January 17th: Today we are roaming around Lusaka! We are finally starting to figure out quachas. I am going to the bank machine in a few minutes here and pulling out 2 million quachas. I feel like I should be buying a house with it! In Lusaka, it is pretty expensive because it is the touristy capital. They say in Mongu it will be cheaper. I have already seen so many things I want to buy for everyone and take home, the baskets are beautiful and the carvings and paintings blow my mind. Interesting things I have seen today are two ladies balancing huge baskets full of food on their heads and a mom wrap her baby around her back with a piece of cloth. I find it a little intimidating that their are armed guards at every store and police everywhere. I bought some groceries and then realized I forgot something in the store so I went to go back in with my bags (like we do at home) and a guard stopped me right away and I thought oh no, i'm not even going to make it to Mongu, he's going to shoot me here and now for thinking i've stolen groceries! I am having a blast. The house we are staying at today is a Cheshire House for disabled children. Which, is right up my alley! They absolutely LOVE bubbles. there were a few fist fights over the bubbles. it was a good thing they were edible because one kid who also loved to wear my sunglasses upside down ate about half the bottle. we danced, they sang the zambian version of ring around the rosy im assuming and we gave them lots of canadian stickers. they decided that i would look better with 20 stickers all over me eventually so i looked like a walking canadian flag. one of the kids laughed and said "well now you don't have to tell us where you're from atleast!". i have met an incredible lady named Maureen. she is the school teacher for the Cheshire house. there is a gym and physiotherapy as well as a school, so many people come to this house. She is going to get her PHD soon in Lusaka and she absolutely loved seeing our London pictures and hearing all about Canada. We figured it out and it would cost her roughly 10,000,000 quachas to even get to Canada. So we told her that we would house her because she has been so nice to us. I gave her a little shampoo and conditioner from the body shop (courtesy of mom from xmas!) and she was so excited. We exchanged emails and she is very excited to hear about Mongu. I am getting the hand shake down, you shake once, loosely hook your thumbs together, bring hands up and then drop them. when they laugh they shake, like a high five? when they really want to show appreciation they touch both cheeks like the french but minus the kissing. when they want to show you that they consider you a friend, they hold your hand while you walk and talk. the people are amazing. so friendly. we had an interesting breakfast this morning, tea and toast with long life shelf milk. it tastes like warm milk? my stomach wasn't too much of a fan but I let it know that it better get used to it fast because that's all they have here, haha. That's it for now! I will see you on the other side of Mongu :). Love you all.