A long weekend…

After the rascal experience last friday I certainly welcomed the long weekend !!

On Saturday I did a trip into Lae with Peter and I met the manager of the local supermarket. His name is Craig and he has been in Lae for approx. 3x years. He used to manage food stores back in Oz and if my memory serves right, one of the stores he used to manage was the “Jewel” store at UMINA. A small world indeed.

After Peter dropped me off after shopping I had a nap and at around sunset I walked over to his place for a mumu (BBQ). There are always many people living and staying at Peter and Agatha's (Peter's wife) and Saturday evening I met one of his nephew's Martin who is in the army and is an intstructor at Ingham barracks which is based about 2 kms up the road from UNITECH. The mumu was great and I am really starting to enjoy the PNG “cuisine”. There are many different ways of preparing a mumu. The one we had Saturday used a large copper dish filled with meat and greens, this dish is then buried in coals in the ground and allowed to cook I think for about one hour. Delicious !!!

Sunday was uneventful and I basically stayed at home all day. Received a few visitors, chewed some buai, drank some coffee and told some stories. Had a few naps, watched a couple of DVD's and went to bed pretty early.

Yesterday, Jane come around for lunch. Jane is a volunteer that works and lives in Lae and we have become friends. She works for an organisation called ADRA (7th Day Adventist) and is the HIV/AIDS Project Coordinator. I cooked Bacon and Eggs and we had fresh Noni juice as well. We were going to go for a walk to the local Rainforest Habitat but decided to do that another day. After Jane left I had a short nap and then went for a walk. Caught up with Goasa and his friend Nelson, hung around Nelson's place for a bit and then wandered over to watch the soccer. Weekends there is always soccer to watch on campus and I have begun to enjoy this activity. Many people come out to watch and some of the local women set up stalls and sell food and drinks (and of course buai).

Anyway, I hope all of you had a relaxing and fun weekend too.