July 6 - Birthday blong Becca

Today was a bit of a frustrating day. I'm tired and in need of some down time, some time alone without my group and without being watched at every given moment. It was mine, Nicole and Rose's small project day, so we met our counterparts and tried to get started, but I'm finding it very hard. The language barrier is an issue right now, and we don't seem to have much direction. We hiked up to the phone twice to ring Linda George from the preschool association but both times she wasn't there - so we didn't get very far todaym there are a lot of questions we really need answered. We did get to visit the kindy though, and Edline George, the kindy teacher, is an amazing woman. The kids are adorable but really, really shy. One of them cried when he saw us. There are 18 kids ages 4-5 that go to the kindy here, 12 boys and 6 girls.

Some of the kindy students...a little shy around us on our first day, but it didn't last long.

The kindergarten development small teams group - from left: Rose, me (white Joanna), Joanna, Lolo, Stan, Edline and Nicole.

This afternoon after I did my washing I sat around with the kids a bit - I'm determined to be better with children than I presently am. I don't know how to talk to kids, so here, it's good, because we have to find other ways of getting along until I get a better hold of the language. They seem to like it a lot when I dance - apparently I look like a chicken.

We've named our house the "Rat Hall", appropriately. Tonight Liesa asked our counterparts, "Hamas rat long wall?", which had everyone in hysterics. I also saw a chicken lay eggs today and had a run-in with the three and a half legged dog.

Chickens eating coconut. I took a lot of pictures of this because I thought it was beyond adorable. Little did these chickies know that soon they would become dinner too.

My World Cup soccer experience in Vanuatu is limited to me checking the results of the matches on a sheet posted outside the co-op - not ideal, but it will have to do. Everyone here seems really excited about it, but no one is cheering for the same teams, and I'm wondering how they actually find out what happened...**

**France and Italy played in the final, Italy winning to my dismay. It turns out that the men would travel to another village to listen to the game on the radio and come back and report the scores to everyone else.