Welcome to New Guinea

Well, here it is, a blog about us. I often wonder who would be interested in reading about the ins and outs of our life, but i guess that's the bonus of a blog, no annoying group emails in your inbox, you can tune in if you like, or not!

Before i begin i need to warn you........i was born with some kind of connection missing between my brand and my fingers. I don't seem to have any problems with talking, but when it comes to the written word, my skills are somewhat lacking. So bear with me and if you have a problem with me spelling or gramma, tune out! (Mum..... stop slapping your forehead and thinking of all that wasted money, i speak proper english, awright?)

Two weeks ago, Tarzan (husband), Jane (that's me) and two cheeky monkeys moved to rural Papua New Guinea. The monkeys are both of the female variety, the eldest (Lucy Lu- LL) is two and a half, the baby, (Little miss Sunshine- LMS) turned 1 last week. Tarzan has a job with a big Agricultural company over here.

We are living in a big, 4 bedroom house up on stilts. (Pics here

) Queensland style, lots of louvered glass windows. The houses are on stilts for a few reasons, 3 meters of rain a year is a pretty good reason! It is also for cooling, and earthquakes. Apparently the houses are designed to 'move' in the event of an earthquake. Not feeling overly excited about the that, hoping the rumor is true and house just wobbles on it's big stilts. We have a huge garden with lots of flowers, bananas, pawpaw, coconuts and many root vegetables which i am yet to identify. The house is in a guarded compound, but not like the compounds in the cities. We are on about 50 acres with a golf course, swimming pool, social club and lots of room. It is safe to wander around the compound, but outside the gates, you need to be cautious.

Fortunately i don't have to tend to the massive garden or clean the house, as most of know, housekeeping is not my forte! So i am loving the help, we have a full time 'house meri' and a 'garden man', who are currently having a battle of wills, but that is a whole other story. Our house meri, Janet is an older lady who has been working here for 8 years. She speaks a little english but we spend morning coffee and afternoon coffee working on my pidgin. "Kiau bilong kakaruk" which translates to............ egg. Well literally egg from a chook. But i am finding most things are a bit long winded. "liklik pikkanini meri bilong me, name bilong em Lucylu" : My daughters name is Lucylu.
She is forever telling me to leave the kids with her and go. Not sure where i'd go, but it's nice that she likes the kids. They are warming to her, and LL has pretty quickly discovered who to ask when mum says no! LMS is happy for Janet to rock her to sleep if she is upset. I don't mind rocking my baby to sleep, especially when there is someone there to help me! ;)

The power is not very reliable and we are averaging a blackout every 2 days. I think the washing machine has already blown up from a power surge.

Shopping is interesting, but i will leave that for another day. But i have certainly had to modify my cooking habits. I have so many stories to tell and i've only been here 2 weeks! If nothing else, this will be a good record of our time here.

Tarzan is loving his job, facing many challenges, not only with the demanding job but all the problems that come with language barriers and cultural differences. He leaves at 6.30am but is home at about 5.30 which is a dream for us. Farmers are rarely home before the sun goes down, so it's nice to have him here to help with the night time chaos....... i mean..... routine.

Well that's it for now, my freshly washed and ironed sheets are calling me. I told Janet ironing them was unnecessary but she insisted?!