Here we are in Zambia

It is kind of the inside joke told whenever something supremely strange or just all backwards happens. And here we are in Zambia. A more specific variation of the classic TIA, I suppose.

Apologies as it has been some time since I have last posted. I have lots to tell you about but, I also want to sleep so this is going to be a compromise of those two desires.

First, I have a sweet tan from getting to go swimming in Dr. Conkling's pool on Monday morning. It was pretty fantastic. Though the water was not quite clear and a bit chilly it was wonderful.

We had a little mayday at the IAVI lab on Sunday afternoon. We were eating lunch with the Daka's (formerly Mr. Duck) and I got a call from Jacquee, the intern on call, the -80 freezers were screaming like banshees and she didn't know what to do. I walked her through all of the obvious options but, no real progress was made. Mr. Daka dropped us all off and Kahler and I headed over to see if we could help. We had one of the general workers come up and he began to just play with all of the circuits in the back next to the generator, which was a quite disconcerting but, it was better than nothing I guess because should we have to move these samples it would be a complete nightmare/disaster. We happen upon the big inverter which had one tiny switch in the middle as that was flipped Kahler and I rejoiced at the silence and ran inside to make sure that our ears were not deceiving us. All was well again at the IAVI lab.

We had planned to go to Bible Study that afternoon but that unfortunate little incident put us outside our time line and I took a nap instead. I awoke and talked to a few very important people for a while on skype and then got to bed at a decent hour.

After the swimming party mentioned above we dropped by Manda Hill to look around and I left a few letters at the 'postnet' there which, incidentally is just exactly like our post office save the fact that I did not wait for an hour to receive the necessary postage. Then it was off to have dinner with Theresa and her friend and gun enthusiest, Darrel. I grilled the burgers and we enjoyed a fairly american meal of cheeseburgers, ranch beans, and a salad with some Peach cobbler and ice cream to top it all off. It was a great time. I have definitely been blessed with some terrific relationships in my time over here thus far. We went over a few options for this next weekend in Livingstone (we are traveling with Theresa) and got some advice from Darrel who used to live in Livingstone and had the inside scoop.

Today it is back to the grind and I am going just a bit more wildly than usual. I am attributing it to the abbreviated work week but, is could be anything. I mean, here I am in Zambia.

I miss you all and hope that your week is proceeding with remarkable speed and that your weekend stores something as exciting as mine does. All is well