Beautiful Frangipanis from the experimental gardner!

18kg of Rice and a Bag

So what do you do when you win an 18kg bag of rice in a raffle and it would take 2 of you until next Christmas to eat it all??? Split it up and give it away of course then give the bag to the dog to play with!! Loving the cooking instructions on the bag especially the bit about foreign smells!!

Clea salavert . . . In memorandum

Had been out with friends celebrating the 100% all kiwi samoan influenced achievement but still managed to get up today at 6am ready to head to lalomanu with the library association of samoa. 25ish samoan librarians today helped set up the clea salavert memorial library which has been built by her family at lalomanu primary school in memory of a young australian avid reader who sadly lost her life in the tsunami while in samoa on holiday. We unboxed books sent by cleas school in australia, labelled, shelved and made pockets, cards and date dues for them. Yes it is a manual library as there is no computer or internet there yet. A terrific amount of work got done over a period of 6 hours but there is still plenty more to do. I spent a bit of time trying to crash course train someone to be a librarian and teach them in the space of a few hours what has taken me years to learn! Struggled a bit with the samoan lunch provided as i still have not got used to umu food and the taro sat heavy in my stomach. Thanks to those for preparing the meal however. No time for a swim unfortunately but checked out the tsunami rebuilding. Taufua is looking great and restored to former glory. Cant quite say the same for the neighbours who have built a great concrete monstrosity on the beach that ruins the landscape and loses the whole purpose of a samoan fale holiday. There are still remainders of destroyed buildings strewing the coastline and the place has turned into a ghost town now all the families are living inland but the vegetation is returning. I was hoping i could stick my head in the sand and avoid the 29th anniversary but that is pretty unrealistic especially as we will be remembering our dear friend peter from netball. The clea salavert library opens on the 5th october and i am looking forward to meeting her family though expect it will be a painful time for them. Photos of this event can be found here http://www.flickr.com/photos/libraryassociationofsamoa/sets/72157624929943355/

I DID IT!! White skirt brigade here I come!!

Apia Town Clock

Speaking of time-related matters, the Samoa Observer reported yesterday that the town clock is going to be repaired.

For those of you that know Apia, this is the clock that is only right twice a day. It hasn't worked for 10 years or so, but it is now being repaired to coincide with the start of daylight saving.

Apparently the clock also has some impressive bells that will ring again once the repairs are complete.

Daylight Saving

Daylight Saving is coming to Samoa!

I don't know if this is a good thing, but like it or not next weekend (Sept 25) we will be putting our clocks forward for the first time ever.

Since we have been here we have experienced a few major changes, particularly the road switch and now we have this to look forward to. I am not 100% sure why they want to do this one - I have seen some wacky claims that this is going to "...improve Samoa's health system." (Samoa Observer 24/9/10). One of the ideas is that this is going to give people and extra hour in the evenings to exercise, but somehow I don't think it will make a difference. For me personally it will be an inconvenience because I like to run after work just as the sun is going down, now I will have to wait and hour longer (or work and hour longer?!).

The other argument is that it will reduce power consumption because we won't have to turn our lights on so early in the evenings, but for me it will mean I will now have to turn the lights on in the morning while I have my breakfast!

I wonder how many people will turn up late for work on the following Monday?!

Winter in Samoa

This last week has been the coldest since we have been here and we have been getting some really heavy rain too. Angela took this photo of the rain at work the other day.

On Wednesday morning it was only 21 degrees when we were going to work and it has been so cold that we have had to put the duvet on the bed! Well, just the duvet cover actually, but this is the first time that we have done this in more than 2 years here. Maybe we are getting acclimatised!!

I know I shouldn't complain about the weather here - we have been watching the news from NZ and can see that you guys are having to put up with some really rough weather too right now. At least we haven't had any snow here!