Yes, I officially started working for the government. Did the whole pledge thing, minus the bible, where I promised to act in the interests of the US government and the embassy here, and to protect it from things like foreign intelligence. So no talking about what my job is. Okay, that's mostly a joke, I'm the WAE Administrative Rover/Cleared Escort which means I do whatever is needed and work whenever needed, and still don't have access to any state secrets or anything. Still, the government, ugh, I'm pretty sure that working for any type of athority was something I vowed never to do as a kid. This means I'm no longer a child.
*Please note I am screaming in agony at admitting this.*
But other than having to admit that I'm supposed to be an adult by now my job is basically a secretary position with a different name.
Okay, now I'm going to move backwards to our vacation to Zanzibar in January. Besides getting to become a certified scuba diver we visited a spice plantation. My favorite part was seeing the cinnamon trees. Anyone who knows me well knows that cinnamon, mint, and vanilla are my favorite spices/flavors in that order. Now I am growing my own cinnamon trees here in Lusaka. I planted four seeds and only two have come up but two is definitely enough. Unfortunately all I have the time to do is check on my trees before bed, I haven't been to Chikumbuso or anywhere else we used to go like the Tuesday Market since I started work on January 15th. Growing-up is quite the dilemma.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Four Months Later...
Well I didn't think anyone was reading the family blog, much less my little spin-off where Mom isn't there to edit over my shoulder so I, and I think all of us, stopped posting. Mom didn't even get the title when she first saw it! (Seriously? It's 'the truth according to Ruth' as in the Ruth part of truth is the most important part, thus the mid-word capitalization) But recently my Aunt Linda mentioned our lack of recent posts on a Skype call so apparently someone did read this. So I'm sending out an update.
We've gotten into a groove here, Miriam and I have a schedule of stuff we do each day and now that Christmas is coming up we're baking cookies too. So far we've made Candy Cane Cookies, Ginger Snaps, and Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars (Miriam found this recipe in her Teens Cook Book so it was new and turned out great, super easy too). We've got the ingredients for Turtles and, at John's request, Pecan Pie. Also I'm going to make Chris's birthday cake in a few days, we're going to celebrate when Grandma Alice and Grandpa Norman (Mom's parents) get here, on the fifteenth instead of the fourteenth.
Mondays we, Miriam and I, spend the day at Chikumbuso and help with the school or the widows. Recently Linda, the woman in charge, saw the tassels on the bag that I got for Christmas last year and decided they needed some on the purses. So I fiddled around and figured out how to make so decently easy to make handmade tassels and have been making them and teaching some of the widows how to make them to decorate their bags. Last time we were there, before the Christmas party, I made over 15 tassels for the women to use to decorate their bags, and showed another lady how to do it on her own.
Most Tuesdays Miriam and I go to the Tuesday Market with Ms. Ellington. The Ellingtons are missionaries here who have a son Chris's age and another one named Chris. At the Market we get fresh vegetables and fruits. The variety is pretty remarkable, the only thing we've ever not been able to find was asparagus and there's even fruits, or vegetables, I've never seen or heard of before. We could also get live crayfish, beans of almost any kind (dried beans like you put in soup or beans and rice), sugar, flour, eggs, dried fish, and tons of other food things. It's an open market in a large 'room' with a floor, a roof and two walls where vendors sit on a blanket with their wares all along the floor and customers make their way along narrow isles to where they need to go.
We don't really have any set Wednesday or Friday activities but on Thursdays we sometimes go to the Mother Theresa Orphanage and read books and sing songs with the kids there. Mom's class ended so now she's been spending a lot of her time working in the garden. We've got some really pretty roses along the driveway now. I picked out an orange one when I went with her to the nursery; it's a very deep orange and looks less domesticated than most rose bushes so Mom called it a wild rose ('...and Ruth picked out a wild rose'), but she might have been referring to the color. The variety of roses was really impressive they had all shades of red, yellow, pink, orange, purple, white, and in between.
