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