Out and about in Port Moresby

A little while ago we booked ourselves onto a boat trip to go snorkelling off the coast of Port Moresby. The trip out was lovely.

Gorgeous Girl loves to snorkel.

We have a casing that we can put a regular camera in. It takes great underwater shots.

Gorgeous Man got some great photos of the things we saw.

If you are in Port Moresby it’s worth the trip. Snorkeling is organised through POMSAC and the Yacht Club.

 

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Celebrating Independence

Recently Papua New Guinea celebrated 40 years of Independence. Gorgeous Girl’s school put on celebration. The kids dressed in traditional costumes from the various regions around Papua New Guinea.

Gorgeous Girl was in the group from Manus Island. They practiced their dances for a few weeks and costumes were supplied.

We supplemented her costume with some shell necklaces.

The local ladies set up shop outside the school gates (shop consists of a cloth on the ground spread with their wares) knowing that the school has these celebrations.

One of the older classes made paper mache mud men masks.

The staff had the authentic masks.

These following ones aren’t the best pictures I took, but they do show a sense of the day without showing the faces of other people’s children.

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Misleading

So, I have to confess that this scrapbook page is misleading.

Gorgeous Girl does not like visiting Santa/Father Christmas. She has to be cajoled into it by me, because I really like having a photo each year to see how much she has grown. There are a few years missing because she refused to participate at all. Last year she agreed to see Santa, but refused to get closer than this. 🙂

I dyed the chipboard using DIY mist (food colouring and water) and my new watercolour wax crayons.

I made a card as well.

I’ve been wanting a large woven basket for a while. Gorgeous Man found one at the market today.

It’s certainly large.

It’s now housing Gorgeous Girl’s collection of soft toys.

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A drive in the country

Recently a group of us decided to take a drive up to the beginning of the Kokoda Track. Gorgeous Man and Gorgeous Girl have been up here before, but it was the first time for me.

We went out in three vehicles, all of which were 4WD, which turned out to be a blessing. To get to the start of the track you need to leave Port Moresby and drive up the mountains. As we drove it started to rain.

and rain

The rain eased up a bit and we crossed a one lane bridge.

and drove along the road

Along the way, one of the cars got stuck in the mud on the side of the road and had to be pulled free with a tow rope, but it was not difficult.

Then we came to a hill

and decided that it would be prudent to leave the cars at the top and walk down. It wasn’t raining when we set out and soon we reached the bottom.

It rained in earnest on the way back up the hill. One good thing about living in the tropics is that the rain is not cold. It was a good day out, but I think our next visit might have to wait until the dry season comes around again.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment on my last post. It was great to meet some new to me blog readers and find new blogs to read.

 

 

 

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Come walk with me

Gorgeous Girl is currently on school holidays. This morning she asked if she could go for a walk around the block. I decided to grab my camera and go with her. Here are some of the things we saw. Gorgeous Girl took this picture. It’s called a candle tree because it’s shaped like a candle. She says it’s her favourite tree.

These trees are my favourite.

I love the shape of them. Around the corner we spotted some corn one of our neighbours has planted at the edge of their yard.

The hibiscus flowers all year.

Gorgeous Girl took this picture of the frangipanis.

There are also lots of coconut trees around.

Then we were too hot and had to come home for a big drink of water and sit under the fan for a while.

Because this is really a craft blog, I’ll leave you with a picture of my current favourite block for the hexagon quilt.  I love the little toadstool houses.

I need to prep some more hexi-pieces to stitch together. I have a few big plane trips coming up and these are my go-to travel project.

I’ve been accepted to present a paper at a conference in Poland. Gorgeous Man is presenting at a (related) conference in Germany a few days prior to the Polish conference and then he is also presenting at the one in Poland. So we’ll be going to that together.

Crafting time is decreasing as I’m trying to get the paper written for the conference as well as keep chugging away on my thesis…

 

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A visitor

We have an area under our house where we are growing orchids. We’ve also planted some basil seeds in a pot under here. They have sprouted and I’m hopeful that they will do well.

There are orchids in pots on the ground and some that need to hang.

The two orchids on the right are in coconut husks and coconut fibre is used as the growing medium. There are a couple of cute little frogs that often come and spend the evening in the orchids.

On Friday night, Gorgeous Man went downstairs to lock up and called out that we might like to come downstairs with a camera as something very special was visiting.

A little carpet python. We left it alone and in the morning the snake was gone, but it had shed it’s skin during the night and left that behind which was very cool.

One thing I love about Gorgeous Girl is that she plays creatively. For her birthday she received some furniture for her dolls house. She’s been spending a lot of time playing with it. Most of her play with that toy involves packing all of the furniture onto one of her toy trucks and “moving house”. I guess kids really do play what they know.

This morning she called me to come and see what she had done. She’d set up a little kitchen outside to do some “baking.”

Mud pie decorated with frangipani petals.

Crochet Cat Number 2 is nearly done. All pieces have been made. They are drying now, hopefully tonight I’ll be able to add a face, and stuff and sew it up.

I have a pair of Mojo socks on the needles. Ironically, I seem to have lost my mojo on them. I’m doing an afterthought heel for the first time and am unsure as to whether I’ve put the waste yarn in the right place. I think I’ll do the heel before I’ve finished the leg and see how it fits and then make a decision as to whether to progress with them.

