In Town

If I keep writing everyday about what happened two days ago, I'll NEVER catch up. Isn't that an amazing revelation?? So maybe I'll stick with it long enough today to get two days done at once. Who knows?? I may even get you updated to today!! Wouldn't that be something!

On Tuesday when we flew into Madang, an old friend of Angie's, who is living here, came in on our pickup ride with her family. They thought it would be fun to meet us at the airport, since they had some shopping to do in town anyway. So we got to meet Robyn, her husband Levi, and their fifteen month old son Michael. We spent forever trying to figure out how we were going to fit everyone, plus all our luggage, and anything we got in town, into the twelve passenger van. So we finally worked all that out (Chris dropped us off at one of the stores, and then drove out here to the base and dropped all the luggage off), and all of us, but especially Angie proceeded to go crazy over being able to grocery shop : ). It IS quite the adventure after not being in a store for months. As soon as we finished the shopping, we HAD to get some ice cream while we waited for Chris : ). This may be a little off the main line, but when I first arrived in Lapilo, Tom and Karen who run the guesthouse kept telling me how awful the ice cream was. They brought their ice cream maker with them so that they wouldn't have to eat the awful stuff. After meeting Joey, he told me I absolutely HAD to try the ice cream. He said it was THE greatest, and he LOVED the stuff! Anyway, it's a little different from what we get in the US, but it tastes fine to me. So anyway we ate our ice cream, and Chris came in just as we were finishing the cleaning of the kids.

From there we met up again with Robyn and Levi, and since we were meeting someone else at a restaurant for lunch we decided to all head over there a little early. We went to a Chinese restaurant called The Ocean (They have tables on a deck overlooking the ocean, but there were too many of us so we had to eat inside). We waited a while before ordering, and then when we finally did order they took forever with the food. But it was worth the wait, so I won't complain...too much : p.

After lunch we all kind of stuck together for the rest of our shopping. Robyn and Levi are new here, so they liked having Angie as an old pro around to help them out. We went to a couple more stores after that, and then Chris took the kids into Best Buy, while Angie and I went to the market. At the market I picked up a couple souvenirs, tried a new kind of fruit, and also green coconut juice. The fruit was kind of a red/pink color with these spiky things all over it. You break off the top, squeeze the fruit out, and then you have to chew it off the seed that's in there. It's kind of like a homegrown grape, but with a slightly different flavor. It was really good. I don't know what it's called though. I asked Angie, but she couldn't remember, so she asked the woman who was selling them, and she had absolutely no idea either.

After we finally arrived at the base, we manged to get our rooming figured out, and then we headed over to have supper with Robyn and Levi. It was really fun, but we were all super exhausted, so we didn't stay too late.

Mark, and Sonde, the Mibu guys who are here to help with the check have been having some troubles. They had been planning on staying with some wantoks (friends) in the area, but it turned out they lived too far from the base for them to be able to walk back and forth. So last night they stayed with a guy who lives in a nearby village, but that has turned out to be a complete disaster. The guy spent the whole night complaining about everything. He didn't want the food they'd brought (it was their normal food from Mibu), they wanted white mans food. They refused the "smokes" offered them, they wanted the filtered kind you buy in town. They also wanted Mark and Sonde to bring them some white mans "stuff". I have no clue where they thought Mark and Sonde were going to get all of this, but they wanted it anyway! Apparently it's kind of the way the Mibu people treated the Walkers when they first moved in with the tribe. It's the cargo cult that a lot of the missionaries in PNG have to deal with. Mark and Sonde are both believers now, and wouldn't even consider doing anything like that anymore, so they're just absolutely heartbroken about this. They've been sticking up for the "white people," saying "that's not what they're here for, they're here to help us learn about God, not get us stuff." But they came over here first thing this morning, because they didn't want to be around this guy anymore. So now they're looking for a place to stay again. I don't really know much about them, other than that Mark is married, but even by looking at them, you can see that they're different from some of the other guys. They spend all their time smiling. Other PNGers who aren't Christians always look unhappy. It's cool to see the difference.

I didn't get through more than one day, but Chris needs the computer... at least I thought so. He's been sleeping for the past ten minutes, so he probably doesn't care anymore. But Angie is starting to fix lunch, so I should go anyway.

Anna