Keeping Busy!

Here’s a recap of some of the fun things that have been going on lately.

Game Days

First of all on the 15-17th Sister Ervi asked us if we would help prepare some games for the senior high school students during their break days. They take their midterm tests in the morning and then they have an interclass competition, speech competition, and the rest of them could play games with us.

So the first day we played tug of war. Alberto, the third year English teacher, helped me translate the instructions into Tetum and he and the student vice president generously helped us explain the game to the students. In East Timor Tug of War is a guys’ game, but Therese, Bernadette, and I were able to jump on a couple of times. The schedule set 1st year class A against class B and C against D and then the winners played each other and same with the other classes. Once the other team didn’t show up so the four of us, Alberto, and some of the other teachers challenged the oncoming team. We’ll just say we demolished them : )

And then we had the final winners face each other. After a quick battle we had a winner and they ran off into their classroom to celebrate. But we called them back out and challenged the overall winner to face us and the teachers. I wish I could say that we demolished them too, but it was the other way around. There were many of them and they were very strong.

The next day we tried Dizzy Dingbats, the relay where you spin around ten times with your forehead on a bat and then run. But it didn’t work out as well as planned. They had the girls play this one, but we don’t think they had done much twirling as children. We started off at ten spins and girls were getting so dizzy they were running to the wrong side of the yard. We went down to five and then three and the some of the girls were still falling over on the ground. So instead we had them play basketball and they were much more content. The game had been fun for all of the students watching from the sidelines, but wasn’t as enjoyable for the participators as we had hoped.

Wednesday we were going to play soccer, but we were asked to play basketball again because they used to let the students play soccer by the school, but many windows and other things got broken. So the students played basketball and were still very happy.

A Christmas Concert

With the Sisters we were invited to a Christmas concert put on by many of the internationals and locals. It was our first taste of air conditioning in the time we’d been here so that was an added plus.

Us and our roomies waiting for the concert to start. On the left is Bernadette and then Therese.

The starter choir was the choir from St. Cecilia’s Church who have performed internationally as well as locally. They sang beautifully – having soloists that performed Ave Maria and Panis Angelicus like I have heard it sung only a few times before.

Here is the Saint Cecilia’s choir (appropriate because St. Cecilia is the patron saint of music : )

We didn’t get a good picture of the main choir, but it was composed mostly of internationals whom were in Dili working or helping. Many of them were outstanding soloists and almost half the choir took a turn singing a Christmas classic, a lot of them in English! We heard White Christmas, I’ll Be Home for Christmas, the Christmas Song… you can imagine why we felt a little homesick. But it was very beautiful and helpful. It made things start to feel like Christmas.

Since then, Brendan and I have been doing Secret Santa with each other to make it feel more like Christmas. It’s fun trying to surprise each other with something a little special. This is our first Christmas as a real family so we’re trying to make it special.

We Have a Car!

Sister Sonia, our kind boss, alerted us that she would be giving us the VOICA car that was used by volunteers in the past. She had the mechanics fix up an oil leak and they brought it over to the Balide Convent. We were there on Thursday to say night prayer with them, so we tried to drive the car home then. I say tried. It’s a nice little manual, a Toyota Carolla, but it had a few problems.

Therese showing off our new hot rod.

So Brendan started drive it home, but immediately it had problems with the battery. Eventually he coerced it into working, but we had to go really slow. The Sisters had asked Bosco, a driver, to lead us home since we weren’t sure of the way. We had made it pretty far, with a few rough times in the middle, when the car died for the final time. We got out and pushed it, but nothing could get it going again. Eventually Bosco took us home in his car and we locked the car and left it on the side of the road.

It turned out that something was wrong with the battery, but Sister Sonia got it fixed and the next day we drove it home for good. Brendan did a great job mastering the car, and everyone was impressed. All of his practice with the nicer manuals at home has been training for our lovely car here : )

It will be really nice to have a car here for health emergencies or for day trips to the beach. We’re all pretty excited to have it as an option, although we’ll still use our feet as our main mode of transportation. Until now we’ve walked EVERYWHERE, which is good because that’s what most of the local people do, including our students. Most people walk, there are many motorcycles, but not too many cars. 50% of the cars on the road are UN vehicles – no joke. The rest are mikrolets (minibuses for public transport), taxis, and a few personal vehicles. That they would give us a car is quite a blessing.

Mini Christmas in the Delta House

Our house is called Delta and is in the Delta 3 neighborhood. Yesterday we had a little Christmas party for the four of us, before we head up to Baucau to have Christmas with the rest of the volunteers. And as most things here, it didn’t go quite as planned.

Even though it was comparatively expensive (but better than buy all the individual ingredients we don’t have), Brendan and I bought a cookie mix and a suncatcher kit to surprise the girls. While they were distracted working on our gift basket for the Sisters and presents for the gift exchange at Balide that night, we tried to make cookies.

Therese, distracted by the gift basket.

Problem: This is the extent of our kitchen – two gas burners. But we made it work. After frying up four gooey cookies, people came in, ate the cookies and moved on to the cookie dough.

The suncatchers would have been really fun, but the paint has dried up in the heat and was in little blocks. We tried to use warm water and even tried to melt it over the flame of the gas burner, but it only worked on a few colors. But I’m sure that using a combination of markers and watercolor paints we will finish those suncatchers.

Brendan’s Haircut

He invested in some hair cutting equipment and buzzed his hair himself. He’s a lot happier with short hair in this heat.

He can now wear his Aussie hat around Dili and not die from the insane sunbeams.

Or he can go without it and smile because things are so much cooler!

Final Perk

We really are on the outskirts of Dili. This really nice road was just put in the week before arrived. You can tell it’s new because it doesn’t have giant potholes all over it. Driving on any other road is like a game because of all the potholes you have to try to avoid.

In the distance are big rolling hills covered by tropical foliage. Usually it is bright and hot and the green is a vibrant color that you can’t get in a crayon package. Here all the colors seem to be more vibrant with all the tropical flowers and fruit. In the Tetum language they even have two words for blue: azul and azul escuro (a very bright blue) to distinguish between blue and radiant blue : )

Brendan catches me walking to school.

K, that’s all! And Happy Jesus' Birthday to you again! We'll let you know about Christmas and New Year's in East Timor when we get back to Dili. God bless!

Love you all!

Rachel and Brendan