Week 3 and 4

Wow- time is flying! I cant believe I have been away from Australia for over a month now. And I thought I would be writing in this blog everyday but now I'm trying to catch up for a few weeks!!

Things are good - it's now the windy season though which means (well, it means its windy of course!) but also that the water is choppy which reduces the opportunity we have to go out in the boat! We have been snorkeling twice (fishing for Sefo, snorkeling for me!) but hopefully there will be more opportunities on the weekends! It's so beautiful underwater! We went last week and I saw the biggest Angel fish I have ever seen - the size of large dinner plates!! That's how I measure all fish - how they will look on my dinner plate!!

We have done a bit of Karaoke lately! On Saturday night in Wallis there was a big concert with famous singers from Tahiti and Futuna and Wallis - all raising money to rebuild Futuna (after the cyclone earlier this year - it was pretty much flattened). We didn't go to the concert, but we went to K's house and he cooked a big BBQ and had some friends over and the karaoke set up. His brother in law, C, sets it all up, but on Sat night he didn't do it properly so had to come back. He is a music guy that works for the TV station, and his wife works on the tv - a news presenter and she was presenting at the concert (it was televised). So C, his wife and all the famous singers rock up at K's house to set up the karaoke! And then they all started singing! It's very hard to go up and sing when there are famous singers there!! They didn't stay for very long though - and then we had the microphones to ourselves! The songs are all so old - although the most recent was Whats Up by 4 non blondes -which, I must say I rocked! I even put on their weird voices!! There were a few french people there (including the director of aircalin, and her very drunk husband!!) so at least I got to practice french as well!!

Monday night was the start of summer in France, and they have a Festival of Music to celebrate. So here, they also have festivals of music! We went to Sefos ex-colleagues place, G, to have a BBQ and to do some more karaoke! We had to go to another place down the hill for the karaoke -which we did at about 10pm. It wasn't at good as Ks, mainly because they couldn't get it working for a while, and G, who was in charge of choosing the songs chose hard ones to sing, which were also slow and boring! We had Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, slow ABBA ones - but then some Lady Gaga thrown in! Weird! Everyone just sat around though not really talking. Although I did meet F, who was in Townsville for a while and spoke good English. It was nice talking with her and she gave me some good ideas for things i can do next year if we stay in Wallis for another year. Definitely worth thinking about!

Other than that I am still helping S with cooking. Last Wednesday night we got to cook for 8 priests and bishops who were in Wallis for a special celebration! S cooked a big Paella and we had Berries and Cream for dessert. Lots of wine, rum punch and whiskey! The priests all pretty much study in Fiji so most of them spoke English - and the bishop is one of the nicest, friendliest men I have met! There was a priest from Tonga who I spoke to a bit - he had spent some time in melb when he was younger with the RAAF. He was a massive man though - we had to give him a special chair to sit in as he didn't fit in the ordinary garden ones - I think he gets lots of gifts of food in Tonga!! It was a lovely dinner and a big success at cooking and serving such important people in this community.

S and I keep cooking lunches - although she doesn't want to sell as much. People were given credit for the lunches and no one really pays up! She is waiting to people to pay what they owe before she starts selling again - this week is pay week for the government staff so hopefully they do pay coz i enjoy it! And I think she makes pretty good money out of it. So lately we have just been cooking for 2 or 3 people who she knows will pay and then eating the rest for lunch! We have had some pretty fancy lunches - very different to the food we eat at Sefos place!! Here its plain rice, fried or boiled fish/chicken/steak, and the native veges like tapioca, yam, taro. When I get to cook it becomes more interesting - and we mainly have marinated chicken/steak on the BBQ. It was fathers day on Sunday here and Sefo and I cooked a lovely BBQ for his dad - couscous salad (with goats cheese - yum!) green salad and steak, pork chops and sausages on the BBQ. I hope his dad liked it!!

Anyway, that's about all I can think of to update at the moment - I really should do it more often because often, Sefo will say or do something and I think I must remember to put it in this blog - but then by the time I get around to writing here I've forgotten!!