It's Moving Day!

Hello from Zambia! I've started this little blog here (with much needed help from my dear husband) so we can keep in touch with close friends and family back in the US. Let me begin by saying that I am an AMATEUR blogger and have no clue what I am doing :). With that said, I hope to get better at this as we go along. My posts will most likely consist of lots of pictures with short descriptions. I'm an accountant/missionary so it's safe to say "writing" isn't my thing. I tend to ramble at times (like now) so let's get this thing started...

We arrived in Zambia on June 21st after spending a lovely honeymoon in Bruges, Belgium (see facebook). Since we landed here things have been fairly hectic. Jacob hit the ground running with Water 282 business, and I started getting settled in my (our) new home. Jacob had been living in a 3 bedroom house that should have been 1 bedroom considering how small it was. It was a tight squeeze to say the least, but we were willing to ride it out until we found a more suitable house. We knew we would need to find a bigger place once I moved to Zambia with him so we had already discussed moving. I quickly started looking on all the Zambian real estate websites only to find that the best way to find a house here is to either drive around looking for "For Rent" signs or walk on foot. By the way, at the time we did not have a working vehicle so there was no driving around option for us. Luckily, Jacob has an amazing Zambian friend, Sharpy, who was willing to go house hunting for us one day. He found the perfect place for us within 2 hours - we had been looking for like 2 weeks with no such luck. Soon after my move to another continent we moved to a new place within Zambia.

IT'S MOVING DAY!!!

I'm sure most of you reading this have never been to Africa so hopefully this will give you a good idea of what most houses look like here in Lusaka. We live in the capital of Zambia along with roughly 3-4 million other people. It's a large city with shopping malls, grocery stores, roadside markets, schools, etc. The roads are terrible and traffic is crazy, but other than that things are pretty "normal" here in Lusaka. Don't get me wrong though; there is extreme poverty in Lusaka as well. It's just different from the rural villages. We aren't living in a straw hut with no electricity, and I thank God for providing us a wonderful, safe home!

Here are some pictures of the move and our new house. We are still getting unpacked because the day after we moved in we left to go work in the villages for two weeks so please excuse the mess. We have plans to paint our bedroom and the hallway entrance to our room as it is key LIME green so we'll post updated pictures as we make small changes. That's for another day though. For now, enjoy the pictures! 

Our old house all packed and ready for the move. 

Sharpy and Jacob loading up the Canter.

This is our new house!

Our yard.

Side view of the house. 

Our den. 

Dining room

Another view of the den looking into the dining room. 

Kitchen

Office

Our bedroom

Another view of our bedroom

And here's a pic of us at a brand new borehole...just in case you miss us and want to see our faces :)

Also, get in the habit of commenting on my blog so that I know you are actually reading it. In fact, if you read this post, just go down to the bottom and leave me a little "I love you". And write a comment for the first five or so posts so it feels like everyone is engaged. After that, you only have to comment on the ones that speak more to you. Thanks!!