March 3

March 3rd, I'm sitting in bed trying to remember today's activities as to choose what I will blog about. We went and visited the new preschool. They call preschools 'kindy', as in short for kindengarten. Alex's host parents started the new kindy, they are in their second week of existence now. They have 10 kids in their class and two teachers, they were singing songs in the local language while we were there.

Alex and I really enjoyed our visit to the kindy. They have an indoor sandbox and toys made out of local seeds and bamboo and such things, play dough was just local clay and scrap lumber for building blocks. They also have a tub of water that is a different toy every week. This week it's to play 'pretend washing clothes by hand', next week it's going to have canoes floating about, week after something else, I don't remember. And they have a room that is a different pretend place every week. This week it's a store, next week a health clinic, week after a school, then a market and so on. The toys are on a rotating schedule too, which I thought was genius, they give the kids some toys for a week and then they are put up for the next 5 weeks. Then when they pull them back out 5 weeks later they are all new again, so they have 6 weeks worth of toys, but the kids always have "new" toys.

We should have some Antarctica friends coming tomorrow - Bamma and Justin (I say should because we haven't communicated with them in the past month), so we're going to head to the airport in the morning, which means we get mail tomorrow, which is pretty exciting. They are going to stay for a week and then we'll have another friend coming. We're excited to show-off our new home to our friends. And I hope they like taro and kumula, as that's all we'll be eating next week. That's not technically true, we'll be eating other foods too, but a lot of taro and kumula.