Trick or Treat!

Halloween is a new invention here in Rurutu and nobody really seems to know or care why we dress up as pumpkins for the occasion, but we all like collecting kilos of bonbons - the girls did trick or treating at school!

Mato is seven!

For her seventh birthday Matotea wanted cupcakes, so she could take some to school to share with her friends......I found an awesome, if rather wicked recipe here (I didn't do the ganache it seems too much, but I did do a rather good white chocolate frosting with lots of sprinkles).

Delicious!

Matotea's changing face

We've been super busy this holiday week with guests up to the eyeballs, it's great that we're so busy, but it's definitely been our toughest challenge yet, particularly as 'meme', my invaluable mother in law, who usually helps with the childcare, has been away in Tahiti and elsewhere, pursuing her ancestors and Parau family, but more about that in the coming weeks! So it was twelve guests and three kids to look after, but we managed it, though I am spending today de-compressing and having some Amaiterai catch-up time! At the end of the school half-term Matotea and Heimana brought home their school portraits, I scanned in Mato's last three school portraits, it's fun to see how she's changed

and how fast she's growing into a beautiful young girl.

School photos

Yes, it's that time of year again, and now I have two heis to make (it's worth it for the cuteness factor)

Easter extravagances

The easter hols are coming to a close, and we're still very much alive after two weeks of guests, girls at home and breast-feeding 7 week old babies......it's a lot to juggle, but we're doing it, and whatsmore, actually enjoying it, in a frazzled sort of a way.

 

Over the Easter weekend we went gourmet  with an excellent passion fruit cheesecake (thanks to the highly unexpected appearance of large quantities of delicious cram cheese at our local store, miracles never cease!)
  Still on a fermented food high, I tried a sourdough fruit brioche (an interesting idea!). Brioche is a traditional French easter thing, so the guests enjoyed it, though my jury's still out, sourdough maybe shouldn't go here!

We did even get some easter chocolates, thanks to some ultra thoughtful guests, the local store had let us down on that one!

 

In anticipation of a chocolate free time I had even gone  the extra mile to do some real painted easter eggs, blowing eggs is too much fun for young and old alike!

Then we had a brief break from guests, enough to have a restorative weekend off, and get gussied up to head off to our first dinner dance en famille (this makes it all sounds rather posh - but it was just poisson cru and chow mein served in mass under a lot of tents with some local dancing and drunkenness)

 Then we've been back into guests, but we all seem to be finding our equilibrium. Amaiterai certainly has figured out where he likes to be best......

 ........and Matotea and Heimana have been enjoying some impromptu horse-riding lessons.

Amaiterai's first month (and a bit!)

Blogging and babies don't mix!
Yesterday Amaiterai was 5 weeks old, he's thriving and has already gained 6 cm in length and over 1.6kg in weight. The month since he arrived has gone by in an eventful blur of sleep-deprivation!





We said goodbye to April a few days after the birth, having learned a thing or two about sourdough and lilikois (passion fruit). Inspired by April, I've gone off on a fermented food frenzy, making sourdough burger buns, sourdough rice crackers and sourdough potato pancakes to name a few, I've also had a go at my first batch of kim chee and a very passable ginger beer! Probiotics are us!

Naturally we celebrated St.David's day (March 1st for all you non-welshies) as well as Wales' victory in the six nations rugby, with a blistering win over England in Cardiff.

We've had a film crew visit us to film our extremely talented trilingual girls, for an educational programme about multilingualism, to be broadcast here in Tahiti.

 

 The grandparents spent the best part of Amaiterai's first month with us, babysitting their hearts out, before a return to chilly Wales a week ago, they left in the snow and two months later returned to snow!

We're enjoying hot and sunny weather, though there is a little coolness to the mornings, heralding the arrival of our autumn! In the meantime there's work to be done in the garden - Amaiterai is not the only thing growing round here, look at these fabulous irises that have just started flowering here in th garden.

The jasmine, ylang-ylang and honeysuckle are also putting on a impressive olfactory experience at the moment. The most exciting new acquisition is cacao, Viriamu's friend in Tahiti he sent him some pods, so now I have Roald Dahlish dreams of creating my own chocolate delights! Talking of chocolate we're running up to the easter hols and our first busy period at the guesthouse with our new recruit! Hold on for a bumpy ride....

September's here

Almost a month has flown by between blogging, and it's been a busy one, full of guests and whales and goings on! First of all we had the much-anticipated arrival of the Gauguin cruise ship, which turned into a fiasco as the guests were unable to get off the boat due to the rough seas and narrow pass in Avera......this was a huge disappointment to us all, particularly the tourist committee (of which I am the tresurer) as we'd spent months preparing a spectacular welcome, training guides, programming an activity-packed day and negotiating at great length with the cruise company. Fortunately, the day was saved to some extent, as some of the welcome committee were allowed to get on the boat (after much to-ing and fro-ing with the cruise staff), so thankfully we managed to get paid for the 325 flower leis that had been prepared by our craftswomen.......I was very grateful to have been absent, it happened to coincide with another tourism salon, and I don't regret it an instant, as we managed to fill the guesthouse for the next three months. The school term continues and Heimana is getting into the school rhythmn. Matotea is making leaps and bounds in the literacy race, she tells me she wants a desk and computer for her birthday, she'll be writing novels by next year!!! For my part the garden's coming on, though it's been a bit too dry lately so some of my seedlings suffered from my absence at the salon, but I'm stocked for fresh herbs, we've been eating my home-grown plum tomatoes, the odd cape gooseberry and are slowly gathering strawberries in the freezer, in the hopes of making some jam or a sauce for yogurt, before the end of the year......I also have been growing, there's a third and final bump, due in feburary......

