December 25th, 2009
Merry Christmas!

We’ve been in Zambia for almost three months now. In a lot of ways, we’re just living a regular Monday-Friday 9-5 lives. Lusaka has the feel of a suburb, just with really bad traffic (granted, this refers to the areas we live, work, and shop in–there are certainly less comfortable areas of the city).
But life in Zambia has also given us some great and surprising experiences. We’ve met a lot of freakishly large bugs and spiders. I learned that when unexpectedly visited by a tarantula, I can jump up and run very fast!

Tarantula!
Here’s my accidental re-enactment of Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World:
We came really, really close to an elephant on the Lower Zambezi:
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Craig rode his bike over 100km up and down a gravel/dirt road on the way to the Lower Zambezi. Thankfully he and Tim Budge were out there to help the “support” vehicles out of multiple jams, this being the worst:

Really great experiences have also come to us from Craig’s work with World Bicycle Relief: the bike distribution at Bimbe Basic School, and meeting community care givers and their clients, for example. I’ve also been working with the Afya Mzuri Knowledge Centre for Health (still getting used to spelling “center” as “centre”), mainly on their website. I’ve been relearning my html and css, plus some new stuff. Also, I’m learning patience. Perhaps the Germans have some word for “patience-required-when-suffering-a-slow-to-non-existent-internet-connection”? Please tell us if there is.
We’ve made some good friends here, people that will hopefully be friends for a very long time (We’re looking at you Kristin, Jen, and Dave!). We also miss everyone back home–it’s hard not to always think “Mary Ellen would love this!” or “Amanda would find this hilarious!” or “We hope Shawn likes this mustachio photo!”, etc. etc.
We also miss Mexican food (and I would love some Vietnamese as well). So expect frequent requests for burritos when we get back. Thankfully, there’s really good Indian food here in Lusaka, so we’re tiding ourselves over masala papadums, jeera rice, chicken and mutton.
Finally, our most recent adventure was a trip to Zanzibar. Despite a complete power blackout for the whole island, and many mishaps, we had a really wonderful time. We got engaged! On a beach at sunset no less. I had just been talking about Bergman’s Seventh Seal when Craig got down on one knee. Seriously!
Photos from our trip are up on Flickr, check it!
As an added bonus to our Merry Christmas greeting above here’s a short “behind the scenes” special feature. This is what happens when I’m on vacation in paradise:
The whole point is: we’re alive and doing well (so, no worrying for you parents out there). And we miss you. And we wish you were here.