We're Here!

At last!!! We're finally here :)

I thought it may never happen, but here I am, typing this from our new home in Pt Moresby. It's been an intense few days! I apologise for the length of the post, I’ll try and keep it brief but I do tend to ramble. Here’s what we’ve been up to the last few days…

Sunday 29th:
Morning – mad packing of last minute things, remembering some things forgotten but realising it's too late to do anything about it. Me finishing thank you cards from Niamh's birthday party. So disorganised! I'm so sorry if I've missed you, my list was lost along the way!

We had a ring ceremony too, with Biscuit as the ring bearer. We decided not to take our actual wedding rings with us, because we'd be devo if they were nicked. So, we went out and for the grand combined total of $45, we bought some rings that we're really not to fussy about losing! Dan's has a gecko on it. Mine has some noice ummm... fake glass? Our vows consisted of “um, I promise to do the same stuff I said last time”

Afternoon – off to the airport for our farewells. Was great that all our family could make it along to say goodbye. We all held it together pretty well until right at the end, when there were a few tears. Biscuit had no idea what all the fuss was about.

Evening – flight to Brisbane! Once on the plane, and tears dried, we were all set for our inaugural Flying Biscuit experience. With the flight at 6:45pm (Biscuit bedtime is 7pm) I was nervous. Often, if there is something more interesting going on, she'll decide to make it very difficult to get her to sleep! We were so thrilled that she giggled all through take off (at the book Grandma Helen made her), then drank a bottle of “muk” and fell asleep 15 minutes later. She woke up right before landing with all the announcements, and was a good girl at the airport, in the taxi and then didn't take too long at all to get off to sleep once we arrived at our apartment in Brisbane.
I decided to buy one last book for my kindle – Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Gold.
Monday 30th:
morning – up early! Niamh slept all night in her hotel supplied cot. Already Brisbane is much warmer than Adelaide. Although it certainly wasn't hot, were all wearing short sleeves. All went very well with our pre ordered babyseat taxi arriving on time, got to the airport on time, check in fine, mummy and daddy haven't had breakfast so getting hungry now, fill in customs cards with baby in sling on hip (such a good choice – had about 5 people comment on how good it was), really hungry now... must eat, Biscuit getting her crank on, lining up for immigration, get to front of the line and the lady says “I've got some bad news for you” and hands us the boarding passes. Apparently they'd printed Niamh's boarding pass off 3 times, and Dan and I didn't have a ticket.

“Are we going to have to go and GROWWWLLLL (sorry, stomach) do it all again?” “Yes, I'm afraid so”. Fortunately they took pity on me with a 12kg toddler on one hip and a huge carryon bag on the other side, and let us sit off to the side and wait for Dan to rush back and get it changed. Dan still had both laptops, had to come back through security and get them both checked again, and then got randomly drug tested on his way. Brill. At least they expedited him through immigration the second time.

After that – off to the qantas club (cheers, business class!) for breakfast. Niamh was very helpful, climbing up onto chairs and sliding off, at one point sliding into our table and knocking all the drinks off. It was getting close to her nap time by now, and she was getting cranky. I was worried about this flight as well. I thought if she didn't get any sleep on the flight I had no idea when her next opportunity for sleep might be, and it had the potential to get ugly.

Luckily I had no reason for concern. She fell asleep in her sling on my lap before takeoff, slept for 2 solid hours and then woke up just in time to eat some lunch before landing in PAPUA NEW GUINEA!

I'd spent so much time worrying about Niamh and sleeping and breakfast and everything else that I'd completely missed what was actually going on. We were IN Port Moresby!! All the months of planning and discussion and stress had finally culminated in this moment. BOOM – Niamh giggled as we landed, and wriggled as though she couldn't wait to get off the plane and run around her new home. As we walked down the stairs that led directly outside into the hot sun, that familiar sticky heat hit us all. In the immigration line, Niamh had little tiny baby sized beads of sweat on her nose. “Juice!?” presenting her now empty sippy cup to me. “Yes sweetie, I know, juice is all gone, we'll get you some more juice when we get through this line” “Jooooooooos!!!” “Yes, sweetie, I know....” “JOOOOOOOOS!!!” Now accompanied by arching her back and trying to fall headfirst out of my arms. “Ok, off you go, have a walk around, then we'll get some juice”. Niamh (with her “gaga” koala backpack leash on) now proceeds to snake in and out of the winding line, under the ropes, taking me behind her and forcing me to apologise to a large number of people whose legs she was cuddling. Eventually we cleared immigration, however to my dismay there was no water or jooos available, so in desperation filled her sippy cup from the tap, and hoped she doesn’t get cholera. On the way out of customs a lovely band was playing some lively traditional islandy sounding music, which got us all back in an excited mood.

The airport in Pt Moresby was pretty much as I remembered the PNG airports. Once you step outside you wonder if maybe the population of the surrounding areas has come down for the day because they’ve got not much else on. Many seemed fascinated by Niamh and openly pointed and talked about her despite standing only a metre or so away from us.
We met up with our driver, loaded all our stuff into a minivan (couldn’t install the babyseat, decided to let it slide just this once..) and set off for the company offices as per our instructions to collect our keys. Once there, we were very politely informed that we had been given the wrong information, and could collect our keys from the apartment reception desk (had driven 20 mins to head office, accommodation was 2 mins from airport). We made the trip back, passing people selling buai on the streets, markets, run down shops, rubbish, stray dogs, rickety PMVs (public motor vehicles – minivans used as public transport), still amazed that we were actually there. Amazed, also, that this is the capital city. We arrived at the accommodation (saluted by the security guards on the way in – yes, that did happen) having failed to communicate our need to the driver to present to reception on arrival, and then had to make the return trip down the very steep hill – to my surprise past the reception hut, back out the gate towards the main hotel entrance and hotel reception. Dan and I both knew that we were at the wrong reception, but he dutifully went in with the driver, where they had the mistake pointed out to them. While we waited in the van, I noted the security guard at the door. I’m certainly no buff when it comes to firearms, but I’m pretty sure the gun that this enormous man held in front of him would not need to be reloaded in between shots.

By this stage, we’d been attempting to get to our accommodation for nearly 2 hours, and I had run out of snacks for the Marauder. And she vomited a little bit, twice. Excellent.

Finally, we arrived at our new home.

Our apartment is beautiful! It has 2 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (1 ensuite), laundry, large open dining/lounge room and 2 balconies. Our main room/balcony overlooks the airport and we have a fantastic view of the planes taking off and landing, and happily I haven’t noticed any noise at all from it. Biscuit is entranced by the big zoom-zooms, but wasted no time at all making herself at home with some ya-yas (sultanas) on the couch. We settled in for an hour or two, after which Ben (Dan’s friend and workmate from Adelaide who arrived the week before us) and Dan’s new boss Greg came for dinner. Bless them, they also brought groceries and wine for us.

On a related note, before we arrived Dan and I had some debate as to what “fully serviced apartment” meant. I took the website at its word, but Dan thought that they might be overplaying it, and about all we’d get is our towels delivered once a week. I began to suspect I was right when I saw the room service menu. We all had room service pizza for dinner, and it was a great opportunity to catch up and have a chat.

This morning, we woke up and tried to make ourselves believe that this was our home now, not some sweet hotel room. Trying to believe this was made harder still when I found the newspaper pushed under our front door. After Dan left for work at 7am (!!!!!) Biscuit and I went for a pleasant walk (on the downhill slope at least) to explore the main hotel. It’s fair to say that a blonde curly haired one year old is a bit of an attraction around here. Particularly one that likes to ham it up, thanks to being the only grandchild on both sides of the family and thoroughly doted on in general. The hotel is absolutely stunning. I’ll put up some pics later, but I left my camera behind on the walk. We also discovered (bummer) that the kids playground area comes with a pretty steep fee (around $800/year, but since we’re residents they’ll knock it down to $400!). It riles the cheap-arse in me, but I guess since we’re not paying rent I’ll cough up.

Later in the morning, we called a driver to take us to the supermarket and start the process of stocking the house with food and other random things. Of course, more dramas with the car arriving etc, and me having to get used to my “call sign” which is the same combination of phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie etc) and numbers as Dan’s, except with “whiskey” for wife on the end. Nice, I’m the wifey now, tasol. However, at last we set off for Boroko Food World. It was absolutely mental. They have about 10 times more employees than they need, as Dan pointed out if it costs nothing to hire people, why not? Anyway, the net result was that Biscuit was being literally followed around by about 5 employees at any one time. At first, I found this fun and cute, however after about half an hour they and Biscuit (having noticed the yayas in the trolley and having begun to loudly demand them) were trying my patience just a little. It is also really hard to buy food in a completely new country. Admittedly a lot of stuff is imported from Australia, but a lot is from Asia or the US. I spent a lot of time trying to work out what the stuff actually was and then think about whether or not we needed it, and then after noting how crazily astronomical the price was, reconsidering whether it was truly necessary. Disappointingly the “fresh” fruit and veggies were not on par with the stuff we bought at insanely cheap prices in the highlands on my last trip. Pretty small, straggly and sad. The stuff imported from Australia (a kilo of oranges costs how much??!) is much better quality.

When we got home, we met Barbara, our lovely “haus meri” or “maid”. Still not comfortable with either term. While we were out she’d changed our towels, cleaned the house and washed the glasses we’d used to have a drink from this morning. Wow! Of course, she is no match for the Niamhinator, who had undid all her good effort within about half an hour of her leaving. On her way out she said “See you tomorrow!”… it’s a dream come true.

This afternoon, we went out again, this time to the pool over in the main hotel. Needless to say, this was great fun. Cooled us off and we both had the giggles. We had leftovers for dinner, and were both very glad to see Dan when he arrived home at the not at all unreasonable time of 5:15pm. Apparently his day went quite well, although he saw 3 car accidents on the way to work and a dead body. I won’t tell you all about his day, I’ll leave that up to him and his blog. But he said overall it was a great start and he’s really excited about his new role.

So far, it is amazing, exciting, new, different. Everyone is ridiculously nice, and I’m still not sure how to handle people running to hold the door open for you (everywhere, not just at the hotel) and doing everything for you at the supermarket and being super attentive all the time. I’m used to (as we all are!) doing my own stuff! Dan’s mate who lives in the same apartment block told us that he leaves a few extra kina on the table and his clothes in the wash. When he gets home from work his clothes are washed, ironed and hung up in the wardrobe.

In regards to the internet, it is crap and mad expensive. I am typing all of this in Word, and have pre-shrunk all my photos, put it all on USB for purposes of maximum time and upload size saving. I’m going over to the hotel in a minute to use the business centre, as our wifi here is crap. We’ll have to sort something else out in the long run.

So in summary. Feel safe? Absolutely! No concerns at all. Right decision? I think so…. I love it so far, but I’ll get back to you once the honeymoon’s over. Is this the real PNG? Not at all! I know this is about as far removed from how the vast majority of PNG citizens live as it is possible to be. But I reckon that, or hope that, given time we’ll get out and about, and see a bit more of the country and how beautiful the rest of it is.

Love to everyone, and a big Happy Birthday to Grandma Alison for yesterday! xoxo

PS For a photo journal of the above, click here :)