Last and Quite Possibly the Least

Well I'm writing this post to you from the comforts of home.  It was a long flight, there is just no way of getting around that.  We left Lusaka shortly after midnight, so that would have been early Wednesday morning.  The first leg was to Amsterdam and it took about 9 or 10 hours.  I was kind of squished as far as width is concerned but I was able to sleep from 2am til 7am about.  Not too bad, but it was not the most refreshing sleep.  Got into Amsterdam around 9 or 10 I think.  We had about an hour and a half before our next flight opened it's security so we wandered around that whole time, I don't we ever sat down we were just happy to stretch our legs and then the flight from Amsterdam to Chicago was about 8 hours.  That one was the worst, it was just really painful being squished in my seat, I say I sat for about 30 minutes and then I stood for about 15 minutes I repeated that cycle the whole time.  The width was pretty narrow, and Josh said it was bad for him too.  Josh got some sleep on the second leg of the trip I didn't.    

Well everything was really going pretty smoothly at this point, we watched as all of our baggage came down the conveyor we had a little extra attention at customs because of where we were coming from.  We made it though and called a taxi and we headed off to my Aunt's house.  But this is the one bad part of the trip.  We left behind my brother's checked bag, his huge suitcase.  It made it through customs we remember that, but we don't remember if it made it into the taxi or not.  So it was probably left at the curb in O'Hare, not good. Well we didn't realize this until we were in Slinger though, which is part of the problem if we recognized that we forgot a bag while we were anywhere near the airport we could have gone back and retrieved it, unfortunately it was too late when we realized it. Josh called the taxi company they said they didn't have it, and the airport said that it would have been taken back to KLM if it was found, but unfortunately KLM's O'Hare depart isn't going to open until later today.  

Well anyway I dropped Josh off there in Slinger and then I made my way up back home, coming back shortly after catechism had let out.  I think I made it back around 7:45pm my kids were still awake.  It was good to see them all, I can see how hard my absence was on them by their greeting of me, Crystal did a great job and had tons of great help, but I don't think I'm going to make a habit of leaving my young family for that long anymore.  Stayed up past 10 to help fight jet lag and I got up around 6:30am this morning after sleeping like a log.  Kids enjoyed their gifts so did Crystal.  But it is time to get back to work and I'm already back in the swing of things.

It was fun being able to blog my experience, I enjoyed using the blog kind of as a public journal of my trip and being able to share the events with I guess who ever cared enough to read them.  It was an amazing trip learned so much and experienced so much, the animals were amazing it was simply awesome to be able to spend that time with our missionaries and with the national pastors there in the LCCA, all who are truly brothers in Christ.  I had fun with my brother, and with the Plugers.  It was good and I'm glad I did it.  As I sign off on my (probably) final blog post just wanted to thank everyone for reading it and for posting comments see you around.  -Peter

UPDATE - I just heard from Josh that his luggage was found at the airport and that it was returned to airline and is waiting for him to go and pick it up, so he is going to have to go back to Chicago (tomorrow) to get the suitcase, not fun but it good that he found it.

UPDATE 2 - Just heard from brother he went all the way down to Chicago to pick up his luggage and when he got there he was informed that they had already shipped it to his house, and is probably going to be there when he gets back!  What a pain.

UPDATE 3 - Well it wasn't there when he got back, a couple of days later he called the airline, they said that his luggage was still at O' Hare!  Awesome.  Well they finally did ship it down to him and I want to say Tuesday night he had his luggage, so it took a week, but he was reunited with it.  And that I believe closes the saga of the trip.  It was a blast.

All set to go

Well we had another night out on the town.  We went to a crocodile farm today and it was interesting, the safety was definitely set at Zambian levels.  There were huge 1000 pound crocodiles behind some chicken wire.  and you can go within inches of them.  It was terrifying but also really cool.  We had crocodile burgers for lunch.  Did a little bit of running around and some more shopping in the mall and had lunch there.  We came back here had a shower got all of our stuff packed up and took a shower, and now we have an half hour before we leave, no time to put pictures on just a quick update, I'll probably post again when I get home, but that won't be for like 30 hours, ouch, not looking forward to all the traveling again, but looking forward to being home, missing my loved ones a lot.  See you soon.  Peter

Big extremes

This morning we started the day by going to chapel at the seminary at 7:30 it was nice a good message.

  Then we went into town. There are lots of extremes between the big city of Lusaka and the villages, the traffic here is crazy.  It is interesting as you are sitting in traffic people come up to you and try to sell you stuff, which i guess isn't that strange.  And they sell top up cards for cell phones, bags of oranges and whatever.  Well we saw one guy who had like 10 dog collars with leashes going from car to car trying to sell them.  This is really crazy who buys their dog collars from wandering people, and then a mile later we saw another guy selling the same collars, and the funny thing is that Zambians don't really own dogs as a general rule, we never saw anyone walking their dog.

