Pre-Departure

Welcome to our blog. The working title "Beware of Hippos" while admittedly awesome and relevant - Zambia has a lot of dangerous aquatic herbivores - is not going to be our permanent title. For now, it'll do.

This whole 'blogging' thing is new to us, but we think it will be a useful tool for staying somewhat connected while we are living and working in Zambia. We hope to update with some consistency and regularity, but we don't really know what kind of internet access we will have. There are a couple of blogging PC volunteers currently serving in Zambia that make fairly regular updates and we hope to do the same.

Barring any unforeseen snags, we will be departing for Zambia on February 17th. It's a little over two months away, but things are moving so quickly now it feels like it's next week. We are excited, anxious, geeked and maybe even jazzed to be going. However, we don't have much time to let our excitement sink in because we have so much to do before we leave.

Joey is busy working on his master's thesis on Zambian cotton production which he needs to complete and successfully defend prior to departure. Joy is busy making moves and working as a preschool teacher. We are both heavy into the holiday season.

The annual Lammers Family Christmas Party was this past weekend and it kicked off our holiday season right. Despite a change in venue, the party maintained its position as West Michigan's #1 most awesome family christmas party with a person named 'Tracker' in attendance. There were plenty of cookies, pies, crew-neck Santa sweatshirts, euchre games, white elephants, inflatable (but inaccurate) globes and venison jerky sticks. Naturally, we had a great time. We are excited for our coming holiday get-togethers in New Hampshire and Arizona.

Until then we'll continue our work and preparations. The Michigan winter is finally here and we love it. We welcome the cold and the snow. Come February we won't see them again for awhile.