A Party With The Vanuato

I'll be honest, I was expecting to be really struggling by now, and who knows maybe soon it'll hit me and I'll have a breakdown or something. But right now I'm REALLY enjoying myself.

Had a much needed lie in on Monday morning (till 10am, up until a few weeks ago I would have considered getting up at 10am an early rising, let alone a lie in!) before heading off to Alexandra to apply for my IRD (tax) number. You'll be pleased to know I also bought LOADS of stamps for postcard sending... still haven't written them yet though... by the end of this week I promise! Having finished my last job at the orchard I expected a couple of quiet days. I was dreadfully wrong. Stopping off at a fruit warehouse-store type thing on the way home I suddenly found myself working in the afternoon packing cherries! As a plus I also got given free real fruit icecream made on the premises. So I'll be working there from now on!

Homemade Pizza is gurrrrd!

Very kindly the girls I was working with gave me a lift back to the hostel and I set about cooking dinner which is about the most stressful process you can go through here. There are 8 hobs, two ovens, a microwave and some rice cookers. 50 people use these facilities every evening. You have got to be damn quick to find space, and as with most meals, you want several things cooking at once. This makes life VERY interesting. I enjoy it though, just means you have to choose your moments carefully!

Now came one of my favourite moments of my time so far. The accomodation is split into two main buildings and the one across from ours was throwing a little party to which we were invitied. A large group of the people staying there are from the Republic of Vanuato and are very musical. So with a broken guitar, ukelele, and an ingeniusly homemade bass, they were performing some of the songs from their home. (very African in style with harmonies galore) Very quickly me and Django joined in with Django on another guitar and me with a drum kindly lent to me by our hosts. Soon most people had pots and pans to bang with, and a Japanese girl helped me construct a kick drum using a pedal bin and a pan. It was AWESOME. I have a video to give you some idea (will be uploaded to FB asap) but with homemade pizza being handed out to all and all the cheering and dancing around, it's very hard to describe the atmosphere. I doubt he reads this but Lashmar, you'd have absolutely ADORED it. One of them is a professional musician and he has promised to get us copies of his album (very popular in his home country) which is very realxing rasta music, great for summer days (of which we have many here =P)

I wish you could all be here with me to experience this, really I do. I'm learning so much about how to live and be the kind of person I want to be. I miss you all massive amounts and look forward to having my accent probed for changes in the very near future. I think I've already started saying 'man' a lot more and ending sentences with 'eh?' (A very Kiwi thing.. they ALL do it!)