I've included a picture of a guy holding a book about "Understanding Physics" which is like the strangest book that you can try to sell people who are stuck in traffic.

 We went grocery shopping in the morning and got some money.  They grocery stores here are really strange and sell strange things like duck fat, not sure what you do with that.  We went to a little village that has lots of souvenirs that you can buy.  I enjoyed trying to get people to go down on their prices one guy wanted to sell a bowl for 150kwatcha ($25( I countered with 40 and then just went on about how there were some small imperfections in it and it was kind of small and then I walked away and he finally went for 50 kwatcha which is like 8 dollars, I was proud of myself, but it takes a lot of time to get the price down.  Here is a picture of the market.

We saw the US Embassy it is huge and impressive.  We met with one of Chris' friends who lives here and we went to an Irish pub for supper and a couple of drinks, it was pretty fun.  It's late and I'm planning on hitting the hay, excited that I'm going to be going home tomorrow, late tomorrow yes, but the voyage will begin tomorrow.  Bye.

Back in the big city

Well we made it back to the big city it is one crazy bumpy five hour long drive there. It's a crazy drive but that when we got here Chris was really tired so he went to sleep and we went out to supper with Pastor sergeant and we went to a Indian themed restaurant the kind of Native American Indian it was really funny because it was very stereo typical we had steak and burgers and it was very modern restaurant in the big mall here in town it was strange because there was a white couple sitting on the other side of the bar and I couldn't help but stare at them because it was so strange to see white people and now we are back at the guest house and we are going to go to sleep hopefully tomorrow Chris will be good and we will be able to drive around in town and get a tour of the big city we are going to do some shopping here in town probably buy some souvenirs I don't have a whole lot else to report so I'll just to close it down at this point but we are definitely excited to be getting closer to the end of our trip it was a lot of fun and it was pretty awesome amor just said the last few days here the last leg of the trip goodnight everybody

whoops I guess it was just the flu

Hello, back again,

First of all no one has commented on my posts in a while, hello is anyone out there?
Secondly as you might be able to tell by the blog post title, Chris our host does not have malaria, the blood tests came back and they didn't find it, he still feels a little sick so they think that he has the flu, and it is possible I guess that he also had malaria, but it is pretty unlikely, so he was belly aching and complaining and it was the common flu, which really isn't anything to laugh at I guess, but I felt like telling Chris that he is big over exaggerator.  But oh well he was feeling better today sort of, he woke up fine but late morning had a little bit of a fever but it has come down and he is feeling, better hopefully he'll be all good tomorrow and the 3 of us can head out to Lusaka for a couple of days at the seminary there and to see the sights of the big city.  Here is a picture that Josh took of the Plugers today, they wanted him to take their picture for some publicity stuff, I thought I'd share it.

Okay lets see today we took it easy here around the area.  You know its the smells and the sounds that are really impressive about Zambia, there is always the sound of chickens, everywhere you go roasters are crowing and the smell of smoke, everyone cooks on charcoal, so there is always that pleasant smoke smell in the air.  But anyway, we went for a short ride w/ Jeanine today to a rural school to pay some school fees for some kid that goes there, but it was way out in the bush and I'll attach a few pictures of some really rural areas in Africa.  The grass thatched roofs are very common in the villages and rural areas, you really wonder how mcuh that helps in the rain, but of course it is cheap.

There was no one at the school so the trip was kind of pointless but right next to the school in this teeny tiny village there was a huge catholic church and it just seemed so strange to be there, the doors were open and Josh and I walked around it and explored it, it must have sat a few hundred people and we wondered if it filled up on Sundays, I think it pretty unlikely.

Out there in the village we saw a woman (in the red shirt below) with a hammer hitting big rocks to make gravel and she was selling little piles of gravel.  It looked like insanely hard work to be doing that in the heat with a hammer but she was really going at it.  Josh went up to her and asked her if she was making rocks, she responded no, I'm making money.  So that was funny the lady pulled one over on Josh.

On the way back from the little village Jeanine got a call that one their friends (who lived in Chipata, 2 hours away) their car broke down near Chris and Jeanine's house, so Jeanine headed on over and picked up her friend's kids while a mechanic towed her car and was going to fix the breaks.  Not having really good breaks on these roads would be a terrible idea, you are constantly slamming on the breaks because of goats and pigs and ox carts and cattle crossing major high ways, its nuts so you definitely want good breaks.  Well we stopped and got gas, the person before us had 3 55 gallon drums in the back of their pick up and they were filling them with diesel, we figured it would be worth over $1000, which is an insane amount of money out here.  Josh and I figured we had time to do some shopping while we waited for diesel.  We bought some chechengwe (the wraps that women wear around their waists) and I also saw a man fixing watches on the sidewalk, my watch has been missing a pin this whole trip and I keep thinking when I get back to the states I'll get it fixed, but I thought this guy could help, for less than $2 he got my watch going again.  It was impressive to see him work with these mechanical watches and fixing the tiny pieces.

