A little song

So I think my birthday and past week can best be summarized with this little song my closest neighbor in my village wrote me..
Happy Birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
You can use my chimbushu (toilet)
Anytime you need to poo!!!
Sick yet funny huh!! See, upon my arrival from second site visit I noticed something was different. Where my chimbushi used to be there was now a pile of dirt and bricks. While I was away it rained every day and my chimbushi collapsed!!! So Erin has been nice enough to let me use hers!! She is really close by me so it's not a big deal. Just funny. She is going to be Katharine's closest neighbor. Isn't that fun! She's great and I told her Katherine is great so I am excited for both of them! Anyways, it's been a great week. My b-day was fantastic thanks for all the presents, cards, and emails! I had a great day!!! This week will be busy. I will have my language test on Tueseday and then a tech presetnation on Wed. Friday we swear in and then on Sat we head off to our villages!!! I am definitly ready but I will be very sad to leave my family in my village behind. They are really wonderful people. So tears to come that day but definitly exctied and ready to start doing my own thing. This will proably be the last blog for quite some time so know that I love you all and hope your doing great!!! Peace out for now, victoria
So we will see if these links work.

For staging pictures..... http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kelley_vl/album?.dir=3668&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

For eastern pictures...
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/kelley_vl/album?.dir=1d2e&.src=ph&store=&prodid=&.done=http%3a//photos.yahoo.com/ph//my_photos

Sorry about the NW pics, I will try to put them on at the solwezi house.

Pictures, Pictures,Pictures

Hello!! These are just a few pics I have taken at different times since I have left. Just click on the album and open it up. I'll try and add more later but it takes FOREVER and forever costs a lot of money:) So for now enjoy what's posted. I had a great time at second site visit. The guy I am replacing was awesome and really fixed the place up. He is leaving me a lot of furniture and stuff so I am really excited. He took me around and introduced me to a lot of people which was great. I biked 7 hours to get up to my site!!! Him and Joe usually do it in 4? They are obviously a lot better bikers than me!! On the way back I took public transport. Me and 15 other Zambians and regina's bike in the back of a small pickup truck! It was crazy fun, bumpy, wet, and rainy. I loved it!! It took about 2 hours. So those are my transport options from Mwinilunga to Ikelenge!!! I'm not sure which I will be doing the most but it is a BEAUTIFUL trip by bike or back of truck. You go up and down beautiful hills, over running rapids, and across beautiful plains where you would think to see gazilles jumping up and down! It was amazing!! Anyways, enjoy all of the pics. I hope they post okay and I will try and do more later! Love ya'll victoria
I think you can click on pictures pictures pictures to get to the pictures:)

Pictures, Pictures,Pictures

Hello!! These are just a few pics I have taken at different times since I have left. Just click on the album and open it up. I'll try and add more later but it takes FOREVER and forever costs a lot of money:) So for now enjoy what's posted. I had a great time at second site visit. The guy I am replacing was awesome and really fixed the place up. He is leaving me a lot of furniture and stuff so I am really excited. He took me around and introduced me to a lot of people which was great. I biked 7 hours to get up to my site!!! Him and Joe usually do it in 4? They are obviously a lot better bikers than me!! On the way back I took public transport. Me and 15 other Zambians and regina's bike in the back of a small pickup truck! It was crazy fun, bumpy, wet, and rainy. I loved it!! It took about 2 hours. So those are my transport options from Mwinilunga to Ikelenge!!! I'm not sure which I will be doing the most but it is a BEAUTIFUL trip by bike or back of truck. You go up and down beautiful hills, over running rapids, and across beautiful plains where you would think to see gazilles jumping up and down! It was amazing!! Anyways, enjoy all of the pics. I hope they post okay and I will try and do more later! Love ya'll victoria
I think you can click on pictures pictures pictures to get to the pictures:)

2 posts in one day!

