On the road again

We are very pleased to finally have our car back on the road again. After all the hassles eventually the right windscreen arrived and was successfully installed.

I was surprised to get a call from the insurance company saying that the correct windscreen had arrived and that if I delivered the car before lunchtime they could have it installed by the end of the day. This seemed very speedy for Samoa! So I delivered the car and we checked again that they had the correct piece of glass then left them to it.

When I went back at the end of the day I was very happy to see our car ready and waiting with its brand new windscreen. I had a quick look to make sure everything was OK before heading home. Everything looked fine, then even managed to transfer the rear vision mirror over without breaking anything!

On the way home I had to use the windscreen wipers to clean the windscreen. I got a bit of a surprise to hear the sound of metal scraping on glass and when the wipers had finished their sweep they were pointing at strange angles across the windscreen! When I got home I was going to get on the phone and give the installer an earful, but realised that they were closed for the day. So I went out and had a closer look. After scratching my head for a while and trying to figure out what had happened I finally realised that the wipers were on the wrong way around (the drivers side wiper was on the passengers side and vice versa). I guess they must have taken them off when they were installing the windscreen and put them on the wrong way round. Fortunately it was and easy thing to fix and there was no damage done.

So, the trusty Subaru (or Knight Rider as it has been christened here by some of the students) is back in one piece again.

Baby Photos

Well, Angela was right - Lucky was due to have puppies.  The other night she didn't come around for dinner, which has never happened before. Then the next night she appeared and got us to follow her down the road to the empty house where the Americans had been staying. She then squeezed under they gate and disappeared under an old shipping container that has been left in the front yard.  The gate is locked and we don't have a key.  The fence and gate is topped with barbed wire, so climbing over didn't look like a good idea.  In the end I decided it was the only way I was going to get in there and manged to get over the barbed wire without doing any damage.

As soon as I got near the container I could hear squeaking coming from underneath.  When I looked under there was Lucky and her litter.  It was hard too see under there, but it looks like 6 or 7 puppies.  Angela has already started thinking up names for them, but I don't think we will be keeping them. Anybody want a puppy?! 

Lucky seems to be fine, she came out and had some food and water. We can't really get at the puppies yet, but I guess they will come out when they can.  

 

SMASHED!!

A couple of weeks ago we went out for a run and came back to find this!

No, we weren't parked under a coconut tree (Angela did check for coconuts, but there wasn't a coconut tree anywhere near us).   It seems that while we were out running a branch feel out of the tree we were parked under and smashed the windscreen.

Since then we have been having all sorts of fun trying to get it fixed. Of course there aren't any Subaru windscreens in the country and before we could arrange anything we had to sort things out with the insurance company.  A fairly simple job you would think, but not here.

Anyway, I was pleased when I received a phone call this morning saying that the windscreen had arrived and that they could fit it today.  So I carefully drove the car to the address that the insurance company gave me. This turned out to be some backyard workshop tucked in behind a laundromat! As soon as I pulled in and saw the look on the owner's face I knew something was wrong.  It turns out that they had ordered the wrong windscreen!! They had the make, model and year correct, but they had ordered the glass for a sedan, not a hatchback and unfortunately there is a difference.  

It looks like we will have to continue waiting until the correct windscreen arrives.  

10km "fun" Run

After spending the last 3 nights working at the South Pacific Netball Champs (serving the VIP section) Adam and I were pretty tired so headed home and ended up missing the end of netball party for all the volunteers that went to 5.00am this morning!

Lucky we did though as we were up at 5.30am and heading for the 10km fun run. I decided to enter just to support Adam even though I have never run this far in my life before. It was nice and cool and calm at 6.30am when the race began. The initial crowd took off at great speed so I found my own plodding pace and settled in. My aim was to at least run 5km and maybe have a 5km warm down as I walked back!

We headed out around the North Eastern side of the island. It was very nice running beside the sea and watching the sun rise. The thing with running in Samoa is that you have to go at stupid o'clock in the morning otherwise it's far too hot. The other thing is that you have to be ready to shout encouragement to those already returning back past you, wave to passers by hanging out of bus windows and say "Malo" (or Hi) to people standing on the side of the road watching as many pairs of palagi legs run past along with a few Samoan ones!

I reached the halfway point and was feeling OK. Nearly did not put my foot over the line so was nearly disqualified but with a bit of a sideways hop got there and had my number ticked off. As I was feeling alright and as it was a bit of a gentle downwards slope I continued to run.

The NZ High Commissioner, Caroline Bilkey went past me at the half way mark and was soon followed by Helen who also works for the NZ High Commission. These two ladies are part of the relay team that Adam is running in later in August half way around Upolu. Good to see they are all out training.

I made it as far at the 7km mark before I decided the legs were getting a bit heavy and to have a walk. It was a nice refreshing power walk in the shade. When I reached the corner where Adam reakoned it was 2km to go I decided to start to run again and see if I could run home. At the Moataa School sign away I went. I was surprised at how comfortable I was feeling and soon reached Apia Park where we play netball and knew I could make it home from there.

My time in the end was 1 hour and 8 minutes. Caroline came in at 1:01 and Helen must have been about 1:05. Adam was 57.5 so in the end after thinking I was miles and at least 1/2 hour behind everyone else my time wasn't too bad.

Feel stoked to have made it 10km only problem now is that I have raised the benchmark! After going home and having a quick shower and some breakfast I headed back out to netball and umpiring training. Now I'm working - what a day!

The patter of tiny Lucky's

The dog is pregnant. I could see her tummy moving and feel the puppies inside. OH MY GOD! Adam wants to disown me!!!! Suppose that is the end of Animal Protection Society visiting on Monday to Spay her then?