Well after that we headed back to the house and had lunch, left over pasties from the night before they were good.  The friend eventually got her brakes working and she came and picked up her kids, Sean appreciated having some company for a couple of hours.  The rest of the day we just hung out and played games, Settlers of Catan and up and down the river we had homemade pizza for supper, Josh brought along some pepperoni so that was pretty tasty.

It is getting to the point were I'm really missing my family, and I'm enjoying it here but also miss being with them, it'll be good that tomorrow we travel to the big city of Lusaka, and we will be closer to going home.  It's been a really fun trip and extremely eye opening.  But will also be happy to be back with those whom I love.  Good night everyone, and leave some comments!

Pastor's Conference

Well its been a few days since my last post.  I have been away from the internet so I'm going to do a little bit of catching up now.

So, since Chris was sick with what we thought was malaria, we arranged for us to meet one of the missionaries half way between where we are staying and the pastor's conference.  It was getting close to dark and it is really pretty dangerous driving here during the day it gets really dangerous at night, so Janine just took us to a little village which was the halfway point and dropped us off and went back home and we were going to wait for the missionary whom she knew was not far away.  Well in that time I saw a small infraction a car bumped into a motorbike no big deal I think that kind of thing happens all the time here.  Well the missionary came and picked us up and took us back to Chipata where the pastor's conference was being held.  In the city (it has about 400,000 people in it) it was getting dark and was actually pretty much dark when we got there, and we were going down this really narrow road that was filled with pot holes and people walking on it in mass hundreds of people every 100 yards or so were on the road it was crazy and the bicycles, we saw a bike that had 2 live pigs tied on the back, that is pretty funny.  So the missionary is driving the land cruiser just weaving between traffic people and pot holes all of course in the dark, Josh and I look at each other like this place is crazy.  Well we get there and we meet then national pastors and missionaries.  They had just finished their soccer game, Malawi verses Zambia, Malawi won 2-0, which was always a major topic of discussion.  The first night we ate beef and nshima and we went to the mission house to have some fellowship with the missionaries.  We sat on the porch and had a good time talking until midnight and then we were super tired so we crashed at the other mission house that was next door.  It was kind of crazy going to the next house there were a couple of gats that you had to go through and there was a bit of cliff that you could easily fall off of.  And you had to really crawl down to get through a gate, it was pretty strange but we got to our air mattresses and got some sleep.

The next morning we woke up early went to the church to get our breakfast nshima and then we headed out to the place where the conference was.  It was at a lodge resort I guess, there were animals there like impala puku and ostriches, which were not fenced in, they were just running around, which I found to be kind of dangerous but apparently they didn't.  There were 2 papers for our conference that day, one was an exegesis of Ezekiel 34 by a National pastor and another paper about Funeral Practices of the people of Africa, that was also done by a national pastor who was surprisingly named Chibi.  Here is a picture of the conference we were outside on the grass under trees and there was a lake behind us, very nice view.

The national pastors just like the pastors in America, like to talk so there was much discussion to each paper, everyone wanted their 10 minutes to comment on each paper.  There were 60 pastors there so it make it kind of hard.  They were interesting papers, and we enjoyed hearing them.  Josh and I were greeted from the group and during our lunch and breaks the pastors came and introduced themselves and we did a lot of chatting. 

The lunch meal was served by the ladies it was neat to hear them singing while they made our lunch during the conference.  We had grilled meat for lunch and.... nshima.  It was very good.  I have a video of them singing, it is too big to upload here from zambia, maybe I'll upload it when I get to the states. They were amazing ladies cooking all that food for all those people.

 Later on there was a business meeting and following that there was a volleyball game.  Now I believe only a few people had ever played the game before, but it was amazing to see in about 30 minutes or so how quickly they picked up the game and were really getting into it, the two countries once again were sparring against each other.  The missionaries on in there as well.  Josh and I played as well on opposite teams.  It was fun.

After that back to the church for supper, there we had sausage and nshima, the sausage was a pretty far cry from anything that I've eaten back in the states but it was ok.  I went back for second on the nshima and that was a mistake, I was hurting for the rest of the night.  Then we went back to the mission houses.  Now I should mention that the 60 people or so are all moving to all these different places by about 4 or 5 land cruisers which are smaller than minivans.  I don't think any of the national pastors have their own vehicles that they come to the conferences in, so everyone crams in the back of these cruisers, it is nuts.  The second night the missionaries enjoyed fellowship again this time we were not up so late, like 10:30.

We woke up the next morning and just had a leisurely morning as we waited for our ride to Petauke, some of the pastors from Petauke were there and they were getting rides back from the missionaries so we went with them, there were 10 people in the land cruiser and I was in the back facing sideways, it was really bad, they don't make those things for big people to sit in the back, those land cruisers are really amazing and they are tanks nothing stops them but not so comfortable.

