Arrival in Zambia!

January 16th: I have arrived safely in Lusaka! I didn't encounter any problems getting through immigration, they forgot to stamp my visa though so it was a good thing that my professor checked that. The first thing that I noticed when I got here was the heat and humidity. Even though we have only been here for a few hours, I already feel famous! People stop their cars to stare at you, you can hear them saying 'white man' as we pass and the kids follow us around just to stare at us. Some of them played with us with bubbles and danced, they were adorable and by the time they were done their faces were plastered with stickers. We are staying in a Cheshire House with nuns who are very nice. There are 13 of us in one big room and 7 in another. The poor guy that travelled with us has to stay all alone in a separate room and is banned from coming in our room. We travelled by taxi to the house and that was an experience! They drive very fast. And when a big semi truck crosses the line by accident, the driver isn't too worried about it even though we were a little worried, haha. There are no pedestrian lights and they drive backwards (just like London) so we sprint across the street and hope that we don't get hit. It is very cheap here. It is very strange to use quachas. It is 5000 quachas to one canadian dollar. So i feel like a millionaire getting out 600,000 quachas at one time from the bank machine! A big 3L bottle of water cost one canadian dollar. It is so beautiful here. There are so many different shades of green and so much vegetation. I can see why, it rained today for a few hours and it doesn't just drizzle, it pours. It sure feels nice though after that heat. It is nice, most people speak english here. They say that once we get to Mongu though, that will chance and we will start to learn Lozi. Tomorrow we are going to the shopping mall and touring around Lusaka and then on Wednesday we take the eight hour bus ride to our final destination, Mongu! The food here is very good, I just had a steak and you can tell that they don't put all the additives like they do in Canada. It was a nice change from burgers and fries every night in London.

Until I arrive in Mongu,
Amanda