Bajawa is even colder than Ruteng..or as I seem to like to call it Retung!

Well my English pronunciation and spelling are not improving out here. All of a sudden I seem to be devising my own language. Made all the sisters reel with laughter when I renamed the town of Ruteng, Retung. No wonder the poor bus driver was confused!

Well as promised I have now found stable internet and photos will now be coming in various shapes and sizes. Firstly my transport. The trusty motor sepeda,

Must

admit have not gone far on it. For a

start it is a kick start bike, I have developed muscles in my right leg I never knew I had, I do wonder if after two years one leg might be bigger than the other. Well I suppose time will tell. Mind you I would need to ride the bike more than the once a week that I am averaging at the moment.

I feel like I have had a busy week this week, but now I am trying to think of something to write I cannot think of that much. At work I have managed to build a simple website for the school. Here is the link, please have a look. http:// www.karyamurni.webs.com/ now all I have to do is devise a simple training package in Bahasa Indonesia so staff who know how to update it. That will be one of my tasks for a few weeks.

I am also compiling an excel spreadsheet with a difference, I am adding photo's so we know exactly which child is which and new staff starting at the school will also know. I am really hoping this will help with data collection. Again some simple training will need to put together. Thankfully the excel training has already been started by Mark so I just need to add a simples session about adding a photo to a spread sheet.

The sisters are on holiday this week, they have very kindly been donated a holiday by a sponsor, so they have all gone to hot Bali, and myself and Sister Petra are here in cold Ruteng. However at least we can rest assured that this is not as cold as Bajawa. It was freezing at night there. Thankyou for Danny and Lau for letting me stay, had a great time. Thanks to the staff at Bappeda for the coffee!

As people will see from these photo's life is quite simple for volunteers.

In the next exciting instalment of my blog I will put some photos of the convent where I am staying and the grounds. If you are lucky you might even get a bit of video, depends how brave I am feeling.

This week the children also performed in the Independence day celebrations in Ruteng. Some people will have already seen the photo's on the website of the school, if not they are well worth a visit and the website is very easy to navigate. But good news for people who have been asking, I got a photo taken.

After a day is this sun, I developed nasty sunburn. I became a bit complacent as it is not normally that hot here, due to the cloud cover. In future I will be much more careful.

People keep e-mailing me about the food and what I am eating. It's easy to remember I am eating white rice, fish and green vegetables 3 times a day seven days a week. I know that sounds bad, but actually I really like it. Especially with a nice dose of Sambal, (the hot chili paste - very popular here)

Please keep in contact. Rachel