Well we saw some of the pastor's homes and were invited in as we dropped them off, it was nice to make friends with them, and then we made it back to Chris' house and heard that he wasn't feeling better and he had in fact been to the hospital and they have taken his blood, he may not have malaria, it might be an infection but they will get back to him and hopefully he will be feeling better soon.  I guess while we were gone he had a fever the whole time and just felt miserable.  One of the missionaries said that he would take us to Lusaka on Sunday and help us get to the airport on Tuesday so we'll see what happens.  Hopefully Chris will be better.  Ok, time sign off, Josh wants to get on the computer.  -Peter

Quickie post before I leave

Hello I don't have a lot of things to report on, our host Chris Pluger, is not feeling good with malaria.  He is taking the treatment for it but it can be days yet before it resides.  Last night he was having some hallucinations, and the intermittent fever and chills.  So he will not be taking us to the pastors conference as planned, but Jeanine (Chris' wife, also our host) will be taking us half way to Chipata and one of the missionaries, Jon Hartman will meet us half way and take us back to the conference.  There will be a paper by a native pastor talking about local funeral practices and we will be talking about other issues as well.  We won't be going until later today after one of the papers.  So we have some time here in Petauke to go for a walk and enjoy the nice warm day here.  And then at 4 we head on over to the conference.  Because we will not have our own car we will not be leaving early like we had planned, we will be leaving at the end of the conference on early Friday morning, the missionary John Hartman will be taking us back because it is on his way back home.  So I'm just making this little post even though very little has happened since my last post, but it'll be a couple of days before I'll be able to blog again.  Take care I'll be back with more pictures.  Here are some more pictures from the safari because I don't have any new pictures to load.  This first picture might look kind of boring but look very closely at it, and I think you can click on the image and view it at full sized, there is something in this picture see if you can find it.

And of course i have to include another picture of Dodger's uncle, here he is enjoying the view of the lion.

Day out on the town.

I forgot to mention though about yesterday as we were leaving the game park there was a really neat shop called tribal textiles, where we went and there were tons of people painting on textiles by hand.  Here is a picture of a guy working they made these into pillow cases and sheets and table clothes and things like that.

Today was a quiet day we didn't really travel anywhere.  Chris has malaria, which is no fun, he was feeling shivers and then feverish intermittently.  So we left him at home in the morning and Josh and I headed out into Petauke to hang out with the locals and check out the market place and get some lunch.

Josh and I headed out into town, we went geocaching and we didn't find the one geocache that is in town, it was placed in an area where there was a lot of pedestrians so it was probably missing.  Anyway we got a lot of looks on the side of the road looking around a tree.  Then we went into the market and struck up a few conversations with people there, they are very friendly and almost everyone there really wanted to talk to us if they could lots of questions what is your name what denomination are you?  which is funny, and of course they know what Lutherans are.  We grabbed some food there in the market, some french fries and fried doughnut things and we grabbed some sugar cane and ate that.  The 10 foot long stalk of sugar cane cost 16 cents. 

 It is tricky a native showed us how to eat it, you have to peal off the outer area with your teeth and eat the sweet pulp in the middle.  We bought a few gifts in the market and probably spent 3 or 4 hours out there it was fun and interesting. Here is a picture of a charcoal vendor who we talked to for a long time about our kids and he wanted to know what America was like.  He couldn't believe that we don't eat nshima in America (the white maize porridge that is very common here) it just blew his mind that it didn't exist, and that we only eat bread.  Here is a picture of him anyways.  Mr. Zulu is his name.

His sons are next to him, Mr. Zulu is the guy standing by Josh.

Well we made it back to the Plugers house, and just kind of spent the rest of the day hanging out at the house Christ started to feel better by the evening and we hope that he has maybe started coming around I don't know we'll see by tomorrow.  We spent the rest of the evening playing board games and having fun. 

Tomorrow we head off to a Pastor's conference in Chipata about 2 hours away.  We were really lucky that we were here during this conference, apparently it only happens every other year that ALL the missionaries from both Zambia and Malawi and all the national pastor get together, so it will be great to be there for that.  I hope Chris feels good enough to take us, one the missionaries might give us a ride if Chris can't do it, so it seems either way we are going to the pastor's conference, and we are going to be spending 1 night there so there will be no blog tomorrow. But hopefully in my next blog I'll have good pictures of the big soccer game between the Malawi pastors and the Zambia pastors, Pastor Enoch was getting excited about the big competiton.  Josh and I think it would fun if we could bring this competition into the states.  Alright take care everyone.  And to comment on Mom's post it was neat to go the service, both experiences were really amazing, so having a good trip so far.  -Peter

Church and a Walk

We woke up the next morning in a leisurely way, our only plans were to go to church in the morning.  The church was not far away probably only a couple of miles away.  We met the pastor at a gas station and he showed us on his motorbike how to get there.  He liked the fact that I wear a suit and go and do my pastoral duties while riding on a moped.  The church was kind of hard to get to and the church was pretty small I believe there was about 30 people there, and it was really more of a shelter made out of grass with a dirt floor and bricks for seats.  There was a mat placed for the children, and because we were the honored guests they brought chairs (on their bikes) for us to sit on.  I could only stand in the middle of the church.