Let the heiva commence.....

 Friday was the opening ceremony of our annual cultural festivities the 'Heiva i Rurutu', for the first time I was involved in the opening parade, as a member of the Tourist Committee. It was a fun little moment of island pride, with an odd jumble of participants - the local associations were out in force, the kid's football associations, the Pandanus weavers and the very noisy Moto-cross and quad bikers, the mayor's office workers (all in matching attire, above) and a drive-by of the new communal heavy machinery!

Then there were the three village's dance troupes with their decorated chariots.

 

There was the raising of the flags headed by the chief of police and an original version of the Marseillaise played on Tahitian drums, by Moerai's dance troupe, all kitted out in ti-leaf costumes. My girls, who'd never miss a party, came along,  dressed up to the nines in their new fairy and ballerina costumes - Matotea was nonplussed when she was not allowed to join me in the parade.

Tama, our friend and the local dentist from Tubuai, took some great photos of the girls as well as the opening of the craft tent, here my mother-in-law shows off her wares.

 In the evening there was the annual fireworks display,  Heimana slept through the whole thing last year, but this year she was completely enchanted.......

Comenius Cultural Exchange

 Matotea's school is involved in an EU funded cultural exchange program. It's a funny little advantage of being part of a French territory. At the moment we've only had opportunities for the staff to travel between schools. Monsieur Vaitea spent a week in Norway (now that's going to be a cultural shock!) and other staff have been to the UK and Spain. Likewise, we had a delegation of teachers from Europe visiting last month. The program is an opportunity for both children and educational staff to travel between countries including Croatia, France (read Rurutu), Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain and the UK. According to their blurb the program promotes linguistic and inter-cultural understanding, encouraging our children to become active European citizens, responding to global issues! I am a fan of any kind of program that encourages our children to become more conscious of the world outside, my big fear for my girls is that they grow up in a Polynesia bubble (lotus-eating), without understanding how life is so very different elsewhere in the world (not better or worse, just fundamentally different). Here in Polynesia we all seem to be expert navel-gazers, it's true we're very geographically isolated, and live a life that is quite detached from mainland Europe, but still there's a whole wide world out there. Sadly, few people here are aware of or interested in international news affairs. The French presidential elections were played out on local tribal alliances (who supports the mayor or not), really not anything to do with the merits of the presidential candidate to govern France. Anyway, last week the school held a "European Fete", I went along out of curiosity, the children were all dressed up in 'pareo' and flower leis, even though each class had been learning about other countries. It seemed mostly to be a rather uninspired show of folk dancing to German and English rock music, with  everyone cheering at the end when the group representing Rurutu came on! Matotea's class did a great job of repeatedly pointing at their nose and ears, along to a German nursery rhyme. The class that were "Happy and they Knew it" were a little less convincing!

Roller chick

What was I thinking, when I ordered these. Someone seems to like them.....though I suspect it's just a matter of time before we end up at the medical center!

May Day mayhem!

On May Day, for lack of a maypole to dance around, or a socialist flag to wave, we girls ventured out for a quick swim on my favourite beach. No mermaids this time, but lots of big waves and a lot of fun!

 Then to top it all off, chef Mato helped me bake some coconut jam biscuits.....and we all helped eat them. Long-live bank holidays - in fact, there are 5 official holidays here in May, plus a half-term break, whew, I'll need to keep on my toes with projects for girls over the next few weeks!

Cupcakes!

I managed to find a few chocolate eggs and a couple of chocolate bunnies at the local store here on Rurutu a week or so ago, so for the first time, we celebrated Easter with the girls. After gorging themselves on the chocolate bunnies on sunday, we even made some super rich cupcakes today, complete with chocolate dipped coconut nests and the last remaining eggs! They didn't last too long.....

Re'o Maohi Week

 

Last week was national language or culture week, here in French Polynesia, to celebrate Matotea's primary school has an open day, with a little expo of the traditional activities that each class has been doing. Granny and grandpa got to visit the open day a couple of years back, this year it was Heimana's turn, and she is SOOOO ready to go to school. 

 

Every morning she waits by the truck-stop with Matotea, with her backpack on, waiting for the day when she too will be allowed to go! Here are a few pictures from the open day, Matotea's class was doing string games, cat's cradle (not sure how traditional that is, but they were all rather cute grappling with their strings!). 

 

The cat's cradle is called the canoe here, and they have a mosquito and taro field too....

There were also flowers made from coconut fiber, painting on coconut fiber as well as a healthy eating display, complete with taro fritters (delicious but not too low fat!).....

Flying high

 

Among the weird and wonderful stuff Granny and Grandbad have brought along with them for the girls are two rather smart (and remarkably easy to fly) kites. Matotea thinks they're just GREAT!

Matotea wears her arm-bands to fly the kite, always best to be a friend of safety, next stop kite-surfing!

Christmas under the palms

We're back into the saddle and have the house full as of boxing day, but we had the weekend to ourselves. So, we had all the family over for a Christmas bash, it was Punarii's christening, one of my nephews (I have a few, five at last count!).

 

It all worked out great in the end, after a bit of drama, because (predictably), the boat was late and so our champagne and beer spent Christmas day sitting on the dock in Rurutu, to be unloaded on the 26th. Fortunately, a kindly family member filled in, and I made a quite passable pineapple rum punch, so we muddled through! The girls spent most of the day shuttling between the beach and the paddling pool.....