Picnic and pictures!

Last weekend I (kerry) was on duty in the girls dorm and had a brilliant weekend with the girls!! Thought I would post a few quick pics of what we got up to!
On Saturday morning the primary girls and I cycled to the farm on site and went for a little picnic and some swimming there! Was great fun :-)

And on Saturday afternoon, with the secondaries, we made a photo collage of some of the photos we had printed in England. It has really brightened up the dorm!

This week is going well so far although Jona feels a little under the weather.
It is really getting quite cold here now and some of the girls are also catching colds!
On Friday we look forward to the school fayre fundraising event :-)

Snakes, Flags and the Winter!

It has been a really good start of the new term for the both of us, although I (jona) have more lessons to do this term so had a day or two before classes started. For Kerry and Jarrett the youth has been busy, one of Jarretts ideas was to place flags around the school to encourage people to work on areas they would like to develop. So the young ppl chose the words Unity, Peace, Patience for example and these were all decided and designed by the youth.

That was last week Thursday at youth group, and this week they had Zambia Youth Olympic trials, where the highly contested events were: Toilet roll shotput, Dinner placemat discus and wheely chairs relay race :) It was really good fun and am sure that the Olympic comittee will be discussing its inclusion in London this year :)

I have Christened my squash racket now in Zambia, almost won all my games, had to resort to some dirty tactics though, in a close match with friend Hilton I just managed to scrape a win as he 'got' in the way of my shot and received a nice bruise in return on the bum (you'll be happy to hear there are no pics of this :)). Although restorative justice was implemented by Dave who similarly hit ME!! with the squash ball to come back from loosing 7-2 to win !!!!

As many may know it is now winter here and at the moment the temperatures have been around 27 max and 12 min. Mostly sunny now the rain has all gone and the grass is going brown and even though it is winter you can still get sunburn as I was gently reminded last week. As a result of this colder weather a lower food supply there have been a number of snake sightings. One of the 6th form students killed a snake the other day, a bigger snake was also seen by the farm and we also had a visit. Just outside the house was a snake in the drain gutter where frogs normally hang out. Not sure what type of snake it was but is you know let us know. Kerry was very happy to actually see a snake in the wild not behind a cage hope you enjoy the pictures.

Lastly Champions league final tonight so we are all off to a Friends house to see and it has been turned into a clash of England vs Germany..... so will be a tense one!!!

Zambian Birthday!

We have thankfully arrived back safely at Amano. We flew from Heathrow last Wednesday, things were all going well (apart from the fact that they thought we had a hand grenade in our hand luggage! Lol) until we hit Lusaka bus station which is one of the more crazier places we have visited in our lives. As soon as we got out the taxi people were crowding around us shouting ‘Muzungu’ (white person), trying to get us on their buses, trying to take our luggage off us, trying to offer us a taxi and sell us fruit! Was a bit stressful with 4 big suitcases, 2 laptops as well as our hand luggage. We had made an online reservation for a bus to Kitwe but apparently they don’t bother to check their reservations and we found that they had already sold out of tickets for the 10.30am bus (we arrived at 8.30am) so we had to wait it out until 12.30! Bit of a long tired hectic wait. We finally got on a coach with all our luggage still with us!

We had arranged for somebody to pick us up in Kitwe in the afternoon and take us back to the school but because everything was all a lot later she understandably felt it wouldn’t be safe for her to pick us up in the dark because of potholes (and crazy truck drivers) on the road back to the school. SO... we had to stay the night with some friends in Kitwe. But it worked out great- they picked us up from Kitwe bus station (which I think is even more overwhelming than Lusaka!), fed us and had nice hot water!

Finally arrived back at school last Friday- both EXTREMELY exhausted. But so nice to feel welcomed by friends on site J

Saturday was my birthday and we had a lovely day with friends! I opened my prezzies from people who had given them to me in England. Was happy to have a supply of chocolate to keep me going!

We had a gathering for coffee and cake in the afternoon J Jona and Jarrett got their baking hats on and made me a lovely chocolate cake followed by making pizza’s for tea!

They provided me with much entertainment as they made the pizza’s- anyone would think they had been making a complicated gourmet meal!

We enjoyed the pizza’s in the evening at the Kirks house as we caught up and watched football!

The students have now all arrived back and the busyness has begun. But the term has gotten off to a great start and we feel so happy to be here! 

Zambia-here we come!

Wow! Can't believe we are headed back to Zambia tomorrow.... in some ways our stay here in England seems to have flown by so quickly but then when I look back I can't believe how much we have crammed in!
We have been soooo blessed to spend such quality time with family and friends and we are going back feeling very loved and supported!! And we are heading back with suitcases full of goodies and treats :-)

We had a great week last week with Jona's cousins- Conrad and Ellie who flew over from Ireland. Was brilliant to spend a chilled out week with them and catch up on all their news. And Jona and his bro enjoyed some heated games of squash and we really enjoyed a trip to the cinema (i managed to stay awake which is always a good sign!)

I enjoyed a great time in London on the weekend with friends from uni. Was GREAT to see them all

And a lovely 'all you can eat' chinese meal for my beautiful friend Vicky's 30th birthday!

The last few days we have had our friend Joey and her Mum down to stay, we enjoyed time (and lots of food) in winchester and great time catching up!!

Please pray for us as we venture into our 24 hour journey back to Amano and that we manage to get all our luggage back too!