Today Mom an I went to the Mercy Ministries school and helped scoop ice cream for their Christmas party treat. They were using our freezer to store the ice cream and keep it cold so we brought it over in our giant cooler and another borrowed cooler, there were 36 tubs, and ended up staying to help serve. It's fun to see kids so excited and grateful for something we'd think so little of. Back in Evanston kids might like ice cream and be happy about an ice cream social at the church but the kids here get this once a year. This is the only time they get the chance to have ice cream, when we bring it to them for Christmas, it just makes things more special.
On that note I've noticed that Zambians are so much more polite and respectful than Americans. Not just to me or something but to each other. When someone comes in the room they walk around and greet everyone, shaking their hand, maybe kissing their cheeks, and say something like good morning (or afternoon or whatever) to each person, often by name. In America it's like wave at the room in general and say 'hi' to everyone at once, if you're really nice (or maybe not, but people here are so polite and respectful to each other that you notice the lack in your own culture).
SO, in all, I'm pretty happy right now. I've got some new crafts from the shipment, baking and decorating is always fun, we've got a few activities and breaks worked into the week, and I've lost a lot of weight.
We've gotten into a groove here, Miriam and I have a schedule of stuff we do each day and now that Christmas is coming up we're baking cookies too. So far we've made Candy Cane Cookies, Ginger Snaps, and Chocolate Chip Toffee Bars (Miriam found this recipe in her Teens Cook Book so it was new and turned out great, super easy too). We've got the ingredients for Turtles and, at John's request, Pecan Pie. Also I'm going to make Chris's birthday cake in a few days, we're going to celebrate when Grandma Alice and Grandpa Norman (Mom's parents) get here, on the fifteenth instead of the fourteenth.
Mondays we, Miriam and I, spend the day at Chikumbuso and help with the school or the widows. Recently Linda, the woman in charge, saw the tassels on the bag that I got for Christmas last year and decided they needed some on the purses. So I fiddled around and figured out how to make so decently easy to make handmade tassels and have been making them and teaching some of the widows how to make them to decorate their bags. Last time we were there, before the Christmas party, I made over 15 tassels for the women to use to decorate their bags, and showed another lady how to do it on her own.
Most Tuesdays Miriam and I go to the Tuesday Market with Ms. Ellington. The Ellingtons are missionaries here who have a son Chris's age and another one named Chris. At the Market we get fresh vegetables and fruits. The variety is pretty remarkable, the only thing we've ever not been able to find was asparagus and there's even fruits, or vegetables, I've never seen or heard of before. We could also get live crayfish, beans of almost any kind (dried beans like you put in soup or beans and rice), sugar, flour, eggs, dried fish, and tons of other food things. It's an open market in a large 'room' with a floor, a roof and two walls where vendors sit on a blanket with their wares all along the floor and customers make their way along narrow isles to where they need to go.
We don't really have any set Wednesday or Friday activities but on Thursdays we sometimes go to the Mother Theresa Orphanage and read books and sing songs with the kids there. Mom's class ended so now she's been spending a lot of her time working in the garden. We've got some really pretty roses along the driveway now. I picked out an orange one when I went with her to the nursery; it's a very deep orange and looks less domesticated than most rose bushes so Mom called it a wild rose ('...and Ruth picked out a wild rose'), but she might have been referring to the color. The variety of roses was really impressive they had all shades of red, yellow, pink, orange, purple, white, and in between.
Today Mom an I went to the Mercy Ministries school and helped scoop ice cream for their Christmas party treat. They were using our freezer to store the ice cream and keep it cold so we brought it over in our giant cooler and another borrowed cooler, there were 36 tubs, and ended up staying to help serve. It's fun to see kids so excited and grateful for something we'd think so little of. Back in Evanston kids might like ice cream and be happy about an ice cream social at the church but the kids here get this once a year. This is the only time they get the chance to have ice cream, when we bring it to them for Christmas, it just makes things more special.
