Merry Christmas Again!

If you haven't checked it out yet, we have pictures posted!! I've got an album at http://picasaweb.google.com/tinawaterbury/MalawiPics
and Zeb has some different pics at
http://picasaweb.google.com/zwaterbury/MalawiPhotosAttempt1#
and
http://picasaweb.google.com/zwaterbury/MoreFromMalawi#


I hope everyone has had a great Christmas. Ours didn't go quite as expected, but it was still pretty nice. We had planned to be back at our site for Christmas after our quick trip into the city. Zeb was having a rash checked out by the doctor that has been getting worse for the past month. But by Wednesday morning it had spread further, including to his face, which looked like he'd been punched in the eye. The Dr. said it was an allergic reaction, although we can't figure out what to, and put Zeb on "med hold" (meaning he has to stay in Lilongwe) until Monday, dec 29. The good thing about that is that because this is now a medical trip he'll get reimbursed for travel costs, and since it is Christmas they're going to cover mine too.
So, we spent our Christmas at the Peace Corps transit house in Lilongwe. At first we thought that we'd be the only ones there for Christmas, then two others from our training group, Erika and Meagan, showed up. However, they're reason for being stuck at the house was far more interesting than ours. They were at the beach and saw a cute little monkey sitting on a bench smelling a flower. Erika decided that it was too cute to pass up and took a picture. The monkey kindly stayed put until she got the perfect picture, and then proceded to drop the flower and jump onto her leg biting and scratching. Not such a cute monkey after all. Luckily the monkey was pretty small and only left a bruise and a few scratches, but since it drew blood she had to come in for rabies shots, and Meagan was a good friend and came with her.
So the four of us had a nice Christmas Eve dinner of steak kabobs on the grill with garlic mashed potatoes and homemade toffee for dessert. Then Christmas Morning we made french toast, zucchini bread, and christmas cookies. It was amazing. Aside from the food, it was still a nice, relaxing day. I even took a nice long bath. (Of course, I had to spend a good hour bleaching and scrubbing the bathtub first since this house is about as clean as a frat house, but it was worth it.) And then on Saturday I even went clothes shopping-- Malawian style. Here in LL there is a giant used clothes market, where there are probably hundreds of vendors with piles and piles of used clothing (most sent here from Britain or the States). If you dig hard and long enough you can find some sweet deals on some nice clothes. Its kinda like Goodwill on steroids. So even though our plans were completely turned around, it worked out alright. Christmas was still tough though, just because it would be so nice to be able to be with our families. This has probably been the most homesick since we've been in country, but it has been really nice to at least be in the city with email access so can have more communication than we'd have had at site.
So the plan for now is to finish up what we need to do here tomorrow morning and then head back to site, although it may not be until Tuesday that we actually make it there. The worst part about this whole week is that we are supposed to have a staff meeting at school Tuesday morning and turn in our Schemes and Records (rough weekly outline of lessons) for the first term of school then too. We left without bringing all of the books we need to finish them since we thought we'd be back Wed or Thurs, so now we don't know if we'll get them in on time (or at least have the time to a decent job) and we might not even get back in time for the meeting. I know there wasn't much we could do about it and our headmaster understands that, but I still feel bad about it. Plus, that's just that much less time to get things around before school starts next monday. It will be a busy week for us coming up anyway, and probably even busier the week after that. I am looking forward to starting classes, getting to know the students, starting up the library, and just finally settling into a routine. We've been moving around so much since we got in country that it will be a welcome (I think) change to be staying in the same place doing the same thing for a while.
Well, I will wrap up here. Thank you to everyone for your emails! It is so nice to hear from home. I expect that it will probably be April before I update again. We have a term break and have another week of training. But then, plans change often here so we will see. I hope everyone is doing well and having a great holiday, and I wish everyone a happy New Year!!

Tina