The pastor was very nice Pastor Enoch who did a very nice job on the service he preached in English (I'm assuming for our benefit I'd say only 1/2 of the other people could understand it) and then he did a recap in their native language.  The rest of the service was in Chewa, and he would do a little bit of English to help us along.  The sermon was very good, very well delivered and distinctly Lutheran with a strong emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit.  It was really pretty amazing, I could have preached that exact sermon from my pulpit, it was a Lutheran sermon.  There was communion afterwards Josh and I received it first (honored guests).  He asked me to give him communion, because other wise he only receives communion a few times a year during pastor conference.  The service lasted about an hour and a half and then there were announcements.  We of course were asked to introduce ourselves and I said a few words to the people just talking about how nice it was to be there and to worship with brothers and sisters in Christ together.  After the service he showed us the parsonage that was being built, it is slow work because of funding.  After that we were invited to the chairman's house for lunch.  So we got in the back of the land cruiser with about 10 other ladies from the church (a land cruiser is not so big) and we headed to the house.  We had chicken and nshima, which was very good and enjoyed a nice conversation with the pastor and his wife and the chairman.  It was nice to be in a traditional house even though it was a little cramped.  In the picture you see Pastor Enoch in the suit his wife is next to him with a traditional costume for pastors wives to wear.  And the chairman is on the right wearing the logo of the LCCA their synod in Zambia.  The pastor is washing the chairman's hands, and everyone washed their hands before and after the meal because you eat with your hands.

After lunch we went back to the lodge and got ready to go for a walking safari in the afternoon.  It was a very nice walk out in the bush.  Because it can be dangerous one of the park ranger came along with a big gun and we had our guide as well come.  We saw lots of tracks and droppings and we got a close in depth look at the plants and tracks and we got to see things close up.We saw a few animals but not too many because they are kind of afraid of seeing people walk around, they are more used to the trucks.  We stayed out there until sundown had our G&T and headed back it was beautiful, and yes mom we have seen the southern cross, I try to find it every night it is really cool, and we can see the big dipper and we can see that it is pointed at where the north star should be but we can't see the north star here so it is really interesting looking at the night sky it is like you are on a different planet it is all different.

Well we went to bed and I fell asleep with earplugs in my ears so I missed all the excitement in the night.  Apparently Josh had to go to the bathroom early this morning and he started to get out of the tent and he saw a huge hippo just a few feet away from his tent munching on some grass and he said it was really scary being close to this monster of an animal.  He had to hold it for 30 minutes while the hippo took its time before it left and Josh was able to leave his tent and make use of the facilities.  I missed that whole event but got to hear about it when I woke up.  Those of you who are reading this and know Josh more than me, make sure you ask him about the hippo when you see him.  And maybe tomorrow I'll get Josh to blog about it.

Well the drive home was pretty uneventful except that I broke the view screen on my camera (BOO) but it still kind of works I just can't see for everything that is in the frame, whatever, it'll work until I get back.  And Chris, our host,  had a fever of 102 when we got back, and he is having the symptoms of malaria, he said that it feels just like malaria so he started taking the treatment for it.  So yeah that isn't great our host has malaria.  Well I should get going its late here and I've typed a lot.  I'll post again tomorrow and let you know how our day here in Petauke went.  Bye.

Safari

Greetings!

We are back from the Safari at the South Luangwa park and we are all safe and we had a great time.  We headed out there on Friday morning along the way to the park the Pluggers visited a few of their ex-patriot friends in Chipata (a pretty big city). Italians who have lived in the country for a long time, we had tea and a nice visit they have an amazing garden so much different vegetation.  We stopped at the mission house in Chipata for a sack lunch and then made our way to the park.  Even before we got to the lodge we started to see some of the animals around, we saw the monkeys (which are around quite a bit, not just at the lodge) and we saw animals like impalas. We got to the lodge, it was called Marula Lodge and it was a very nice place to stay.  The bathrooms were out in the open, but they had a bamboo fence around them.  So when you were using the bathroom you could look up and see monkeys swinging around in the trees and bush babies up there, kind of strange but pretty neat, that is also the room where you showered too so it was kind of out in the open.  Apparently the toilet paper was getting stolen by cheeky monkeys so they put the paper in the monkey proof tins, here you can see Dodger's uncle is disappointed that he can't get at the toilet paper, argh! foiled again!

