Gresi

We headed out to Gresi, the language closest to Kemtuik, for an indigenous praise and worship gathering.

Ethnomusicologist friend Erin came with her husband, baby and middle daughter Allegra, which was fun for the boys. We stopped at a lookout on the way..

..and then picked up Pak Jacob. Here I am with his daughter Bertha and granddaughter Esther Kalvaria.

The band: drummers and singers. The guy on the right is leading.
These ladies were the first up to dance.

After a couple of hours of singing the band took a break while various people spoke.

There was an interesting mix of greetings, community announcements and a sermon.

This is how the kids kept themselves amused during the long speeches: Allegra does something sensible and educational, Soren and Reub chew plastic and pretend to be elephants..

Jacob has a bit of a gift with babies, and we welcomed the break from holding her. Why didn't we bring a stroller?!

More dancing and then lunch at about 4pm.

Allegra finally managed to convince Soren to come in for a quick dance. He coped well with the day until about 3pm, when he had a meltdown and needed lots of hugs and reassurance, overwhelmed I think by the noise and intensity of the singing and dancing, us being pretty unavailable and the fact that lunch was delayed a few hours and we had run out of snacks!
Reuben goes in for a solo, typically unfazed.
Lovely brand new squat toilet. The boys are now very adept at using one without peeing all over their clothes.

YMP3's Birthday

Phil went to Manokwari for the 10th birthday celebration of the local organisation we work with, YMP3. If you look a map of Papua, Manokwari is in the 'Bird's Head' of the island. Phil and other Sentani colleagues travelled the two or so hours in a small plane and Phil had a go at the reins.
The view of Lake Sentani from the air is magnificent! At bottom right you can see the road that Phil rides to get to our language areas. Nice commute!
This is us: Indonesians from Papua and elsewhere, Americans, Australians, Koreans.

Thailand

Phil took off to Thailand for 10 days to play drums in the band for the four-yearly conference of our wider organisation. He had a blast while we languished at home. No, not really, we had some fun of our own. There were 520 people of 67 nationalities representing 82 organisations working in 77 countries (if you're into stats..)

Phil raced around Chiang Mai in a tuk-tuk trying to get some vaccines for Autumn and Reuben. Long story short: no luck.

Phil snuck out with a friend to do a Thai cooking course..
Pad Thai. Newtown here we come..