Rarotonga - First 2 weeks

We arrived on a sunny Saturday in Rarotonga after a flight over the South Pacific and its islands on a bumpy small plane. We were picked up at customs by the house manager and given fresh flower garlands around our necks. It was immediately nice being able to speak English again after South America. We arrived at the house that we had only previously see on the internet and it is a good version of what we saw. A 3-bed house on the beach with a swimming pool between the house and lagoon and a kayak launch place. For the island it is a pretty nice house and pretty modern. We immediately felt at home. On the Sunday & Monday (island holiday) we hired an old 7-seater with 105k on the clock, drove around the island (Having got our official Cook Island driving licences, with a picture, for $20 each and a few minutes wait to get them processed), found and looked around the school with no-one there and generally found our way around the island, including the sailing club, which is the hub of social life around, especially for the kids (kind of like the bank of England club back home!). We met parents of children at the school and felt more comfortable that we had made the right decision about the school.

On Tuesday, we took the kids to school at 7.45am to meet the Headmaster and borrow/buy the school uniform. The boys were immediately told that no shoes were needed - so the uniform consisted of 3 pieces of clothing - black shorts, a flowery blue shirt and a t-shirt for games!! and off they went to their new classes. They were all nervous, especially Toby, and we were very keen to see how they had got on after their first day. As all the shops had been shut since we had arrived we needed to get the shopping done and prepare them a pack lunch for 10am (yes that is lunchtime at school!). Megan was very keen to play with little girls her age and so when we picked her up she had had a great time! And when we picked the boys up at 2pm they had both had a great time already. So Day 1 was a success and after Day 2 they were really integrated already and really enjoying it, having met some really nice kids and Toby had moved up a year - so week 1 went pretty well.

Sheena & Ian started running along the beach each morning and ian started renting a boat from Tony, the sailing club captain, to sail in the Lagoon. The kids started to mix and Toby was invited to Liams 10th birthday party including a sleepover (which also involved a fire on the beach, petrol lighting, digging a hole on the beach for the boys which they could all climb into and then cover it and them with coconut leaves - Nancy, Liams Mum, was right up there on the cool Mums award!). Sam was learning to sail in the lagoon with a fun group of his age group Arii, Josieh and another Sam. Megan was gaining a few friends like Imogen and another Hannah and Sheena and Megan visited a few houses with Megans freinds. Megan and Sam went to play with Josieh and Hannah at their house which also incorporates a huge lettuce farm (they are the Cook Islands only producer of lettuces and good they are too!), their own chickens (which Megan saw hatch while she was there) and their own pig called Tallulah. They are home schooled (I am sure better than Sam and Toby as their mother is a teacher!).

On the Friday 30th it was Tobys 10th Birthday. We had a family birthday party at the house which was very quiet compared to last years "Foodfight" ! Toby chose to go Deep Sea Fishing for his birthday so Ian, Toby, Sam, Liam & another friend called Felix went out one afternoon after school and trolled around for 4 hrs and caught nothing - this from a Captain who claimed a 98% success record of catching something each trip!

On the first Saturday night we were invited to the annual sailing club BBQ on one of the lagoons islands. About 70 of us were ferried over carrying our food and booze in the sailing clubs small rib and then we all went off to find wood and dead coconut trees, started the fire and cooked away - all very relaxed and as newly paid up members we were very welcomed and had a good time.

The only other interesting thing of note was Ian got a call from the school for a Tsunami test! A couple of weeks previously there had been the after-effects of the Japan Tsunami which was not too bad here but the test was to check all the parents numbers and the kids had to leave the school and walk up the hill to safety - a good test to know!!

The second week was very similar to the first - sunny, kids mixing with their friends, a bit of sailing (Sam won 2 of his 5 races - the other 3 were fixed!!), a bit of football with a local side! a bit of windsurfing, some running, kayaking around the lagoon visiting the lagoon islands and snorkelling, some visits to some local residents with kids friends and generally finding our way around and meeting people. S&I did the 4-hr cross island walk including walking across the mountain range in the middle to the famous peak of the "Needle" which just juts straight into the sky from the top of the mountain - a very good view. We were taken by the world famous "Pa", who was a real character and was very entertaining with his stories of 28 children and meeting famous people over the years - such as the nude models from Sweden. We had a great walk through the very rainforest-like central bit, quite steep in places and narrow with a few drops. We had 2 dentists from Sweden with us who had brought 3000 toothbrushes to the Cook islands and were touring schools to teach the kids how to look after their teeth properly and a backpacking couple for Manchester, who were 6 days in to a 7 month world tour!! Pa made the tip very interesting and we were both glad we had done it - the views were pretty good from the mountain although obviously no way near as high as South America!

I am writing this on the first day of real stormy weather, thnder and torrential rain - and we are all trying to catch up with our Daily Journals and Blogs etc... Megan has made me a sand pancake and the boys have created crab houses all over the garden and beach for hermit crabs and other huge crabs we catch on the beach at night.

Life here is very relaxed - most things operate on Cook Islands time - so if it is due to start at 12 noon it could be anytime between then & 1.30pm. It has been really enjoyable first couple of weeks - we have thoughts that maybe we could all stay here for a year or 2 and then think lets see how we feel after 6 weeks.

We are starting our diving course next week to try to get our Open Water Padi license whilst we are here - requires some reading and thinking so Sheena and i are gearing up for it!!

So only a month more to go before we leave for NZ - that time will give us a really good feel and view of whether we could really live here or not for a while!! The local residents view seems to be a few years is good and then you either stay for a long time or move on....... we'll see!!