That night that we got there we didn't really do too much we were getting there at sundown so there wasn't really enough time to go out for a drive and we were all kind of tired from the big day of driving.  But we enjoyed the vegetable lasagne for supper enjoyed our Gin and Tonics (G&T).  That is a popular drink here because this lodge was ran by British people, and I'd say that is probably the predominate group of people that this lodge is geared towards.  There was a British lady staying there also and some Americans and some Dutch people, an Italian guy who was interesting, named Bruno.  It was nice getting to know the fellow guests there at the lodge.  But anyway, we were told that the dining hall was no longer there when we arrived.  Apparently a few months ago a huge tree fell down upon the dining hall and completely destroyed it, also killing a priest and injuring another person.  So that was kind of scary but when you look at the trees that are around you notice that they are all huge the trees grow to mammoth proportions.  But they had other arrangements for our meals.  We ate right on the Luangwa River and could watch elephants and hippos as we ate.  My tent was pretty close by as well, and it opened up right onto the river as well so I could lay in bed and see the hippos go swimming by.  Even though it was a tent 2 full sized twin beds were in it, I had the tent to myself which was nice.  After Josh and Chris taught Sean how to play cribbage we went to bed and I slept really well the first night.

We got up really early on the next day, at 5am! We did that in order to get out into the park by sunrise.  As we were going into the park we saw a family of elephants walking around the check in booth where you pay to get into the park.  I don't know there is just something about baby elephants they are so cute.  I have pictures but I don't want to post a million shots so I'll hold off on that but baby elephants are just the cutest.  The game drive started out really nice we saw a giraffe and lots of birds and other things.  Here is a picture of Josh with the giraffe.  Now this park isn't like a place that is fenced off, but it is just an area of land that is protected from poachers, and of course the animals see people and are pretty used to the trucks, so they aren't really afraid of the trucks or anything at least not usually.  But this is of course a very natural element for them and they are wild.
 
Our game drive guide (David) had heard that some lions had taken down an impala in a certain area in the night so he thought that we would have a good chance of seeing the lion there.  So then we sort of stumbled upon a fully grown male lion as it was going into the bush, I really only had a few seconds to look at it then it went into the bush.  I thought that that would be the end of the lion sighting it was pretty cool but short, but then the guide just drives through the brush and sort of circumvented the lion to sort of get ahead of it and the lion came out of the bush right where he thought it would and we had a great view of it as it walked right by us.  I'll attach a photo of it to show how close this thing got.  Apparently the guide didn't think we were in any danger, it had just had a big meal and it wasn't really hungry

 I've seen lions in the zoo of course but it is impressive to see them out in the wild with absolutely nothing between you and the lion, you realize how big they are how big their paws are and how they could tear you apart not problem if they wanted to.  Well we followed the lion for a little bit as it walked over to a cool place to take a nap.  When he submerged from the bush there was a whole herd of impala that he was walking towards, now the impala hardly even notice the safari trucks, but when the lion came around he got their full attention and they definitely cleared a path for him and didn't mess around.  Well apparently he was a little sleepy after his big meal so he laid down for a while we have some good shots of that I could resist doing a selfie with the lion.

Well I guess after a while a different safari truck saw us and came over and scared away the lion but we had tons of time to get a close look at it.  And get a bunch of pictures.  Once again when I get state side and have unlimited bandwidth I might upload more, I'm trying to keep the uploads down.  But the lion was cool.  We saw all sorts of neat animals in addition though we saw lots of elephants and giraffe, warthogs and impalas and water bucks and pukus.  I can't remember all the birds that we saw but there were some really neat ones like bee-eaters and a different kind of king fishers.  Well, we had our tea out in the bush in the mid morning and did some more animal viewing and we were back by noon.

We had a few hours off before our next drive we swam in the pool that they have and just took it easy, they served homemade pizza that was quite good and then we went out again by 3 for the next drive.  This time we saw alot of the same animals, baboons including an albino one.  We saw lots of giraffes and hippos and neat animals we stopped in one clearing and just looked for a long time because it was so huge there were zebras in the foreground and elephants in the far background and the giraffes were far away but they moved in closer and it was neat to see them all with their stunning backdrop of trees and mountains.  Here's a picture.

Very beautiful.  Well when it was sunset time we found a nice place to have some G&T and a little snack out in the bush and we enjoyed our drinks as we watched the sun set.  But we still had 2 more hours of drive time left because this was a night drive as well.  There was a spotter riding in the front seat who had a big spot light and he was looking for night time animals.  We saw quite a few animals at night, we saw some hyenas I think we saw 4, they are pretty frightening looking, I didn't get any decent pictures because it was dark and they were only visible because of a spotlight.  Josh got a few good pictures.  The animal that you really want to see while you are out at night is the leopard and we were fortunate that we did see a leopard that night it was pretty cool and it got really close to us it basically walked right past our truck we got a few good pictures and it was neat to see.  So in those 2 drives we saw 4 of the 5 big five safari animals we didn't see the water buffalo but I didn't really think that was such a bad thing.  But we got back around 8 or so at night had our supper and then we were off to bed after an eventful evening.  I think I'm going to continue the events of the next day in a different blog post because this one is getting huge.  So I'll end it here and in my next post I'll discus church in the bush and a nature walk.  Bye

Chilling out in Petauke

Well today is our second full day in Petauke, and we kind of tried to take the day off and keep things kind of low key, we have been doing a lot of traveling so it was nice to just not do any big trips today.  We received a tour of the Pluger's yard which is very nice.  Peter their gardener does a good job of sweeping up the yard and growing grass in what seems like very difficult soil to grow anything on.  I'll include a picture of Chris holding a cashew nut

It is interesting all the trees they have in their yard, Josh and I ate some guava plants they were pretty good, their lemon tree is always producing some lemons.