On that note I've noticed that Zambians are so much more polite and respectful than Americans. Not just to me or something but to each other. When someone comes in the room they walk around and greet everyone, shaking their hand, maybe kissing their cheeks, and say something like good morning (or afternoon or whatever) to each person, often by name. In America it's like wave at the room in general and say 'hi' to everyone at once, if you're really nice (or maybe not, but people here are so polite and respectful to each other that you notice the lack in your own culture).
SO, in all, I'm pretty happy right now. I've got some new crafts from the shipment, baking and decorating is always fun, we've got a few activities and breaks worked into the week, and I've lost a lot of weight.
Monday, August 29, 2011
About The Second Day
17.8.2011 – 16:00
Today I went on a walk outside of our fortress with Mom and Miriam. We stopped by a plant nursery, a meat store, and a grocery store. At the grocery store we got brown sugar and brown flour. People tried to get us to use their taxis at every corner, Mom thinks that because I’m fat people will look at us and think we’re rich. Miriam is helping Mom make meatballs for dinner tonight. I carried the bag from the grocery home. While we were on our way home, walking by the side of the road since there are no sidewalks where we were, some guy in a bus whistled at us as the bus drove past. Once we got back Mom and Miriam started the dinner and Mom wrote another blog entry for her McAuley family blog. I read an e-book and wrote this entry. That was the extent of our adventures today.
Chris and John came home around 15:40 (3:40pm) and both of them had trouble in their Spanish class today. Chris has never taken Spanish before and his teacher teaches by speaking to the kids only in Spanish. John’s class is reading papers and writing essays in Spanish at a level way beyond what he’s done before. The both of them are going to need some serious good luck wishes and prayers to get through the year. Chris was really excited about his drama class, he had a ton of fun doing all the activities his teacher had them do. He was telling me how all the kids in his class liked his accent and he thought their accents were really cool (most of the class seems to be from Europe and there is a boy from Australia who ‘actually uses mate when he talks’).
One thing Mom, and probably Dad, isn’t too happy about is that Chris is repeating Algebra I. (This’ll be the 2nd time this has happened!) He’s supposed to be in Geometry this year, and he’s had to repeat a year of math before because he switched middle schools. At this rate he’ll never get past Algebra (I’m joking). He says he can’t get into a higher math unless he does all his classes with the 10th graders because of the way it’s set up. There are 2 classes of 9th grade and they do all their classes together, none of that individualized schedule nonsense that ETHS has.
Mom’s sitting next to me sleeping. She was studying the native language. I feel kind of bad for her; we don’t have a car or friends here so we’re kind of stuck in the house, it’s just a temporary house so she can’t really unpack and settle in too much or work in the garden, and there’s only so much we brought to do. Being enclosed in this big wall it feels like we’re the only people around. She used to have a part time job to keep her busy but now I’m sure she’s getting bored. I would be except I brought a ton of e-book things downloaded onto my computer that I haven’t read yet.
The First Real Day
16.8.2011 – 22:18
John and Chris had their first day of school today. Chris talked about it at dinner; the schedule that was made, the classes he’s taking, and some of the kids in his class. Although he told Mom about his day and the people he met right when he got home John napped all afternoon after that and missed dinner. I’m a stress sleeper, when I get worried, sad, or stressed out I get tired and I sleep a lot more, maybe John’s feeling stressed right now.
Since Dad works for the CDC we’ve got an Embassy mailbox and diplomatic passports (kinda cool). But even more fun is we’re invited to a barbeque at the Ambassador’s house and they’ll have to send a car from the Embassy for us (since we don’t have one). It makes me feel like we’re so much more important than we really are (we’re not Embassy political people, the CDC is public health work, and it’s really just a welcome thing for all the new families around here, according to the school there are quite a few).
Our entire family, except John, played Cosmic Encounter earlier. I was green as usual. For those who don’t know Cosmic Encounter is a sort of board game where each person is a different alien race (chosen at random from over a hundred possibilities) and you’ve got five planets in your home system and to win you need to get five foreign colonies. It’s never the same because there are tons of alien races (each race has a different power) and people will form different alliances each time. Since playing with Mom I’ve decided to never again play a game that requires alliances and strategy with her (JK). She’s so competitive she doesn’t know the meaning of compromise or working together to win.
