It has been quite the experience so far let me tell ya. Being someone who has never left her continent and suddenly submerged into a completely different culture I feel like such a newb! So it was pretty hard the first couple weeks my mind going aahhh overwhelmed!!!! I had to experience the culture shock I guess but now I am settled in quite a bit more. We (my new roomie Liz and I) found a solid very lively Penticostal church (complete with the shouts of: "Glory! Amen brother! C'mon! Halleluja!" and lots of dancing it's so much fun) It is about ten minuts walk from our house so we just hike er' to church every sunday.
Teaching has been the biggest challenge I think. The first day I had 25 students in the class. I was supposed to have 17 but some were just curious about the new "mazungoo" (white person in Bemba the main language). The next day was way less but oh man I had to pray my way through that day haha. But each day gets better and each day I get more confident at this new job I am learning to like it and have fun at it. So I have one class in the morning and one in the afternoon about 19 regular students, eight boys and eleven girls. When there isn't a foot ball (soccer) game happening I will usually have everyone there. We have finished making tote bags and just finished making aprons which was the first one I have ever made! This week we will be starting shirts for the boys and wrap skirts for the girls and I will be teaching about how to start your own business haha so wish me luck!
I feel like every day has a new life lesson. I am learning so much about patience, how to grocery shop, cook, and how to kill larger than life insects which will eat your FACE... but not really.. I am just terrified of all things crawling at ground level here cause they are usually twice as big as canadian insects. It's something I am praying through ok! A couple nights ago we had a couple of lovely neighborhood cockroaches enter our abode so we spent a few squealing minutes jumping from couch to couch and trying to quickly move the funiture so we could have a chance to kill it before it would run under the next couch. I made Liz kill them cause there was no way I was getting that close to it. I am so SO glad she is my roomate if she wasn't here I would for sure go crazy. God is so great setting that up so we could be here at the same time. We were even sitting next to eachother on the plane! So rad. So yesturday we bought a bag full of chemicals so it is death to the cockroaches and slugs very soon can I get an Ahmen!
So am living in a compound area with two houses in it one is owned by the PAOC and a missionary couple lives there part time, Don and Marie they are so, so great. The first night we got here they cooked us dinner which was iiiiiincredibly delicious spagetti yum yum. The other house is where we are living which is owned by the Village of Hope. Coinicidently it hasn't been lived in for two years so there is alot to do. We are thinking of hiring people to help us, as the other day I spent about two hours scrubbing two years of dirt off the bars on the kitchen window with a tooth brush. Hahah
Sometimes it is hard to believe I am here who would have thought that I would be in Africa
Well this is a sizeable update if you made it to the end you deserve a very high five and my congrats. I miss you all so, so much and am thinking of you thank you for your prayers, please keep em up I defs need them! Will update again soon and tell you what is happenin in the life of Laura the Explora!!
