Today I went to a meeting from some moms that are putting together a preschool. Marc is very excited about it and can hardly wait. It will be an interesting group of kids. There are two Indonesian kids, one Japanese, one Korean, two Canadians, and one child who is born here to a mom from PNG and a dad that could represent the UN. So it will be very multicultural. While I was there, Hugo went with the kids to our friends, who live next to our new house, to hang out and play. They have a trampoline, need I say more? So we looked at our new house. Work is going depressingly slowly. I heard that a lot of guys were sent to Wamena to finish some houses there and should be back next week. Hopefully my prediction of Christmas is really overly pessimistic. In the meantime, the kids are enjoying living here on base and have a lot of fun playing with Doren Togeretz. I’m sure Doren really likes it too as there are no other kids his age here on base.

This morning before going to the meeting I took an ojek (motorcycle taxi) to the pasar. Last week my pembantu came home with some sorry looking veggies and meat that had been previously frozen so I figured it would be better if I went myself. It is quite the place as I’ve described before, but now you can see the photo evidence. I love watching the chicken lady cut up chickens. She is incredibly efficient at it. You will notice that she is Javanese and the people that have their vegetables on the ground are Papuan. Here people distinguish locals from transmigrants by calling the locals curly haired and the transmigrants straight haired. At the market it is mostly the curly haired that display their wares on the ground and the straight haired that have the tables.

The other photos are from last week. Marla Togeretz organized an impromptu soccer game with some local kids, our kids and Doren. They had a great time!

I forgot to recount a funny thing that happened to me last week. One morning after the older kids had gone to school and Hugo was off to work, I went outside to put on a load of laundry. There is a front loading washer with this house and it takes about an hour to do a load so I try to get it going right after everyone is gone. I went outside and starting loading up the machine when I heard the sound of the door being shut with force. My heart sank, we were locked out of the house. We being Marc, Brynnie and I. Brynnie thought she’d be helpful and shut the door... the door that locks once you shut it if a little knob is pushed down on the inside... I had locked the other screen door with the slide lock. There I was in my pajamas, having not yet showered, Brynnie had a poopie diaper and I knew that Hugo did not have keys with him. So I went to my neighbour Karin. As it happens, another neighbour Karen was visiting and they were outside chatting. I told them of my predicament and the two of them leapt into action. Karin got a hammer and screw driver and Karen went to work. They got the pins out of the hinges of the screen door and took it right off and we got in. My heroes!! Whew, that wouldn’t have been fun...