On Wednesday a cruise ship from Auckland with mainly Kiwis was in
Luganville. On Thursday another cruise ship was in port - the passengers
mainly from Aussie. At the end of the first day Viv overheard a tour
operator talking to the owner of the supermarket we go to, saying how
the first ship was full of NZ'ers and on average they spend half of what
Aussies spend when on holiday.
Does this mean, kiwis are conservative, or two Scottish or poorer?
God Bless
Jon
Blog Blong Mama Viv
We were all pleased to get back to work again because the kids were getting a little sick of each other and spending a bit too much time in each other’s company – not just within the family, rather within the community. The new term saw more kids come back from their home villages and islands and a bit more life around the place. Personally, I found that without the structure of the school day to work around, I was a bit lost and at rather a loose end. Even though I don’t always enjoy the teaching, it is my purpose in being here and without it, there isn’t much for me beyond the daily grind of feeding and looking after the family.
We have struggled to get back into good productive work patterns since recommencing because there has been quite a lot of out of the ordinary stuff happening around the campus. In the first 2 weeks of term the mamas took part in a cooking course, run by some people from in town. This did not include me of course, because of school commitments, but was part of the women’s programme. The second week saw them holding restaurant meals for lunch and dinner. We were delighted to be able to wander over and purchase meals for the family quite cheaply. I thought that our kids were confirmed riceahloics, but even they were sick of rice by the end of having it 2x a day for 3 days! Still, it was a nice change from cooking ourselves, and not having to do the dishes either!! Simon is particularly fed up with having to do dishes all the time here, but we have a strict roster to adhere to for every mealtime except weekday breakfasts when Madeline does them.
The other main focus for life at Talua of late has been preparation for and holding of the Open Days. These were on Thursday and Friday of last week. The main feature of the Open Days is lots of sport, with soccer and women’s volleyball competitions being held, and food selling. The objective is for fundraising and perhaps increasing the profile of the college locally. The preparation involved major tidying up of the college grounds, building of temporary huts for food preparation and sale, mowing the football field which for most of the year is a cow paddock across the road (!), weaving of mats for those visitors who stayed the night to sleep on, etc, etc.
There is usually choir and string band competitions as part of the Open days as well, but there was apparently some kind of clash and no visitors turned up for that. The sport team entries were also down , so I’m not sure how successful it was as a fundraising event. Still there was plenty of food being sold – 2 cattle beasts were killed for the event, and lots of cakes and other goodies were made and sold. Our kids enjoyed the novelty of being able to wander over and spend money on sweets, cakes or gum. Just like being able to walk down to the corner dairy! There is a small campus store here open limited hour, with limited goods, but we don’t buy much there.
In general, a lot of people put in a lot of effort. I found it a very long period of time when I was surrounded by lots of people I couldn’t understand well. In other words – hard and a bit lonely despite the number of people around. Even the kids felt a bit like they were more conspicuous because there were lots of people who are not used to seeing them around. Jon used the time without lecture commitments to do some wiring work in the ceiling that he had been meaning to do for ages. The rats had been chewing on wires and so some circuits, and therefore plugs and lights, didn’t work ( he was mightily relieved not to see any rats in the ceiling space while he was there!!) and he also rewired some places so that we now have 12 volt lighting in more parts of the house. This can run straight off the battery and doesn’t need to go via an inverter.
