Greetings to all far and wide!

Sometimes when I think about it, I'm very amazed by the fact that I am halfway across the world from my family, friends, home, basically everything I have ever known! To anyone who travels it might not seem so strange, but to me who has never been away from my family for a week, much less three MONTHS, it can be rather...umm...my mind just went blank...Uhhh...amazing...startling...I can't remember the word that I was going to use. Whatever. You get my point. I hope so anyway :).

Saturday we ended up not going down to Mibu. It actually ended up being a great day. In the morning we listened to a sermon on tape, which means that I got to hear my first English sermon since I got here! After that Angie and I went over to Brooke's house and spray painted the gifts that we made for the other women in the Madang region. I wasn't doing any of the painting, so I got roped into a game with Marietta. After that game we ended up playing baseball in the blazing hot sun.

When we paused for a koolaid break, I mentioned that it was a day for a water fight, definitely NOT baseball. The kids really liked that idea, so they decided to ask their parents if we could. They thought it was a little more likely if "Aunt Anna" was involved. I overheard them saying: "Can we have a water fight?? Aunt Anna REALLY wants to!" So we were given permission, and they got a good start by grabbing bowls and squirt guns and drenching me! I didn't have any water, so I made them quit while we discussed our refill problems. Marietta asked Joey what we should do, and he gave us permission to go to the Tivai (nearby river/waterfall) if I went with them. So we gathered our cups and bowls and headed for the river. Just before you get to the river there is a very tall, steep, rocky, mountain that you have to go down. I didn't have shoes on... or socks...don't worry Mom, you taught me well :p. So it ended up being a VERY painful hike down. Once we got there, we had a never ending supply of water, and waterfall to play in! It's not big, just the short little drops (you'll have to see the pictures) with a few small pools of water, and very slippery rocks. We didn't waste any time! Before we were there five minutes we were all completely drenched (especially me!), and it was not because we fell in! I think I'll leave the rest to your imagination :).

The other night Chris, Angie, and I decided to start a puzzle. So we pulled out this 500 piece, 3-D style, puzzle of dolphins and fish swimming around. It was really hard, and it took us a couple of days, but we got it done. The point is, that I warned Chris that I would tell everyone about his new obsession. His new obsession is with... You'd NEVER guess...DOLPHIN LIPS! He spent all of the time he was working on it collecting them, talking about them, and insisting that he was an expert on "dolphin lips". Angie and I spent a lot of time laughing at him, but when I couldn't find a piece with dolphin lips, I suggested that he come look for them, and within a minute or two he'd found the piece that I'd spent ten minutes looking for :).

Last night was my sleepover. We all had a ton of fun, made a big mess, and are probably all really tired. We watched a couple movies, painted our finger and toenails, ate cookies, and poppy seed bread, and even managed to squeeze a couple hours of sleep in there! At about four this morning, Shiloh, Jael, and I were all awake...until we realized what time it was. But all of us were awake around seven this morning. So we decided to put in another movie :). Oh, I forgot to mention that right after we'd all gotten pj'd and started our first movie we heard this strange noise. At first we all thought that it was Jael, since for some odd reason she was sitting in the corner. Then I realized that she was ONLY sitting, and she wasn't doing anything. So then we were all trying to figure out what it was. All of a sudden it occurred to me that it was probably Joey and Solomon trying to scare us. So Shiloh and I snuck out the office door, and turned the flashlight on, but we were too late. This morning we found out that if we had stepped out my door (the doors are on different sides of the building) we would've been blasted with a squirt gun!

That was about the most exciting thing that happened at it. The only other thing was that Jael had this weird idea that at ten o'clock we were going to start sneaking around. I have no idea why, but that was her idea. So she spent the first half of the night crawling around with her rear in the air "sneaking". Marietta was calling it her "elephanting". That was probably closer to the truth! We kept telling her it wasn't time yet (I was hoping she would be asleep before her "sneaking time" rolled around :p), but finally I told her we were going to skip the sneaking time, and she gave up on it.

That's all I can think of right now, so I better get going and clean up my cabin. "Hurricane Sleepover" hit me hard :). Talk to you guys later! Thank you for all your prayers and support.
Love,
Anna