Swimming Weekend

It's been a while, but we have been really busy. This post is from the weekend of March 13th. Mersades and Teddy joined the school's swim team, and after a few weeks of practice they had their first swim meet.
The swim meet was to take place down the mountain, in what we call the low lands, in another Freeport town called Kuala Kenchana. (I think that is how it is spelled, but I am too lazy to check and make sure it is right.) So in order for this to all take place the Quality of Life people have to organize how to get approximately 150 people down the mountain, on helicopters, before the window of opportunity is gone. They can only fly the choppers when the weather and clouds cooperate. It is usually from seven in the morning until noon. And noon is usually a very late time. Most days they fly until around 10. So to get all those people down it had to be an almost perfect day. Fortunately, it was! Chris took Mersades and Teddy, while I stayed up top with Gavin and Gabrielle. I figured three less people to fly down would help the Q of L guys out...plus we were headed down the next weekend to leave for Australia. Sometimes you just have to make a sacrifice....... Of course I didn't want to wait for my turn on the chopper!!!!

So here are Mersades and Teddy before the meet started.
Teddy getting ready to go....

Next up Mersades...

Mersades and Teddy with some of their teammates watching other races.

The Papuan kids just loved this little blond hair boy.

I think this was Mersades doing the breast stroke. I sure hope it wasn't the crawl stroke!!!

Teddy lost his goggles when he dove in to the pool.

Chris took this picture from inside their limousine.

This is a picture of Banti. It was the original settlement when Tembagapura was started. This town is about two miles down the mountain from us.

This is just a pretty picture of one of the valleys close to where we live.

So while Chris and the other two were busy in the lowlands, I decided to brave a trip up to Rainbow Ridge (just another town with living quarters up the mountain from us) to take Gavin and Gabrielle swimming. For the three of us to get there, we had to walk up to the shops, hop on a bus, and after 20 to 30 minutes of riding in a dusty and stinky bus (it took this long because of all the other stops in Hidden Valley) we made it up to Rainbow Ridge. We then got off the bus and walked over to the swimming pool. Guess What???? It was CLOSED!!!! They were doing welding on the outside of the building.....not even close to where the pool was located....but it was totally closed down! So we RAN back to the bus! We didn't want to get stuck in RR for another 40 minutes! Thank goodness, we made it...... Yes everyone was staring at us.......

It wasn't a total loss, we did get some awesome pictures of the mountains around us! And, YES that is SNOW on the middle mountain top!

Here is just a zoomed in picture of the mountain.

Here is a picture before we found out the pool was closed.

And of course, Gavin and Gabrielle cooperating at having their picture taken.... (rolling my eyes here!)

So that was our weekend.... Oh wait, I forgot.... to end my weekend, Gabrielle threw up, Sunday, at four in the morning! PERFECT!

Cheers,

Robin