April 21, 2014

Happy Easter everyone! It's already Easter down under, the Easter Bunny has been here and deposited treats and, from what I hear, he's headed up your way to take care of everyone at the top of the world! What a busy boy he is! This is a long post with a lot of pictures and several short videos. Many thanks to Tyler for helping me to convert the videos to a format that allows me to put them on my blog.

We went out for lunch Thursday and on the way back to the building where we teach classes, I stopped at a little outside food stand to buy some scones to give to our friends.  The man in the picture below waited on us and of course, once I started talking, he said, "You're from the States, I can tell by your accent." And when I said 'yes' he asked me what state I was from. When I said Idaho he said, "Oh, I've heard of Idaho, you have a very good football team there, the Broncos." Wow, I figured anyone in Sydney, Australia who knows about football, let alone the Boise State Broncos, deserves his picture posted on my blog!

Another picture I've been meaning to post is this one, not because the city of Baulkham Hills will mean anything to any of you, but because when entering many of the suburbs in Sydney, the signs welcome you to the 'shire'. It never fails to make me smile when I see these signs. I always feel like I might see a Hobbit out and about somewhere in the city. The word 'shire' just smacks of Lord of the Rings to me.

Friday afternoon we went for a drive up into the hills. It's late fall down here, so the apples are ripe and are available in fruit stands all over in the mountains. We figured, why be boring and buy our apples in the grocery store? Buying apples gave us a great excuse to go for an afternoon drive. Coming from Fruitland, Idaho makes me an expert in apple growth and production, so I thought I'd show you how they do it down under. We have giant bats down here called flying foxes, and they LOVE to eat fruit off the trees, so to protect the fruit, they cover the trees with netting. There are two types of netting, one completely covers the tree, it's used on the smaller trees and protects against bats and possums. Bats get into the tops of the trees and possums come up from the bottom. They cover the whole tree to protect it from these two pests. The large trees aren't bothered as much with possums, but the bats are still a problem, so the large trees are protected with netting that is suspended above the trees. I've never seen this done in the US, maybe there are places in the US that employ this method, but it's not used in Fruitland!

The netting over the small trees

You can see how tightly they cover the growing area

The nets are stored down next to the trees once the apples are picked

Big trees under suspension netting

You can see how high up we are, however these mountains would just be called hills in Idaho!

On our way home, we stopped at a little restaurant recommended by some friends. It's just a little tiny place and very old, but had great food. It was such a tiny place that the kitchen area was open to the restaurant area and since my husband is drawn to things that are a little different from the usual... he made friends with the cook and got to see how their oven works! I thought only pizza was made in this kind of an oven, but I was wrong, it's center section is great for all kinds of food. We ordered the lamb shoulder roast. It had been slow cooking for 16 hours in a little spot in the oven and I must say, it was the best lamb I've ever eaten. Awesome stuff. It kind of made me wish I had an oven like this!

The wall oven, the fire portion is off on the right and the heat is pulled from a damper on the left

The little side oven where the meat cooked

I would never make it as a food photographer, this picture doesn't do it justice, but the food was awesome!

Grandchildren:

This week I thought I would write about a wedding Grandpa and I went to. One of the places where we teach classes is where a lot of people from Tonga live. They all moved from Tonga many years ago to live in Australia because there are better jobs and the jobs pay a lot more money than jobs in Tonga do. Can you find Tonga on this map?

Two people in our class were engaged when they started the class and this week was their wedding. Their names are Kini (the boy) and Nona (the girl).  Those names are just short names for their Tongan names which are really long. We got invited to come to their wedding celebration. Tongan weddings last for three days! The first night was a dance party. I am attaching some videos I took so you can see some of the dancing they did. They had to have the dance party inside in the church because it's almost winter down here and it's too cold to have a party outside at night. It would have been really fun to have the dances outside with tiki torches for lights, but it was inside with regular lights. Check out the costumes the dancers wear. Some of the costumes are made of regular material, but some of the costumes the boys wear are made from tapa. Watch this video to understand how the taovala (skirts) the men are wearing in these dances is made:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWN-TY6tzJc
The dances that are done have significance and tell a story, but since the stories were told in Tongan, I couldn't understand them. I will show you the different dances though. First of all, the boys who were friends relations of the groom danced. This is a little part of the introduction dance (these videos will only work if you are on a computer, the iPad won't play them, sorry):

Then the boys did a sword dance:

After that, the boys and the girls danced together:

Then the bride danced:

At the end of the dances a lady and her little girl danced and pretty soon lots of people joined in:

At the end of the dance party everyone put leis on Kini and Nona's necks.  You can see how many leis they got!

We went to Kini and Nona's wedding and reception yesterday.  The reception had a big program and a really big dinner.  We stayed for four hours and the dancing hadn't even started when we left.  Tongans know how to have a party!

The top table was for the bridal party, the bottom table was for special guests.  There are 8 roasted pigs on the 2 tables!

They had lots of food for us to eat. On each head table were 4 roasted pigs. They roast the whole pig, they leave on the head with the ears and everything. They even leave the tail on!

This cake was the groom's cake, there were eight separate cakes!  The bride's cake had eight cakes too.

These ladies are wearing their island skirts that are saved for special occasions. These skirts are woven from reeds.

The bride and groom changed from their wedding clothes to island clothes.  

These two pictures are a closeup of the design on the tapa cloth they were given for their wedding. It is very important for every Tongan home to have at least one tapa wall hanging.

Another exciting thing that is happening in Australia this week is that Prince William and his wife Kate are here visiting from England. They brought their baby, George. Everyone in Australia is very excited to see them; they are especially excited to see baby George. The most exciting thing for me this week is that I am cat sitting for 10 days for my neighbor, Sean. Remember I told you about his cat, Robby? I was hoping to make friends with Robby, but he's having nothing to do with that. He hides anytime he sees me. Maybe by the end of the week he will decide I'm not scary. I will let you know if he ever lets me pet him!