calvin ate "pit pit" yesterday.
The kids here have a chart of new foods, for every new food they try 6 times they get a sticker. The stickers all work up to a piece of chocolate so there is a rewards plan for the kids to try new food.
So last night Calvin says
"Can I please have 1 piece of chicken and 1piece of pitpit"
so I served him. He slowly ate his pit pit (a png vegetable, and if you know my son and vegetables, then you know what a trial this was for him)
then after the pit pit he ate the chicken. All very slowly.
So approximately fifteen minutes after originally asking for the chicken he says to me very seriously, "I ate the chicken so that the pitpit wouldn't bounce back up."
I had to laugh. He wanted his chocolate so badly that he had put in place a plan at mealtime to counteract his own body's reaction to vegetables.
I looked over today and my daughter had gone around the playground and gathered up 6 national girls, and got them all, one by one, to sit on a tire swing together, until she was the last one and then she pushed it... 7 girls riding on a big tire swing in a circle.... all organized by my daughter, with a language barrier. It was a GREAT moment to observe... I can see her skills starting to blossom at this age.
Wherever we go, there is a group of PNG kids waving and saying "hi Sydney" she is making a lot of friends.
Today at lunch my daughter and I had our first full length conversation in Tok Pisin. She thinks it's fun to talk in tok pisin because she doesn't think I know what she's saying, but today, she found out I did. And when she jokingly told me to Pasim Maus, (close your mouth) we had a serious moment of explaining how it isn't okay to be disrespectful in any language.
Still, I walked away realizing that that was a momentous occasion because we both fully understood our lunch conversation and there was no English spoken. It was a completely spontaneous thing and it showed me how much they've been learning in school.
The teacher dropped by and said our kids were doing very well now. I think the first two weeks was a period of adjustment.
Time is crawling by here.
Tonight we have our first major transition at POC. It is when we first meet our Wasfamily and have a meal with them. The night will be mostly conversation in tok pisin and it'll be our first chance to exercise our conversational abilities without a translator. We'll see how it goes. A lot of people are nervous about it, but we really aren't because we've already made several png friends and we know they are great people.
One comment about the culture. This culture does not harbor resentment, racism, or many of our American prejudices. For example, during WWII the Japanese came and did unspeakable acts to the people here, and yet, Japanese are loved today by PNG. In PNG, you're white, or fat, or ugly, or short, or tall, it's all the same, they have no judgment on that, they do not think poorly of you because of these things. They truly are a very hospitable people.
We can learn a lot from this part of their behavior. They of course have another side, not to paint it all roses, but I did think it amazing how they do not harbor resentment or racism.