Outrigger Canoe Racing

We had the big regatta over the weekend and it was great fun.  For us social/business house crews the racing started on Friday afternoon.  This was supposed to be a 6km ‘Change Race’, where we were supposed to do 4 laps around a 1.5 km triangular course and change 3 crew members each lap.  For those of us that hadn’t done much training this sounded like it would be quite a challenge. Due to time constraints the course was shortened – we had to paddle out to a buoy about 400m out, turn around and come back then change 3 crew members then out and back again with another change and out and back a final time – a total distance of about 2.4 km. This sounded much better to us, the only problem was that we hadn’t practiced doing a 180 degree turn and these boats are quite big and don’t turn easily.  To add the drama it was quite windy, this was an extra challenge for us novice crews.  This all made for plenty of action for the spectators, we had a couple of boats tangled up on the marker buoys, one boat that flipped over and some rather ‘interesting’ crew changes.  At the end of it all our crew managed a very impressive second place! We managed to avoid most of the problems and got through the race ok.  We did get a 20 second penalty because we only changed 2 crew members instead of 3 at the end of the first lap, but aside from that we went well.  We were also the best looking crew thanks to our flash team uniforms!

On Saturday we had the shorter 500m and 250m races.  These are a lot more straight forward – no turns and no crew changes. Just line up at the start line and paddle like mad to the finish line with the winners of each heat to go through to the final. The 500m race was first and we were in the second heat.  We started off OK and had enough power left at the end to win our heat, so we got to the final.  The final was a really close race, after a slow start we didn’t quite have enough power to come through at the end and had to settle for third. 

 

The 250m sprints were next and this time I took my turn to sit our and let one of the others paddle. It was good to be able to watch the crews in action from the comfort of the shore.  In our heat there was some controversy at the start and 2 crews (included ours) were still waiting for the start signal while the other crews stated paddling.  It took them a little while to realise that the race was not going to be restarted so had to get going and try to catch up. Unfortunately they weren’t able to get there, so we missed out on the final.  As you can imagine there were all sorts of protests and complaints directed to the race starter and race director, both of these guys work for us but there was no way they would listen to our protests. Just wait until work next week – we will sort them out then! 

It was a great event and everyone had fun racing. It was also good to watch the competitive paddlers racing too. They really get the canoes moving, but even they have their mishaps – one of the finalists in the women’s 500m race tipped over right when she was challenging for first place! 

Independence Weekend

We have just enjoyed another long weekend for Samoa’s Independence Day Celebrations.  

In the days leading up to the weekend there was some confusion over whether we would have 2 holidays (Monday and Tuesday) or just Monday.  A week out my boss rang the relevant government department and was told that Monday only was a public holiday, but then on the Thursday before the weekend there was an official announcement that Monday and Tuesday had both been declared public holidays, so we ended up with a four day weekend.  We still can’t get over the fact that no one can confirm which days are holidays until a couple of days before the event! 

This time last year we had only just arrived and were invited to take part with USP as they joined in the march as part of the celebrations.  Although it was a long day we enjoyed taking part and then stayed to watch a lot of the cultural performances from the various schools and villages.  This year USP weren’t marching and we had a number of other things on to fill in our long weekend, including: va’a racing, 5km fun run, netball, sewing, gardening…     

Over the next few days we will try to post some of what we did during the weekend.  

APS

Since adopting the dogs Angela has been wanting to find out about getting them ‘fixed’ and checked over.  Here in Samoa there are no vets, but there is the Animal Protection Society.  They rely on volunteer vets to provide spaying and neutering services and run some education programs.  We will probably have to pay them a visit sometime soon to get Angela’s dogs looked at. 

The other night the APS held a fundraising dinner so we decided to go along.  It was a good night, held at Bistro Tatau – one of Apia’s finest restaurants.  We had never been there before, so it was a good excuse to check it out.  The meals were very nice and between courses there were presentations by APS, quizzes and then the guest speaker – Pamela Stephenson Connolly (Billy Connolly’s wife – although I am sure she doesn’t like to referred to that way!).  Even though she admitted that she is not an ‘animal person’ she did give a very entertaining speech.  

All in all it was a good night out for a good cause. 

Going to the Dogs!

Those of you that know the way Angela feels about dogs will never believe it, but she has adopted 2 Samoan dogs.  

When we first moved in to our house the family across the road had a dog named Lucky.  Last

 year Lucky had some puppies and then later in the year the family moved away. When they moved they took the puppy with them, but left Lucky behind.  At the time there were a couple of 

Americans living down the road. They had some dogs of their own and took to feeding Lucky when they feed their dogs. Somewhere along the way Lucky’s ‘companion’ turned up, the Americans called him Old Man and started feeding him too.  Then the Americans returned home and there was no one to look after Lucky and Old Man.  

Angela decided that she couldn’t sit by and watch these dogs starve, so decided to feed them. Of course we didn’t have any suitable dog food, so had to go and buy some.  At first the dogs were a

bit wary of us, and Angela wasn’t too sure about the dogs, but now whenever we come home we are greeting to 2 dogs with furiously wagging tails! At first they weren’t too keen on being patted, but now they come and have a pat and Lucky even likes having her tummy tickled! 

 

We have also learnt the Lucky is the bossy one out of the 2 and Old Man is a bit slow. When we try to feed them Lucky always barges in and wolfs down the food and Old Man sits back and misses out, so now Angela gives them separate bowls and keeps one inside he gate and one outside until Old Man has had a chance to get his fair share!