So dam day was amazing!!! I think it is going to rank as a top 10 in Zambia when all is said and done. I really loved it. It was so good to get to hang out at a swimming pool. We couldn't swim in the water because of crocs? But they had a pool and it was so nice. I got some sun, not too much but a good amount. The best part though was lunch!! We stopped at the grocery store and got hamburger meat. I think I had a whole cow for lunch!! It was fantatistic. I love hamburger meat and I love grilling and I loved eating chips and salsa!!!! Oh pure goodness all the way around. It was supreme!!! Anyways, I love you all oh an more info on the dam. All the peace corps trainees went. It was about 30 minutes on the other side of Kitwe. Great fun, love ya vic

One Wednesday

So I thought I would dedicate this page to the activities that occured on Wed my homestay day. Homestay day was implemented by the Peace Corps in hopes that during training for one afternoon we would stay at home and experience everything our homestay families do. I was not looking forward to it but it ended up being a lot of fun so here goes with my schedule....
4:30- My Amaama wakes up, since we sleep under the same roof and she is very loud when she unlocks the door I wake up.
4:35- I go back to sleep
6:00- Wake up and try to find my toilet paper so I can run to the chimubshi (along the way I must greet my mom and tell her that yes, I have woken up well, even though I am in a super big hurry to make it to the RR on time.
6:10- Get back to my house and gather my stuff for my bath.
6:15- I tell my A maama I am ready to bathe and she takes one bucket of cold and one bucket of hot water in the bathing hut for me.
6:35- I return to find breakfast on the table as always.
6:50- I rush to the RR and rush around to finish getting ready.
7:00- Head to the big hut to meet the PC bus for tech processing in another village at 8:00
8:00- Tech Processing from the week.
12:00- Head home for culture day activities
12:30- Wash my clothes outside with my sister. It is kind of hard work but they were very good to help me.
1:00- Cut the tomatoes and onions. Cried like a baby from the onions and the smoke. They felt bad but I told them it wasn't a big deal. It really wasn't I just had onion juice and smoke in my eyes.
1:15- Made shima
1:30- Ate Lunch
2:00- Washed dishes. I hate doing it in America and I don't really enjoy it here either!
2:15- Swept the ground.
2:17- Wow, sweeping the ground is hard work. I got tired fast so my mom and my sister took over. We don't use regular brooms.
2:30- Took a nap
3:00- Went outside and set with my family. One of my neices had hair bugs (lice I suspect) so my A maama was cutting off all of her hair.
3:45- Went to the fields with my mom. We have a lot of fields. We picked corn and seet potato leaves for lunch on Thursday.
5:00- Arrived back home and I pounded casava root with my sister mom and niece who stared at me the whole time. I tried the pounding for a while. It was fun but I wasn't very good. Then my sister did it and she was really good. Then my mom did it and well she has a lot of years on all of us. It was actually a really cool picture. Africa in its purest form.
5:30- Then I sifted the root we pounded. I was better at that.
6:00- Made rice and soya pieces (my favorite) for dinner
6:45- Evening shower
7:00- Played tic tac toe with my sister in the dirt
7:30- Sat in kitchen hut with my family
8:00- Time to go get ready for bed.
8:30- Lights (my candle) out!
So that's a day! A really fun day that I enjoyed a lot. The women work their rears off here. Can't wait for ya'll to come experince it! Love ya vic

Suprise!!!!

So it's friday and I am blogging. Who would have thought!! I hope this makes ya'll day as much as it does mine. So today was two test friday. I feel like I am back in college. I got up at 4:30 to study. I did okay. Better than I thought but not as good as I should have. Such is life. An interesting thing on the way to the test. We got picked up from our village at 7:30 with our language trainers and then we went to the training center. On the way our driver (he's PC staff) hit a bird and then pulled over and picked it up so he could eat it for lunch!!! Can you believe it. He got out of the vehicl and we were all like wait why's he stoping it's just a bird and the lang trainers, they are zambian, looked at us and were like duh, to eat. We told them that that was a cultural moment for us. Matt, dan, and erin took a pic so I'm sure someone will post it on Sun. Another surprising thing is that I actually perfer to use a chimbushi (our toilet/outhouse) as opposed to a regular standing toliet. Theres a lot to be said for a hole in the ground. It really makes the process so much easier. The bank where I am at typing has a pretyy nice toliet but I find myself longing for that deep dark hole. Oh well. Oh to answer the question about my bike. It has 21 speeds, Front and back brakes. I am getting used I suppose. So that is really all for now. Tommorrow is big dam day!! I am so excited it will be great to be by the water!!! I can't wait. I'll tell ya'll all about it on sunday hopefully. I will proably come to Kitwe!! Peace out, love ya Vic