Bits and Bites...

This past Saturday was the fortieth day since Ibu Rita’s husband died. According to their culture they have a service at Rita’s house. So all her family came and all his family came and Rita was expected to serve them all (never mind the fact that she has been forbidden from working or even leaving her house for the past 40 days). Many many people came and there were many that slept at Rita’s house. They also went to the gravesite and some of the relatives wanted to see the place where Rita’s husband had died. So instead of working this week, Rita is recovering.

The concrete pad at the back of our house is finally finished. So the kids were out there yesterday on roller blades and playing hockey. Very quickly a crowd of kids gathered to watch.

I think the soccer league that plays across the road is heading into the playoffs - there’s a lot more and louder cheering now.

Yesterday I took Ice to the dentist. Things got rather busy so I wasn’t able to take her before. But that turned out to be a good thing as there is an expat dentist here and he is now allowed to work on whomever he wants. Before that was not the case. So yesterday I took Ice and Christiaan to see him at his house. At the moment he can only work out of his house. So the two of them sat down in the cool reclining lawn chairs he uses for when he goes out into villages. This dentist is teaching Papuans how to be dentists. It’s a pretty neat program. So it was Papuans who worked on Ice. She needed more than just the one tooth that caused the abscess pulled. She had some old roots from other teeth that she had pulled out herself that also needed to be removed. (Papuans have an insanely high pain tolerance.) So yesterday they just pulled out everything necessary on the one side of her mouth. Next month we’ll do the other side and then the following month we’ll work on getting her some fake teeth. Unfortunately she has chewed beetle nut which stain teeth a dark red/brown. Like really bad coffee stains only really, really hard to get off. We all strongly encouraged her not to chew it any more as it can give you gum issues which will make your teeth simply fall out. It will be hard for her as so many people do it and it is such a social thing like smoking together or drinking coffee together.

The other day we discovered that we can’t run the kettle, the hot water heater for our shower and the dryer at the same time… bummer...

Finally, I'll end off with Aidan's most recent "thinking sheet". Each child in his grade has an ice cream cone with a cherry and a few scoops. For infractions in the class they have to remove first the cherry, than a scoop and so on. If they need to remove a scoop, they have to draw a picture of what they did wrong and then one of what they should have done. The following is Aidan's illustration of himself doing an arm fart and then of himself sitting quietly at his desk: