Back on the Homefront

With Paul off on his research cruise, I finally got around to getting some pictures and writing about our new house. We moved in January, right after getting back from New Zealand, and since then mothers and mothers-in-laws have been asking to see pictures of the new place so here we go. The new house is in the village of Malaeimi, in a valley at the base of Tau Mountain. This satellite image really highlights the fact that we now live in the jungle! I was tired of the apartment living, but we traded the sterility of our second-floor apartment to move into an older, rotting island house. As far as island standards go, though, it really is a nice house. The problem is that we live in a valley and although it didn't seem possible to be any more humid and damp, we are! It seems to rain more here than anywhere else on the island. My biggest challenge is to time the drying of the laundry in between the rain showers. The perks are, well, we get to live in a valley surrounded by the mountains and the jungle is our backyard. My favorite feature of our house is the screened-in porch. It is so nice to sit out there and we often enjoy our meals on the porch. Most of our walls are louver windows so it is very light and airy in the house. I love being in my house now, whereas in the apartment I always wanted to get out. We temporarily converted our kitchen table into a ping pong table and after lots of practice I am getting good enough to beat Paul once in awhile (unless he's just letting me win).I made curtains for the bedrooms and here is a picture of Emma's room with her fancy pink island curtains. Our yard is amazing. Emma wanders around for hours (doused in mosquito repellant). We are in a compound of four houses and all of our neighbors have children of various ages. One day Emma organized a kick ball game with almost 10 kids. She has definitely moved up from playing by herself on a cement slab.

And here's a couple of pregnancy pictures of me in our backyard. The photos were taken on March 8 when I was about 30 weeks pregnant. That was the day of the wonderful baby shower that my friends threw for me... thank you Carol, Liz, Julia & Deepa!