 

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Excitement and counting our blessings

There’s been a lot going on here at Ruth’s Place.

Last year I blogged about Gorgeous Girl’s new swing…

On Saturday afternoon Gorgeous Girl and I were relaxing quietly in the lounge when we heard a loud cracking noise. I looked up just in time to see branches going past the window.

The tree snapped off at the base. Gorgeous Man thinks it was because of beetles.

This is what freaked me out a little.

I’m feeling very blessed that Gorgeous Girl wasn’t swinging at the time and that there were no neighbourhood kids playing on it either. Also feeling very lucky that the tree fell in the direction it did, if it had fallen in the other direction it would have damaged the house.

Gorgeous Girl’s best friend is leaving in a few weeks. Today we had their last special play date, they’ll still be at school together for a while. One of the fancy hotels here has a play area. We have to pay for it, but it’s one of the few places in Port Moresby where the kids can play and swim, and it’s nice for the parents to hang out and relax. What we didn’t realise when we turned up was that there were special Halloween activities in the play area today. Halloween is not an Australian custom, so we haven’t ever celebrated it in our house. Gorgeous Girl was most impressed with her first Halloween experience.

There were some costumes.

Some art and craft. We came home with a glittery painting of some pumpkins. There was also party food (Gorgeous Girl pretty much ignored the  lollies (candy) in favour of the popcorn and savory salted snacks), and party games where Gorgeous Girl won a book much to her delight.

I didn’t quite get her little friend’s soft toy finished before our playdate this morning. But I did get him finished off this afternoon. He’ll be delivered next week.

Please don’t notice that his arms are sew on at different heights. A closeup.

Gorgeous Girl chose the buttons for the eyes.

I’ve started the front for Gorgeous Girl’s matching cat.

I really like this African Flower pattern.  I can see a blanket of these in my future. Not while I’m living in PNG and doing the stash down thing though. We have no use for blankets here and I don’t have space to store one, and I’d need to buy a ton of yarn to make one and that would defeat the whole stash down process I’ve been on for the last two years.

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Out and about

On Sunday a group of us from Gorgeous Man’s work took a trip to Sirianamu Dam. We took two four wheel drives, a security guard and a two way radio so that we could speak between cars. After all that preparation the trip was uneventful.

It’s about an hour’s drive from Port Morseby. The drive is impressive, up mountains on narrow roads. When we got there we stopped and saw the dam overflow pipe.

This photo shows the surrounding scenery a little better.

Gorgeous Girl at the top.

Of course the high light for Gorgeous Girl was the chance to go swimming in part of the dam.

The sun was pretty brutal and there was no shade. We rigged up a temporary shelter for me.

It worked pretty well, though I did get terribly sunburnt on the lower 6 inches of my legs. I only have 10 minutes in the sun before I’m severely burnt… After some snacks in the shelter at the top of the hill it was time to return to Port Moresby. We stopped at a local market on the way home and picked up some delicious bananas and a pineapple (haven’t eaten that yet). It was a lovely day out.

The cat is progressing nicely.

Just one arm, two legs and an entire other cat to go. I’m not going to have enough white cotton left to make matching exactly cats, so they will be fraternal twins.

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Independence Day

This year marks Papua New Guinea’s 38th year of Independence. Each year Gorgeous Girl’s school puts on a concert celebrating the cultural diversity that makes up PNG. Each class dresses in traditional clothes from different regions and does a dance or sings a song from that area. PNG has over 800 different languages, so there are a lot to choose from.

Here’s my Gorgeous Girl dressed up. I snapped this after her performance. Her class was performing a dance from New Ireland.

With her class.

Some of the other classes.

I hope you enjoyed a little peek into our celebrations here.

I’ll be offline for a week or so. Talk to you when I get back.

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Cultural Diversity -in which we divert from crafting content

We are privileged to live in a culturally diverse community. This weekend the students from Vanuatu held a fund raising event and so Gorgeous Man, Gorgeous Girl and I went along.

I love that we can take Gorgeous Girl to an event and she’ll hear songs in 6 different languages/dialects and see dances from two additional countries. After the speeches we had a traditional dinner.

There was kaukau (sweet potato) cooked in banana leaves under the ground.

The darker purpley ones are cooked banana.

When I was at university (for the first time) I had a lot of Polynesian friends, so I was happy to see taro on the menu. This was cooked in coconut milk and was very nice.

Gorgeous Man and Gorgeous Girl are not fans of taro.

This last one was interesting. I went back after everyone had finished eating to take pictures, so it’s a bit of a mess.

This is yams which are mixed into a paste and then cooked in a ring around the bowl in the centre. (The cooking container is made from banana leaves and is also cooked below ground). The bowl in the centre is filled with onions and coconut milk. You slice a piece of the yam material off and dip it in the coconut milk.

I love that Gorgeous Girl is an adventurous eater and will try new foods.

After the food there was dancing and singing. Firstly the girls from Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas) danced.

There was some Samoan dancing as well.

I had some very good friends who were Samoan. Both of whom have passed away, so this dance made me smile and brought back many happy memories. I have better photos than this, but I’m trying to respect people’s privacy while at the same time show a little of what we experienced.

I also have pictures of the garden, but will save them for next time.

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