Beach Photo

This is a photo of us, on the beach. No, the ocean isn't actually tilted, we had to set the camera on a crooked log for the photo. The beach is made of lots of smooth rocks, coral, and shells. Some of the shells move, they are hermit crabs. Our shell collection is growing, but we won't be able to bring it back to Australia with us!

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This fortnight's discoveries…

- if the weather is cool, an Indonesian may serve you a glass of hot water

- the words for dog, wind, and t-shirt are very much alike

- ½ tsp. salt and 8 tsp. sugar in 1 litre of water make an Oral Rehydration Solution

- Crabs can crawl up curtains and our drying laundry

- Dave got the word for head ("Kepala") and coconut ("Kelapa") mixed up only once…

- Laundry scrub brushes are a wonderful invention

- Heather's new hobby: Gecko Poking.

- Snorkelling + big waves + rocks = bloody scraped Heather and worried Indonesians

- If you sit still on the beach long enough, you'll notice hundreds of "pebbles" moving- tiny hermit crabs everywhere

- Indonesians (of limited English) will call both of us "Mister"

- Pisang Goreng (Fried Bananas)

- An oven, in this location, is a metal box that sits on your kerosene burner

- You can fell a tree with a machete and rope… then chop up the wood the next day with a chainsaw

This week the army came to camp on our basketball court during the change of troops. A huge landing ship came to drop them off, with little boats ferrying the men to the pier. We didn't see many of them during their stay, but they were quite polite and a few took photos with David.

There haven't been any major accomplishments this fortnight; we are still waiting on approvals and finances. We have completed many small tasks, such as getting power to some of the other chalets, establishing a rubbish handling system (burn, bury, or sell), fixing leaks and pumps, and hacking down trees and overgrown shrubs.

Yesterday we had a big meal with gado-gado (vegetables in peanut sauce), tuna, rice, and cakes and bananas. Heather still had to get help cooking (as she doesn't know Indonesian cooking very well) so the whole event had a very communal feel. Several people came to the meal, including the army commandant for the island, who is leaving soon.