Easter Monday—a public holiday in Zambia. Thank goodness, too, because I feel like the weekend was really busy and not relaxing at all! I got some much needed sleep, and tried crossing things off my to do list in the morning. Lots of emails and a facebook chat later, I decided to shower and finally present myself to the world at 11. Mrs. A was worried about us; she knocked on the door twice before then to see if we were alright since we weren’t out and about yet. J
Well, T and I have two to do lists for our dwindling time here: a “fun” list and an “other” list. We decided that today would be the day to tackle the fun list. J We headed out to Arcades, where this guy wanted to talk to me, which happens often (trying to sell things) but this guy grabbed my arm and wouldn’t let go. Eventually I got him off, but it wasn’t too fun. We went to Mint Cafe for lunch. Delicious. I had been craving it; we had eaten there for our first meal in Zambia and not since then! We decided to splurge too and get cake. J Mint cafe: check one. Well, the Sunday market happened to be partially around too. On a Monday. Because of the holiday, there were performers and a bounce house and musicians and some of the market, so T and I meandered through in search of these bags we had seen a friend buy in Malawi. Found em! Decided to stick around the mall until later since the prices are better later in the day. What do you do at the outlet mall with time to kill? Well, we checked out movie show times and Just Go With It with Adam Sandler was playing later, so we decided to see that. In the mean time, we walked down the road to Unza—the University of Zambia—to see what a big college campus is like in Africa. So we became college students again for about an hour. J We found the school of education and checked out the dorms from the outside, too. Definitely appreciate my school after seeing their facilities. Unza: check two. We headed back to the movie and enjoyed it in a very full theatre.
After the movie, we went back to the bag lady (hahah that songs bad, but that’s what she was selling!) and asked if she could personalize some bags for us with chitenga material we would provide and she said yes! So, there was a lot of back and forth and bartering with several stands, but in the end, T and I picked our material, got to a price we could live with, and are having the lady make the bags and we’ll pick them up at the market on Sunday. Chitenga backpacks: check three. Well, by this time it was 5 pm, so we decided to hit Rhapsody’s for a drink. And who would we meet there, but a man from Michigan. Small world! Drink at Rhapsody’s: check four.
Next was the minibus ride home. Usually not that entertaining once you get the hang of it. I confidently handed forward my K2000 (40 cents) to get from the mall home and was told the ride was K4000. Well, I’ve paid between K2000 and K3500 to get to the mall, but never K4000, and I was not backing down. I wasn’t going to let him rip me off just because I was a Mzungu. So for 15 minutes (our minibus had to fill up at the diesel station while we were crammed in it unfortunately), I was stubborn and battled with our minibus director guy about how I always pay K2000 (usually) and have never paid K4000. So, yes, we were arguing about 40 cents, but I wasn’t going to give in. Others in the minibus were starting to say just to give in to him to shut him up, but we just got out of the minibus two stops early to get away from this guy. A lady in there told me not to get off because he wouldn’t throw me out (which I knew was true because other minibus guys have been made at how much I’ve given them before), but we decided to get off early to get our last checkmark. So, there’s a giant chicken in the roundabout by our house that’s pretty new. And of course we wanted Easter pictures with the Easter chicken. So we did. Check five. And then we ended up walking the 25 minutes back to campus. My poor feet in my flats!
We got back to campus and went over by D&D. They have this neat idea to take the campus kids to the croc and snake farm nearby next week, and wanted to know if we wanted to help chaperone. Heck yes! It’s kind of a goodbye for us and for the kids, as the kids will be all moving in about a month, too. We made it back to our house in time for dinner from Mrs. A (Hungarians, coleslaw/veggie mixture, and chips aka fries) before lesson planning for tomorrow and trying to cross more things off the to do lists. While we got five things off the “fun” list, we still have many things on the “other” side of the list….
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