Gold Reef City

On Wednesday we woke up to a beautiful day!! We made our routine(as of 2 days) drive through McDonalds for a Coke Light then off to Gold Reef City, an amusement park. We arrived at 9:30, opening hour, and had quite a queue(a line). Nothing compared to Disney but...all in perspective. The price was 390Rand- around $39 for the whole family. It was great fun!!

We saw a peacock- male, female and baby just walking around the park. Then we were off to the huge ferris wheel. Chelsea and I followed that off with to the Golden Loop. We finally talked Brad into going on a rollercoaster and he had a great time!!

All his fear is in the anticipation.

Erik and I mostly enjoyed the lazy river ride- if only it had been longer and a little quieter:)

We spent all day at the park and were exhausted by the time we left.

Dinner was at Ghiradelli's at Nelson Mandela Square. We ordered pizza and discussed our favorite pizza in Jacksonville. Pizza was not good!!

Aparteid museum

We started the day with an awesome Coke Light from Mickey D's drive-thru. Notice Erik driving on the right side and the drive-thru window all backwards!!

We then headed off to the Aparteid Museum. We learned that Europeans "discovered" South Africa and its gold. Quickly the country was a leader in the Gold business bringing people from all over to South Africa. The current inhabitants of South Africa, the Bushman, were quickly pushed out of the way. One cool statement was made by a native of South Africa- "When the Europeans arrived we had the land and they had the Bible, now we have the Bible and they have the land." It is amazing what greed will do to the best of intentions!! After many hundreds of years of fighting over the land a political party was elected to office in 1948 that established "Aparteid"- basically segregation. People were given different identification cards based on their race and that card would determine where you could live and go in South Africa. The "non-europeans (black)" Africans were pushed out of the good lands and made to live far apart from the "european (white)" Africans. Finally Nelson Mandela became President and ended Aparteid. We left the museum in a downer mood. A lot of the pictures we saw from the 50's and 60's in South Africa are still going on in Zambia, the way the people live, survive, the skinny babies.

We went to the African Market and had fun bartering with all the "salemen". They would ask where we were from- when we said "Zambia" all the sudden we were given the "African" price vs. the American price:)

We went Monte Casino as we heard it was really cool inside and had some great food and shopping. Well, we ended up in the game room for the majority of our time. The kids ran into a walking Christmas tree.

We ended our day with Yo Sushi- we sat at a rotating sushi bar. We ate 10 plates of sushi then headed home for a good nights sleep.

Johannesburg

We arrived in Johannesburg yesterday afternoon. It was a 2 hour flight from Lusaka but when we landed we felt like we were anywhere but Africa.

Johannesburg is a big city with big freeways and lots of malls!!

We rented a very small red Toyota Yaris- we piled our bags in and were off. The kids thought the car was so cool!!

We arrived at our hotel around 7pm and we were starving so we ate at a steakhouse, Bull Run, which is attached to our hotel. We were pleasantly surprised at the reasonable prices for dinner. The currency in South Africa is Rand and current exchange rate is around 10ZAR to $1. So when you look at clothes the prices are about 350ZAR or $35.

Our hotel offers a free delicious breakfast buffet. We walked to the Sandton mall today around 9am. The entire mall is beautifully decorated for Christmas and each store is advertising "Big Summer Sale"- it is still odd celebrating Christmas in the middle of Summer! It was cool here today and overcast most of the day with some late afternoon rain!

After a couple hours of shopping, we went to lunch at McDonalds- Erik and the kids were so happy!! We had our first fountain drink is 5 months- it was sooooo delicious!

The kids had their own money and decided they each wanted a Build-A-Bear so we adopted Nola the Giraffe and Mutale the Rhino today.

We shopped some more then went to a movie at 2:00. We walked to an Italian restaurant for dinner then checked out the small shopping area next to our hotel.

We are off to the Apartied museum tomorrow and some shopping at the local craft market.

Out of Africa!!

After many months of trying to make this business a success we have come to the end of our road (or shall we say Kwacha) and will be returning to America.



We are definitely very thankful for our time in Africa. I have learned so much about the Zambian culture, Africa in general, the life of a missionary as well as had the opportunity to make friends from India, Korea, Belgium, France, Nicaragua, Georgia, Texas and South Carolina. What a blessing to see God's creation all over this World.



Thanks so much for all your prayers and support during our journey! You have blessed our lives and we were so happy to share this adventure with you through the blog!

Grease and Crazy hair

Tonight was Pop of the Tops at the kid's school and the primary classes each had a performance. Bradley's class did a Grease Medley and he got to play Danny Zuko. It was great- his teacher, Mrs. Lucas did a wonderful job including all the children in the performance. I tried to attach the video but it was too big so you will just have to see it when we get home...

Here is Chelsea's crazy hair day...the students were mesmerized as they could not understand how she got her hair to stand so straight. Mr. Gumbay called her Marge Simpson all day. It has been a fun last week of school.

Z-Con

The business side of our adventure here is getting rather tough. Zcon has just finished it's first job- which was a foundation job that took about 3 months. Our superintendent, Harold, did a great job and has quite a rapport with his work crew of just under 50 men and one women (the cook). One of the workers actually named his first child after Harold!! The crew is very happy to be working for Zcon and have said he would go anywhere Zcon sent them. It's great to have happy employees who are truly thankful for each day of employment. This job has gained us a lot of experience, but not a lot of Kwacha. We continue to pray for God's direction in leading us to the right jobs to fulfill our mission while in Zambia- to transfer our skills to the Zambian workers, pay them an above average wage, and treat them with respect.

Cool friends!!

Okay...how many friends do you have that have Zebras running around their backyards? Yeah, me neither but...Chelsea and Bradley have friends named Adele and Kelly who have 2 Zebras in their yard...which is around 26 acres. How cool is that?? They would not let us approach them but they would creep up on you, like in this picture of Bradley and Kelly.

We had lunch yesterday with Mike and Lesley-Ann Borman- Mike moved to South Africa from California then traded in a corporate lifestyle to move to Zambia and become a professional hunter and taxidermist. Lesley-Ann is Zambian born and bred- she had some great stories about how this country has changed.

Exams are over for Chelsea so she began "Spirit Week" at school today. Her class, Year 7, had to dress in all black so she wore a black tank-top with black pants- she said she felt "Goth". Tomorrow is Crazy Hair day and thanks to Erica Tebb's great "plastic cup on the head" hairdo- she is sure to win extra points for her team. The whole school is split into 3 teams all year and have little competitions every now and then to earn points. It creates camaraderie among students in different grades as they all work together to earn points. They are named after the three rivers in Zambia: Kafue, Zambezi and Luangwa.

Brad is preparing for a week of fun with a field trip to the movies, a Christmas party and his Grease presentation. He got a recorder in music class today and is sitting behind me now playing "Yankee Doodle". The Internet is amazing- Erik downloaded many songs for Brad to play on his recorder- including some Christmas carols.