Our Current House
15.8.2011 – 8:36
We’ve arrived at our final destination, for now. Zambia is looking pretty nice so far. Although shorts are still a no-go us girls won’t always have to wear skirts as we previously thought. It’s an hour even further ahead than London so it’s around 1:30 in the morning back in Chicago.
We’re in a temporary house for now. It’s all one floor, but we’ve got 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room, and a sitting room. And a huge yard, it’s gigantic; we’ve got a pool (it’s dried-up right now but still), a basketball court, a volleyball/tennis court, and tons of normal yard space. The whole thing is enclosed with a wall that’s got barbed wire around the top and there’s a uniformed guard at the entry/exit to the place (he’s only armed with a Billy club thing).
There’s something wrong with the roof of the place we’re in, it leaks in the rainy season, and it’s got a canvas tarp over part of the roof so the housing people are trying to move us out sooner rather than later. We’ll be moving into a house that was, until now, used by the Dutch Embassy.
The Trip There
14.8.2011 – 17:17
We’ve been waiting in Heathrow Airport since 11:50ish this morning. I’m actually uncertain as to what day it is…jk. Since leaving Chicago Saturday evening, the flight was for 9 pm or 21:00, it was a longer than it seemed airplane ride into London because we were going forward in time. Seriously, we lost some hours there over the Atlantic!
I wrote an entry on Tuesday earlier this week talking about our family reunion in Yellowstone National Park, which I have tons of photos from and I’ll have to upload them on Facebook or something, but my mom opened a separate window and logged into her e-mail so when I went to post the entry it got erased and told me to log-in under my name. So sad, too bad, I’m too lazy to re-write it after that.
Whatever, time for a movie review because that’s the only interesting thing around here. Both John and I saw Fast Five on the plane. I have to say since I hadn’t seen the four previous movies John later told me existed I felt that all the characters were under developed and the plot was spotty. The fight scenes seemed really fake, it was hard to tell the difference between certain peoples’ minions, and I just couldn’t believe any of the car stunts, at all, although I guess the muscled guys, awesome cars, and beautiful women were there to make up for the rest of the film. There was a point where some drug lord’s guys are shooting at the three main characters (who are street racers, car thieves, and an FBI Agent turned traitor, so they’re the ‘bad guys’ too) and the FBI/police are also there, armed with machine guns as well, to take in the main characters and I couldn’t tell which side was which for some of the fight; it looked like people were shooting their own side. In the end the main characters and their friends made off with the money and lived happy lives.
We’ve almost made it and by 6 tomorrow morning we’ll be in Lusaka, Zambia, home sweet home for the next two years.
Monday, August 1, 2011
And I'm off...
So, as most people who know me already know, my family is moving to Zambia in less than 2 weeks (only 12 days now) to fulfill my parents' lifelong dream of being missionaries in Africa.
My mom started a family blog called The McAuleys In Zambia that I guess we'll all be posting on... or not. I think it's going to be a bust. Mom started her own blog over a year ago and she's only made two posts so I don't see this new one doing any better. Now, people who know me might be shocked to hear, I've kept a diary since grade school and while I have had to switch journals I do write in it almost every night. It helps collect my thoughts. Therefore I've decided to start my own blog and try to write in it once a week, it'll be the more consistent, more accurate, account of what's really happening over in Africa.
My mom started a family blog called The McAuleys In Zambia that I guess we'll all be posting on... or not. I think it's going to be a bust. Mom started her own blog over a year ago and she's only made two posts so I don't see this new one doing any better. Now, people who know me might be shocked to hear, I've kept a diary since grade school and while I have had to switch journals I do write in it almost every night. It helps collect my thoughts. Therefore I've decided to start my own blog and try to write in it once a week, it'll be the more consistent, more accurate, account of what's really happening over in Africa.
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