Birthday fun!

Oh dear, I guess the novelty of this life must really be running out, I haven't blogged for ages! It's been a lovely couple of weeks though. Jes and Tom came out 2 weeks ago, and we packed lots of touristing into the 5 days Jes was here. The best bit was just catching up, but another highlight was going over to Livingstone island and seeing the Falls from the top. Tom went for a swim but Jes and I decided that sounded a bit scary

Tom stayed on for my birthday, and we had a dinner party for a few friends. Lovely to get so many packages from home and some thoughtful gifts from my new friends who seem to know me very well already and chose nice new clothes and jewelry. Staying with tradition I had two cakes (and one more promised in the post!!) and generally felt very spoiled. The biggest surprise was one of Rabbit's friends and relations (my affectionate term for the vast extended family that all Zambians seem to possess) turning up at my office with a dozen red roses.

Meanwhile, work is slowly moving on and we even managed to fill in a funding application this week. This morning I texted all my colleagues to remind them to come to work and it seemed to have an effect and we got a fair bit done. It often feels like I'm just nagging, but my boss always laughs when I say that so perhaps I'm achieving more than I realise. I'm off to Lusaka on Wednesday for VSO Zambia's annual conference, which I've been helping to organise. It'll be great to catch up with all my friends and I have a couple of presentations to make which I'm geekily looking forward to. I'll also get chance to meet up with Tom again, who's spending a couple of days in Lusaka after a trip to Botswana and South Africa. So all go but I'll try to blog a bit more often, and will try to persuade Hilary, Ed, Tom and Jes to make a contribution from the UK!