WOW internet is FREE here and SOO FAST! I can upload these blog photos super quickly. I forgot just how fast non satellite based internet could be.
As far as culture shock.... not much yet. We did go grocery shopping for some breakfast items and although we're used to Australian food perhaps you would find some of these photos interesting.
I got to sit in the co-pilot seat! I asked a lot of questions and learned a LOT about the planes and aviation in PNG... the plane may look small, but that's because it is although not the smallest in our fleet:
My view:
it took our kids almost a full 2 minutes to figure out how this water fountain across from the 'Night Markets' in Cairns worked, they had given up but mom gave them a hint:
snap crackle pop by any other name sounds as sweet:
raisins in Aus are called 'sultanas'
Almost the first thing I noticed in the grocery store was the wheels on this cart. They were slotted and I spent some time figuring out why. My only guess was that they were slotted to fit smoothly on the following photo:
My wife wouldn't let me experiment, but I'm pretty sure the slots on the wheels of the cart match the slots on this people mover... the grocery store was on the second story of a mall... we parked in a huge parking garage.
this kids went nuts over this kia caravan car we rented (for $2.00 p/hour!!!!!) and also we noticed how more affordable groceries were. People have often talked about how all the huge amount of choices have stymied them with culture shock, but we didn't notice it. I did however notice it took a lot longer to make a decision as to which cereal to get for the kids... since we eat Aussie food mostly in PNG, it wasn't because they didn't know the brands, it was because there were so many choices.
Final thought:
-when you raise your kids they start to learn not to ask for... rides on the quarter carousel or money for a silly vending machine game or the gumball machine (or whatever today's equivalent of a gumball machine is)... as they age they realize mom and dad aren't shelling out for these small attractive to kids things and they stop asking...
but when you go away and come back, it's all new again and so the asking starts over again. All the conditioning is gone. They were dazzled by things they would have overlooked before, and we often had to call them away from the kid-trap machines.
