Thursday, February 3, 2011
2.3
2:52 AM
Ange
The first is a picture of making a basket out of a coconut palm frond. The second is a weaved thing they use as blinds or the inside walls of their houses, made from part of the sago palm trees. The last is a basket made for cooking rice. You fill these half way with rice and put them in boiling water and the rice comes out perfect! SO YUMMY TOO!
I don’t think I can properly describe today without lots of pictures. Some of the local people came by the show us how to make the things they normally make, like mats and bags and stuff. These people are so creative and innovative with how they use the nature and their surroundings to their advantage without killing others or the environment. (And we with all our technology and education can’t get find peace with others or keep our air clean!) They are so strong too! I’m having doubts that I can climb up the mountain without dying, let alone doing it with my groceries! And they do it every day like its nothing! Some kids walk 3 hours to school and back, up and down the mountain trails. They are simply incredible people. I can’t wait to get to know them more and live with them in their villages!
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
2.2
2:51 AM
Ange
Today we went on one of our “conditioning swims” again. It was also raining again, but not thundering and lightning like last time. We were riding down the mountain in the dyna and it was just pouring! On some stretches of the road there is a steep cliff and you can see out over the landscape to the ocean, but you could barely see ten feet off the cliff, that’s how hard it was raining! Of course it made the dirt road more like a muddy slip n slide, but we had a really good driver this time that went nice and slow, and thankfully we got to Nagada (the beach) with our bottoms still attached!
The jungle in the rain isn’t something that you can describe or show in pictures (it would just come out like a massive green blob fuzzied up even more by the wall of water). But it gives you chills because it’s so beautiful. It kind of looks unreal, like something from a fantasy movie, with these giant trees, hanging vines and flowers. The rain comes down and it looks just like clear lines and then the mist comes up and it looks magical. The sound just puts you to sleep too! The bugs are taking shelter and the all the leaves sound like little drums. Too bad I was on the dyna though; I couldn’t take a nap :_(
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
2.1
2:50 AM
Ange
This is part of our dorm area...
This weekend we are going to have to make our own outdoor kitchens in the back of our dorms and then the weekend after that we start our “haus kuks”. In Tok Pisin “Haus kuk” literally means house you cook in, or kitchen. In POC “haus kuk” means we cook our own food in our own homemade kitchen, kind of “village style” on the weekends. It’s an exercise to help us get more used to cooking how we would if we were to live in the village (and we will live in a village for 5 weeks at the end of the course). I think it’s going to be really fun!
But anyways, today we had our first orientation about “haus kuks”. The kitchen manager (Missy) showed us a bunch of the different types of food you can find in the stores here. There’s lots of canned tuna (which I can’t eat because I’m allergic), canned mackerel, canned corn beef, and spam. The main thing is that we won’t have any kind of refrigeration, and she told us lots of surprising ways to keep some “refrigerated” things good. Did you know that eggs can keep for 10-12 weeks without a fridge?! All you have to do is turn them once a day to make sure the egg yolk doesn’t settle again the shell (so that there’s some airflow). You can keep mayo if you only use clean knives (no double dipping) and add a layer of vinegar to the top. Unfortunately there’s some kind of baking soda shortage and you can’t find it anywhere in town. Maybe it will be there by the next time we go shopping! :D
