November Potpourri

Hello Dear Readers - almost a month has gone past without a post on our blog. We had a bunch of technical problems with our internet connection which pretty much prevented us from posting anything, but that seems to be behind us now, so we will do our best to catch up.

Lusaka Halloween - this is a very, very late entry. We didn't really celebrate Halloween here, but we did carve a "pumpkin", well, it's a watermelon. Someone emailed us and demanded a picture, so here it is.

Oooh, the worlds scariest (and tastiest) jack-o-lantern

Teaching Systems Administrators - I (John) have just finished teaching some of the staff at our partner schools and the ISP partner in basic systems administration for the Linux computer systems we have installed in the schools. Despite being eight or nine years old the computers are performing pretty well, but when they do break, the schools always call me. This training is an attempt to get the schools to be more self sufficient, to be able to create and delete accounts on their own, to set up printers and so on. We had eight students for eight classes and it went pretty well. Some students were very quick on the uptake, but everyone seemed to have a good time. We'll see how effective the course was by how well the computers keep running.

The happy students

Team Meeting - One of the great things about MCC in Zambia is that we have regular team meetings. It's great to get together with all the far flung MCC volunteers, this year there are more than ever with the Smith family working up in Kitwe. This time, after a day and a half of meetings we went to "Adventure City", which is Lusaka's (and probably Zambia's) only water slide park. Everyone had a great time.

It's all downhill from here

Putting up the Christmas Tree - Christmas trees are really not available around here. Christmas time is the right time for mangoes, avocados, lychees and guavas, not pine trees. However, friends of ours are in the US for Christmas and lent us their fake tree for the season. Erin and Kristina had a great time putting it up, and now we have a lovely fake tree, and no needles on the floor.

We have to figure out where the branches go....

Tada!

Coming Events: We are looking forward to our big MCC Southern Africa regional retreat starting next weekend. Our friends Dave and Ruth and their two boys are coming out mid December and we will be taking a trip to Zanzibar with them - we are also very much looking forward to that. December will be very busy!