Friday 27 February was our first real day! Began to start looking at the syllabi and Teacher's Guides for the new curriculum. We also did some shopping. What I like is that you can walk around and no-one bothers you and everyone is happy to greet you. No dogs around to follow you either!

So we took ourselves back to Madang Lodge [our hotel] and had a swim. When colleagues came to the Lodge that eveing they told us that friends had been to the office to look for us! They also came to the Lodge but somehow we missed them.

Anyway they come from Ken's home town and Ruth is the younger sister of the lads Ken hung out with!!! We arranged to meet them on Sunday and boy oh boy I couldn't believe that Andrew could still sound so Cumbrian after 20 years here!

We had a lovely day with them on the New Tribe's Mission compound which is about 30 minutes drive away from Madang. After Church, where we met three young families who will be going to live in the bush to do translation work, very brave! we went in Andrew's boat to a popular resort and had a lunch. On the way back we stopped at a tiny island, one of the 600 islands, and enjoyed a swim. Andrew tried to teach me to snorkel without much success as I could see just how quickly the shallow water dropped over a huge cliff drop of about 50 feet and I was a bit scared! I had been happily swimming there without realising how big the drop was!

Back for supper and a chat over old times and then a late ride home. A great day out. Will try and put the photos on the blog but we're having technical problems ie lack of experience, we need Rebekah [ our granddaughter] to help!