So begins our last week in Zambia, which is quite odd to think about. It hit this morning sitting in church that we are only going to have one more Sunday here. I can't believe it. Time has gone so fast, and yet so slow too. It seems like we just got here, and yet it seems like we've been here forever...not really sure how to explain it. Amazing how many incredible experiences you can pack into almost 3 months, how many interesting people you can meet, how many wonderful things can happen. Fantastic summer.

We got back this afternoon from our village stay! It was quite an experience. We stayed with an absolutely fantastic family, the Chindolo's, in the home in Mboole, which is a village about and hours walk from ours. We made nsima, the traditional staple food, baked a cake over a fire, visited a few local churches, went for a nice walk through the bush, hung out with a ton of kids, went to a great church this morning, and had a wonderful time. The family was fantastic. They were really into teaching us Chitonga, the local language. But they did it in such a way that didn't leave your head fried at the end of the conversation. Good teachers. Mrs Chindolo would simply say various phrases in Chitonga to us with maybe one or two English words so that we could take a stab at figuring out what the heck she was talking about. It was great fun attempting to guess. They were all very patient, and very willing to help us learn. I think if we had stayed with them for the summer we would all know Tonga very well! We were there Friday afternoon, Saturday and then today. This morning we went to the local church. Its a bit smaller than the one we have been regularly attending and it was packed. The local womens choir sang as well as the womens choir from our village. The service was incredibly long, but the singing was phenomenal! It's nice to get to the point where you can understand bits and pieces of the language and all of it no longer sounds like complete gibberish. After church we had a huge lunch and trekked back home. Excellent weekend.

This weekend we'll be heading into town for our last week. We've met some fantastic people from all over the world at these fellowships we have gone to a few times. We're going to hang out with a few of them in an orphanage, doing economic development projects and anything else we can figure out. It should be fun and another great experience! Its going to be good to be busy the last week too because it could be a really long with no teaching or anything and the promise of home next week.

So...one more week. 19th we shall be home. I could really go for a cheeseburger with a whole lot of cheese one it...like a block of cheese on top of the burger...yes...