Another road trip survived!

Whew—I am SO glad that this trip is over! It’s so wonderful to be sitting on my porch and listening to Christmas music while I work on my Christmas shopping and blogging. Because I had to do all the driving, the trip was rather exhausting for me, and the police stops were insane. While I was away I managed to accomplish the following things:

* I picked up my new work permit—now I’m done with emigration nonsense for the next two years! Huzzah! It only took an hour, and there were no hiccups in the process. Praise the Lord!

* I got Jill’s truck’s fitness done even though it involved paying and picking up the form at one RTSA location, driving way out to the Mimosa location to get the actual inspection done, accidentally flagrantly jumping the queue, tramping around in the rain, and turning down the ‘tempting’ offer to teach the RTSA guy how to sing.

* Lots of shopping was done! When you can’t get more than the basics in Ikelenge, trips to town are a chance to pick up all those treats like brown sugar, cheese, yogurt, and spices for Christmas baking. I may have found a few Christmas presents for myself as well…

* I got to watch Ender’s Game ! I LOVED it! While the book is still better, I thought they did a really good job of it. More on that later.

One thing I really enjoyed about this trip was seeing the Christmas in Lusaka. The lights in Manda hill were particularly nice.

At Arcades, they had a somewhat tacky/cool tree made up of plastic bottles. Way to recycle Zambia!

I’ll write another post later about the crazy thing that happened in Solwezi and any other wild stories that come to mind. Today has been busy as I try to get everything put away, do a bit of cleaning in my house, and borrowed a sewing machine so I can get busy with all that material I just bought.

Parting shot: My cat had fun with the bags I was unpacking last night!

P.S. Just in case anyone cares, here is pumpkin No. 4--and perhaps my favorite of them all.