Return to no-man's land

My trip to Italy was fantastic despite the cold and the occasional rain. I would comment more, but seeing gas this is a blog about Zambia, I will leave out the details of my trip except to say that the return part of the trip was less than wonderful. My flight out of Pisa was cancelled due to a flat tire and they had to bring another plane from Milan to take us all to London, but by then I had waited all day in the small Pisa airport and missed the once a day flight to Joburg where I was supposed to connect to Lusaka. by the time I got to London I was tired and bored and slightly annoyed, but i was given a hotel room for the night with a late check-out because my flight wasn't until the next evening. Luckily, they were able to put me on a direct flight to Lusaka that left at the same time as the flight to Joburg but saved me about 7 hours from not having to go out of the way and transfer. I enjoyed the hotel, watched tv, slept well, ate well (meals were included) and walked around in the brisk London weather. All in all it wasn't so bad and because I got into Lusaka in the morning instead of the afternoon I was able to go straight back to Central Province instead of spending a night in Lusaka as I originally planned. So i actually wasn't set back in time and it was better to spend the night in a nice hotel in London than on a couch in the volunteer lounge at Peace Corps office. In fact there was a nearby bowling alley and since i had almost 24 hours in London I could have gone and done something fun except that I had no money aside from Zambian Kwacha which cannot be exchanged outside of southern Africa and i couldn't find an ATM to get money for a bus or anything. Also, I've decided (yet again) thats its not really fun to do things like bowling, eating out at a restaurant, touring a town etc, on your own, in fact it's rather lame. Regardless, I did eventually get home to Zambia. Since my return I have been hiding out in the village, there's not much to say about the past 2 weeks. I have been bored out of my mind, it rains a lot of the time and when its dry and sunny, the roads are so flooded that its difficult to travel anywhere. I have read a lot, Don Quixote, a Tale of Two Cities, Jane Eyre etc. and slept a lot. I think it's worse now because almost all the other volunteers are on Vacation as are the commercial farmers that live near me, so i don't even have anyone I can visit. Still, I'm not sure how I'll make it through the rainy season if this continues. For once people are actually working in their fields because they have to plant and weed and tend their crops. Considering no one came to meetings back when they practically had nothing else to do, I know no one will come during the rainy season, plus they all hate getting wet and try to avoid being outside when it is raining or could rain soon, which is most of the time. I still like my village, but I hate not having anything to do. The only possibility i have of work is with the schools that open in January, so I'll see how that goes, otherwise I have no idea what to do. For Christmas I'm going to the house, I don't know if anyone else will be there, but I am looking forward to making Christmas cookies and a cake and listening to my christmas music and hopefully finding a church to go to.