Sunday, April 19, 2015

Relaxing

I thought I had updated this at end of term, but I guess I just wrote my newsletter instead. We've now had about 2 1/2 weeks of holidays and I have to say it hasn't been too bad. Last week, Lina and I headed into Kitwe (COpperbelt) to do some shopping. I think this was the first time we have ever driven straight to Kitwe without stopping overnight in Solwezi. I didn't know how long of a trip it would be. It's only about 566kms, but due to the rain and bad road conditions it took us over 12 1/2 hours despite that it wasn't too bad a trip, nothing went wrong with the car, we didn't have any police stops etc. We had a nice visit with the Fernando family and got all our shopping done. Although we didn't find everything we were looking for this is normal so we weren't too put out. We even had time to get a little pampering done, Lina got a manicure and I got a pedicure. Of course walking around the dirty town afterwards and falling into a hole kind of took away from the clean pampered feeling, but that is life. Our trip back up was a lot dryer which made it a little faster and we would have gotten home much sooner had it not been for the few stops/errands that we had to make. All in all though it was a decent trip and it was so nice to get off station! I'm still battling this cold that I've had since before the term ended. It's really holding on and is affecting my allergies and my asthma which is SO not fun! I think it if continues much longer I'm going to have to see if I can get some antibiotics or something. It would be nice to start the next term in a healthy state. When I got home from the trip I started into sorting my house. I've packed up some stuff to send home with Jill Avery's parents when they leave in a few weeks. It's hard to sort through what to take and what to leave. Some stuff isn't necessary to keep but has sentimental value. How do you choose? SOme stuff I would like to take home but it is too heavy/big and will cost too much, so I'll have to leave it behind and see about replacing them later. Moving house is hard when you're changing cities, but moving to a new continent is SO much harder. I guess ultimately I have to remember it's all just 'stuff' and in the grand scheme of things it's worthless.... this is not an easy thing to do though.