23rd November Happy Special Birthday Dave. Happy birthday Molly & Mark. The end in nigh! Incredibly we're nearing the end of our placement here in PNG. And so begin the goodbyes, the speeches and the presents! Last week the other volunteers were up from Madang and Goroka for a moderation conference, so suddenly our number more then doubled overnight and the people of Kundiawa must have wondered what was going on with this influx of more ex-pats appearing...

2nd - 15th November A Very Happy Birthday Paul and Bob So we waited and waited and waited.... The school truck was to pick us up at 8.30 a.m. By 9.30 we realised that there may be a problem - though in PNG 1 hour late is nothing unusual. Eventually, having tried numerous times to contact the school we received a phone call from the head of dept who had requested us to run a 3 day phonics course. The senior management team told her on Sunday evening that th...

Beginning 18.10.09 Last time we wrote, we said how the work had slowed down for us. Now we're back on the carousel which will make our last few weeks pass by very quickly.We've had two school visits - both of which we stayed at for a few days to carry out staff training and both of which involve incessant bone-shaking journeys lasting about 3½ hours each way. Alison says its like having a baby - by the time the next visit comes, we've forgotten just how bad the...

Week Beginning 12.10.09 Mike still needs you to send an email, as all addresses were lost. Bride price:We told you about attending a 'bride price' mumu back in April. Last weekend we attended the follow up to this. The first was for the groom's family to host a mumu for the bride's family (which took all the food away with them) and this one for the bride's family to host a mumu for the groom's family (which took all the food away with them) and to negotiate a ...

27.09.09 - 11.10.09 Nightmare: Laptop crashes, Alison fraught. Lifeline cut.Yes the ol' laptop finally lost it - and all the programmes with it. Luckily all our documents are backed up on external hard drive. So we had to start again with a clean sheet (though the dirty rotten viruses are still worming their way around the system). Within 24 hrs we were up and running again and back on the internet - not bad considering our technical know-how-not-to. Having got ...