones. Its great to be sharing Africa with Darcy and seeing the continent afresh through her eyes. She is journaling and hopes to post something here soon too. She is loving it.

We have met many of the fulltime Seeds of Hope staff who have gone out of there way to help us get settled in. After picking us up from the bus stop this morning they took us around to run errands including dropping off the training manuals at the printers, going grocery shopping, exchanging money etc... The 22 manuals for students will cost about 1 million kwacha ($250 US dollars). The exchange rate is 1 USD = 3,850 K. The lottery is giving away 1.5 billion. The biggest bill we've seen thus far is 50,000 K the smallest is 1,000 and there are no coins. Tomorrow we're looking forward to church and then to beginning our class on monday.