Monday, August 17th.

Monday was such a weird day for everyone I think because we kind of skipped Sunday altogether. This honestly felt like one of the longest days of my life though because 95% of it was spent on a plane or some other mode of transportation. Regardless, it was a day well spent making memories with our new Zambia family.
The morning started off by landing our 15 hour flight into Johannesburg. The flight actually went by faster than I had anticipated. The worst part for me was the random body aches that would happen from sitting in one position for so long. I oddly felt like I had accomplished so much though when the plane landed.  After we all stood up to exit the plane, a few of us made eye contact with each other like "WE DID IT!", which was just so relieving.
We hung out for a bit in the Johannesburg airport, which had a lot of really cool shops with African clothing and animal skins. The boys seemed to just be really excited about sunglasses though, because I swear they disappeared like 4 times to go look at sunglasses.
The flight into Livingstone was literally a piece of cake for us all. I think we were all just so exhausted that we all slept the whole flight. Courtney fell asleep so hard that it took 4 people to shake her, including the flight attendant, who thought she was dead. That was one of the funniest things for us all to witness.
We met up with Eric, Elem, and Duncan (yay!) at Livingstone and we exchanged our money for Kwacha at the airport. We had approximately 4 hours in a tight-squeezed van until we arrived in Macha.  It was pretty enjoyable getting to see Africa and just have fun together.
Arriving in Macha was such a breath of fresh air for  us and gave us all a feeling of relief.  We dropped our bags off and immediately headed over to play with some kids. We all enjoyed some soccer, volleyball, and pretty much whatever else we could make up with a ball. We enjoyed a fantastic dinner at the Thuma's and headed back to get some sleep early.  We're ready to get the ball rolling tomorrow!  Also, the stars in Africa are AMAZING, definitely a sight I will remember forever.  Thanks for keeping up with us and pray that God can speak to these children through us this week. God is so good!

Love always,
Skylar Cohick