Well anyway we decided to take a walk and check out the sites of Petauke.  Here is a picture of us all in our dorky hats.  Aren't we a bunch of cool looking dudes?  It was pretty hot and sunny, like probably 80 degrees or so, actually not really hot but warm enough and it was a nice break from the weather we were having in Wisconsin.

We headed out and we saw a parade, because today is a holiday in Petauke, May Day, not really sure what it means.  But the parade was nice we saw a bunch of women in their church choir outfits marching and singing.  Then we checked out a catholic church which had some pretty neat murals.  Then we headed over and we checked out Chris' office and we met one of the translators, Father Tembo.  Here is a picture of him.  He seemed like a very nice guy enjoyed talking with him for a while.

After that we went to the market which was really quite an experience.  First of all you have to understand that I haven't seen anyone else white here, kind of a no brainer, but there are just absolutely no white people here.  So a white person is really kind of a spectacle aparently, well, everyone here is not tall, I wouldn't say really short, but I don't think I saw anyone who was 5' 10".  And well there are very few people who are big around the waist.  So I'm pretty sure that I was the strangest thing that the people here have seen for a long time, and really no one was trying to hide their amazement at the huge white guy walking down the street.  A little child maybe 2 was walking and she didn't realize I was there till she was really close she looked up and saw and started to scream and cry, I would imagine she has never seen a white person before, especially one who is 3 times the size of everyone else.  People were pointing and it was just very strange, we really stuck out, and that is an understatement. One lady who was working at a salon saw me walking by and she called out to me and wanted to see me, and she called her friends over and she produced a cell phone and asked Chris to take picture of us on her cell phone, that was funny she wanted a picture of me to probably tell her friends about the huge white guy she saw and she didn't think anyone would believe her so she wanted the picture.

The lady in the middle is the one who wanted my picture

Of course I had Chris snap a picture as well.  Then we saw the market and it was filled with food and dried caterpillars and tiny fish lots of strange things were there.  There huge piles of tobacco and all sorts of other things that are grown locally.

It was nice when we saw a big dust devil at least for a moment everyone stopped looking at me and looked at it.

For lunch we went to a local restaurant that served the traditional food, Nsima.  Which is corn mush pudding and chicken and some vegetables.  It was actually really pretty good, It was a little bland tasting and you eat it with your hands but it did fill you up pretty good.

 The white stuff in the bowl is the nshima and you can see the chicken and the greens which are rape, there was also an eggplant relish that was really good.

Well we headed back home after that we just hung out at the house.  It was nice I was able to talk to Crystal on the phone for a while and to hear that things are going fine there on the home front.  It really hasn't been that long actually just a few days I think but the distance is pretty great and being thrown out of your culture makes it nice to hear Crystal's voice.

Later in the day we and made supper pumpkin soup was part of the meal grown their in their garden, Sean (the Pluger's son) had his birthday cake today and it was really good.  We played a game and we are going to go to bed soon, which is kind of early.  Tomorrow morning we are heading out to the game park for a safari.  I don't think that I will be able to post a blog for a few days, probably not till Monday night, there will be no internet access for a while.  I'll take a bunch of pictures of whatever animals I see and I'll post a few the next time that I post.

Well I'm off to bed and I'm going to sleep in my mosquito net, and look who was hanging around on my mosquito net, Dodger's uncle oh man that monkey gets into alot of trouble.  I hope he doesn't get into any trouble with the animals at the game park!  Good night everyone talk to you later.  -Peter

In Petauke

Well we made it here and we made it here safely.  It has been quite a trip, it was about 36 hours of travel total.  Last night we stayed at the seminary guest house, which was really nice we got to see the seminary, I believe we will see it more in detail when we come back, it was neat to see and we also met Dr. Ernst Wendland.  We saw the seminary students being taught how to drive motorcycles and they were learning on a pink moped, I had to snap a picture of that.  We left about noon we made it and I think the last 5 hours of travel was the most interesting, we drove from the big city Lusaka today, and we drove all the way to Petauke, which is 5 hours of driving, and it was interesting to see the area and the people.  It is just a stark difference, so many people walking on the roads.  So many people selling vegetables and other things.  We stopped and checked out a few markets and shops before we left Lusaka, it is quite interesting.  Quite a few different ox carts and things like that.  And I kind of knew that that was the case because I read about it before I came here but of course its really hard to understand it completely until you see it.  It is pretty dangerous driving here, which I knew about before but I guess you don't realize it until you see it.  Josh took a picture of a big bridge that we were passing and their were some police officers off to the side, and they thought that Josh was taking a picture of them, which is a big no no, the officer didn't really make a big deal of it but he made it known that he didn't want his picture taken.  Now we are at the Pluger's house and tomorrow we are just going to be spending the day here in town and we are going to be taking it easy tomorrow which is nice.  Oh I also found the monkey that the kids put in my suitcase sneaky kids I'll see about including more pictures of Dodgers uncle.  Alright talk to you later.

