2013

Well, what do you know!  I'm actually posting on this blog.  After months of either having no computer, or no internet access (capable of blogging), OR no time... I finally have all 3!

Let me try to catch up.  We are back home at the College, since the 22nd of January, after 3 months away in Scotland.  A lovely 3 months... seeing so many dear friends and making so many new friends.  It was truly encouraging and refreshing.  But it is good to be home!  Elijah is so, so, so, happy to be back home in Zambia again. He is glad to be back in a familiar place surrounded by familiar people, food, and environment.

Elijah is growing up so fast - he is now 2 years 8 months old... he'll be 3 at the beginning of July.  I can't believe it!  Suddenly my baby boy is walking around the house serenading his sister, building train tracks and having make-believe play with his toy animals.  And Ketzia seems bound and determined to catch up to her brother in everything.  She is 14 months old but so well-developed -- already running at top speeds, totally stable on her feet, and very clever.  She can understand everything I say to her even though she isn't talking yet. 

I had the students ROARING with laughter while I told them stories about Elijah in Scotland...  Like our first week there, when Elijah told me, "Mama, I'm going to buy eggs now." (In Zambia we always walk to the farm and buy fresh eggs there - Elijah gets to help by carrying the money.)  So he walked out of the living room and shut the door, and down the hall and shut the door. He came back about 20 seconds later and said, "Mama, it's too cold to buy eggs!"  Another day I overheard Elijah pretending to talk on the mobile phone (which had notoriously bad reception) -- "Ullo!" he said, "Ullo!  Can you hear me?"  Then with a sigh of disgust he said, "The signal's gone!"  The students absolutely loved hearing of his exploits.

We have about 24 students this year, and the term started smoothly (we're halfway through week 2 at present).  The first month or so David is lecturing every morning, so he's very busy just now but enjoying teaching.  We are glad that our colleague Phil returned from his furlough last week, and look forward to seeing our colleague Marjanne return from her furlough at the end of this week!

We have a new internet set-up here which is (so far) working MUCH better than last year.  It is faster, which means we've even been able to talk to family using ooVoo (like Skype except we've found it works much better than Skype...) a few times which never worked last year!  The internet is still having a few issues, it's not 100% sorted out yet, but we are very encouraged.  Hence, my ability to post on the blog.  Last year I could barely ever get this page to load!  What a blessing!

At the moment I am struggling with a huge flea problem... we came home to find both our dogs happy and healthy and well-fed, but crawling with fleas!  We've given them a couple of flea treatments but nothing has worked yet.  Then we found that the new hut which was built in our garden at the end of last year was SWARMING with fleas - so they were flooded out with loads of boiling water (hopefully they are still gone). But there are still fleas in the grass outside the hut, and now there are fleas in the children's sandbox because I can't keep the dogs from lying in there in the heat of the day!  So poor Elijah and Ketzia have been told that they can't play in the sandbox for the time being (they keep ending up covered in fleas).  I don't really know what to do to get rid of these pests!  And I'm so worried that they will end up in the house and then what am I going to do?!