A day in the life...

Several of you have asked what my schedule is like, so I thought I’d let you all know!  I’m 15 hours ahead of you on the East coast… Here’s a look at what a normal (if those exist) weekday looks like:

6:00am | Rise and shine!  This is about what time the sun starts rising, too.  And I haven’t had to use an alarm clock to wake me at all… usually the birds, roosters and insects have already done that!

7:00am | Breakfast.  The normal is granola, yogurt and fruit (with some cinnamon-sugar sprinkled in).  There are so many bananas.  Good thing they’re my favorite fruit!  I eat at least 3 a day.  I’m going to be sick of them in a couple weeks!

8:00am | Classes.  We usually start out with Tok Pisin (the trade language) classes: we sing a couple songs, read a portion of Jonah and discuss the meaning of the words, have a lesson with a national tisa (teacher).  Some mornings we go into the town of Madang to the market or other stores.

9:30am | Tea time. We sit with our Tok Pisin teachers while we have tea and biscuits and can only speak in Tok Pisin!  Yesterday we brought pictures of our family to explain how we are related to each of them.

10:00am | Lecture time.  We have classes on PNG history, geography, medical advice, anthropology, etc.

12:15pm | Lunch.  This is usually our biggest meal of the day.  And it’s always so good!

1:00-2:00pm | Rest time.  I can’t take naps… never have been good at it.  So this is when I try to get online or do some homework or whatever.  And this is the one time (if the internet is working) that I can maybe actually talk to someone back home.

2:00-4:00pm | Hands-on class time.  Mondays we hike.  Wednesdays we go swimming in Nagada Harbor (I'm up to 5 laps! That's 5/8 mile).  Today we learned to build an outdoor haus kuk (kitchen).  One day we’ll learn to bake bread.  And lots of other useful things for living in PNG.

5:45pm | Dinner.  I love to eat. :)

7:00pm | Some nights we have group fun times.  And other times we just hang out, check our email and facebook, or do homework!

8:30 or 9:00pm | Bedtime! We’re always so exhausted by now!

And now you have an idea of what a day in the life of a POC (Pacific Orientation Course) participant looks like!  But it of course never looks the same :)

Here are some pics for you...

Flying into Port Moresby

Meal time

A flower some of the girls picked

Swimming at Nagada (that rope in the water to the left of the pic

is what we swim laps around.  8 laps is a mile)

Our dorms (this picture was supposed to be in my first blog from PNG,

but you guys didn't tell me that I uploaded the wrong picture!)

Watching as the men demonstrate how to build an outdoor haus kuk (kitchen)

They built the shelter and a picnic table with sticks, bamboo, a tarp
and some string in under an hour!

You get to see my progress and finished result in a few days. :)