Flying isn't fun anymore

Well I'm writing this on the second leg of the trip I am pretty much exactly on the equator the in flight map helps with knowing where you are.   Apparently we are not on a non stop flight to lusaka instead we are stopping in Harare but we don't have to leave the plane OK whatever we are surrounded by nachos on the plane makes me miss Silas.  Oh flying over the Sahara desert is something that is a whole bunch of sand it is really amazing to see how bleak it is and how huge made me think of Hannibal and all the history that is attached there.   The first leg to Amsterdam went well the plane was not full so got to have an empty seat between us and extra legroom and our seats went back further than the other seats so we were spoiled I guess on this leg we still have theextra legroom but we are right next to each other. 

The thrill of flying and having drinks served to you had certainly way of art lay for me and I'm ready to land and go to sleep.   We both didn't get much sleep on the way over to Amsterdam running on like 4 hours of sleep.  I'll part this as soon as I've got wifi bye

It begins

Well we have a couple hours before the plane gets here so I thought I would make a blog post.  So far the day is gone really well I forgot my Kindle and I realize that about 1 or 2 miles away from the house so made a quick trip back to get it and that meant that when we got to Chicago at Uncle Ray's house we got there about 2 minutes before the taxi arrived.  The taxi driver was Nigerian so he understood what are travel was going to be like.  We flew through the big check in and security check in I got a little extra attention from a TSA agent I'm not sure if I would consider the human rights violation but it was something like that now my brother and I we are just hanging out here at the airport waiting for a couple hours the plane just arrived it's a huge plane I'll post a picture of it on here. 

My plan for today is to go to bed right after supper and hopefully I'll wake up in Amsterdam well rested yeah and that means that when we get into lusaka at 11 p.m. I should be able to go to sleep and the jet Lag won't be so bad that's the plan we'll see how it goes.

All Set to Go

Well, I'm all packed and ready to go, had a nice day today, church in the morning, voter's meeting after, a member took the family out for lunch (which was very nice), I don't know if there are many restaurants in Zambia that serve 1 pound cheeseburgers as their regular sized hamburger (you have to request a smaller burger if you want a 1/2 pounder).    There was a quick visit in the hospital and then a chance to spend a little bit of time with the family again before heading out.  The kids had fun trying to stick stuff in my bags to make me try to take it to Africa, I believe I've gotten everything out of the bags that doesn't belong.  Silas wanted to come along but I told him that he had to stay home and take care of Mom.  He understood, as best as a 13 month old can.

I was informed by Chris that I maybe had unrealistic hopes of the availability of the internet in Zambia, but of course he warned me about this over the internet so it can't be too bad.  When I'm out and about traveling internet may be a little bit harder to get to and to keep the blog current, but fear not there will be times, like when we are at the Pluger's house when I believe there should be internet at least so we'll see.

Otherwise I believe Josh and I have made all the plans and we are ready for whatever might come our way.  It always makes for a good story when things go terribly bad so the worst case scenario is that I have a lot of good stories to tell.

Begin the trip tomorrow at 8:30am.  I'll see if I can post tomorrow from the airport.  -Peter

The Day Before the Day Before

Hi, everyone created the blog today, I've never blogged before, but I thought I'd go this route for my trip to Africa as a way to journal it, and then share that with whoever wants to see it.  Today I'm packing in a little bit more earnest, I believe that I have purchased everything that needs to be purchased.  I'm still roasting more coffee, the person that I'm going to be staying with (Chris Pluger) enjoys his coffee as do my brother and myself, so I'm going to roast 6lbs and if that doesn't last us 2 weeks then we are in serious trouble, I believe you die if you do not sleep for 10 days, and that would probably be the result of us drinking that much coffee.

So other than roasting coffee doing a little bit last minute packing just trying to spend some quality time with the family, we went for a really nice walk earlier today and did a little bit of geocaching.  Here we are looking.

Looking for a geocoin to take to Africa, it was missing!

I've never been away from the family for this long, it will be pretty hard to do, but hopefully it won't be too bad.  I believe I'm dreading being away from loved ones now even more than I am dreading the 21 hours in a plan (24 hours total travel time in a plane) and really the WHOPPING 44 hours of travel from my door to Chris' door.

Tomorrow I go on my malaria medication, hopefully I don't get "vivid dreams" like my mom did when she was on a different kind of malaria drug, it didn't sound good.  

Otherwise just getting ready to preach in an hour or so, and just to let people know that I hope to be updating this blog pretty regularly while I'm gone so check back often if you want to be kept informed.  If not that is okay too.  -Peter