Matotea is two!

October 15th was Matotea's second birthday - it's hard to believe that she's two already. While she still isn't really aware of what a birthday is and why it's special, she does like eating cake!!!!

A blog is born!

Since the beginning of the month we've had ADSL high-speed wireless internet here at home. I can tell you it is revolutionizing our life - or rather my life! It's just so wonderful to be able to talk to my friends and family over the internet, it just breaks down those distance barriers. Of course, I wouldn't have been inspired to get revamp my blog without it. With the dial-up I never really could enjoy being online because of the expense and the fact that it was clogging up our phone-line, so plain old web-surfing (that I took for granted in California) was kept to a minimum. Anyway, now I've re-posted many of the old blog entries I had on the old site and am busy back posting a lot of entries that I just never got around to writing or posting, from the last couple of years. Now I have renewed my good intentions to be a faithful blogger, particularly now it's so easy with blogspot! The other big advantage of high-speed is the opportunity for internet shopping - the delivery charges are pretty extortionate and you'd better not be in a hurry - but still hats off to sites like Amazon, for instance, who can deliver to French Polynesia! It's just these little things that make life just that bit less isolated, for all my good intentions to live simply and with nature I can't hide just how reliant I am on modern technology, maybe even more so now I'm here in Rurutu......

Amy and Dave tie the knot

On August 2nd my good friends Amy and Dave tied the knot in a beautiful spot surrounded by a huge eucalyptus forest in the Dandenong Hills, Melbourne, Australia. It was a really beautiful occasion and I felt privileged to be a matron of honor (even if it was a little bit chilly!!!). I got some friends of mine in Raiatea to design some black pearl necklaces for Amy and us girls, and I think Catherine and Eric did an amazing job. Amy just looked stunning!

There's actually a really nice story behind their wedding, and of course it involves Rurutu. Amy and I were at uni together and we enjoyed some fun adventures, I got to visit her in Australia a couple of times. Amy and Dave were even able to come to our wedding in Rurutu back in December 2006, Amy was one of my maids of honor. In fact Dave proposed to Amy while they were here with us, so it's all one beautiful full circle.

Dave was also almost singlehandedly responsible for our wedding video - and he did an amazing job, so hats off to him. The family and even some of our guests here in Rurutu still really enjoy watching the DVD.

I spent most of the time in Aus hanging out with Amy and Dave's family, doing some touristy things, lots of shopping and of course topping up on speaking english!

Heiva de Rurutu 2008

The heiva is a month long cultural festival celebrated every year across French Polynesia. In Tahiti it's a large and rather professional festival, but in the islands it remains charmingly rustic. This year was the first year that I've really done the whole heiva in Rurutu. The festival includes a huge variety of competitions ranging from sporting events like paddling,

stone-lifting,

and, of course, the bareback horse race along the beach.....

(Viriamu got third this year, but his little brother got first! It's supposedly a friendly race, but there's definitely some pride at stake)

There are also dance, singing, music, flower-arranging and weaving competitions, as well as the country-fair sort of things, the longest/heaviest bunch of bananas or taro root, coconut husking and taro-pounding competitions, all in all it's a lot of good fun for the whole family!!

manioc (tapioca) roots (above left), varieties of bananas and taro (above right)

a prize-winning bunch of bananas weighing in at >40kg

poi-poi making (taro-pounding)