At long last

Friday has come and two expeditions have gone so the base is much more reasonable and peaceful now. At one point this week we had about 85 people here who were going on various expeditions and now we're down to about 30. I had put in a lot of hours to get the vehicles ready for the Angola expedition and they left on Tuesday as planned. It will take several days of driving until they get to Angola but the team was really excited to get going.

Another crew of people came in from Florida and England on Wednesday for the Victoria Falls expedition that left today. It's been really cool getting to hang out with people from all over the world. So far we've had quite the spread of English dialects spoken here: Canadian, Midwestern, Texan, Southern, 3 kinds of British, Australian, New Zealander, South African, Brazilian, and Zambian.

I have been helping teach the diesel mechanics course while being here and I was one of the examiners for the students hands-on final. Everybody did very well. Once the diesel course ended I was able to start my welding course. The first lecture was yesterday and I finished up the lecturing today so I took the class to the shop to intro the equipment we'll be using. Everybody is excited to get in to the shop and start working so it seems to be going well so far. The students are especially excited because they will be graded based on the final project they have to build rather than written tests like in the diesel mechanics course. Each team of 3-4 people will be making a motorcycle stand so we can stop using paint buckets to put broken dirtbikes on.

I'm looking forward to a restful weekend without expedion prep to do.