Rain, rain come our way.

We've had beautiful sunny weather for nearly 12 days in a row (the most since we arrived!). This has been GREAT for our solar panels & batteries, especially after the problems we had over the past couple months - we were without our lights for over a month and without the water pump (i.e. shower) for two months! (Don't worry, we were taking showers, just with our camping solar shower!)


Unfortunately, our water tank has been getting very, very LOW since it hasn't been raining. We keep hoping to look out and see a storm like this rolling in (this photo is from our shower platform a few months ago), but so far, the sun just keeps shining.

Hmmmm

Glacier Water, that is a product of Palau?

We've only been here 6 months, but we certainly haven't seen anything CLOSE to a glacier since arriving ... whatever sells goes I guess.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

In October, we planted some seeds in hopes of being able to grow some of our own produce here as there are basically no vegetables available on Angaur. Some friends of ours even lent us a little garden plot on their property in the village since the soil/location at our house is not good for growing things do to the near constant sea/salt spray. Here's a photo journey since then.

It must be laundry day!

This is Jason on laundry day. We do laundry every two weeks. We are incredibly thankful that there is a laundry-mat here in Angaur ... I did laundry by hand in Tonga and it's really hard! But, it still requires quite a haul getting two weeks worth of clothes the 1 1/2 miles across the island to wash and back to the house. Luckily, one of our friends here loaned us this bike - it's still a bit of a miserable ride, but WAY better than poor Jason having to walk all the way carrying this huge bag of clothes!

Our House

We had a few days last month where the weather allowed us to open up most of the canvas siding on our house - usually it's windy, rainy or both and so we only have 2 to 3 open at one time. It was SO beautiful to have a picture-perfect day and sit inside our house looking out at all the incredible views.

This is the "low" setting on our stove. Jason is my simmering helper ... holding the pan 6" off the stove whenever we need to simmer something!

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Sunrises, Sunsents & Moonshine

I think I've been up now for 3 or 4 sunrises and just love them ... even though I don't really LOVE being up quite that early!

We live on the East side of the island and I didn't expect to be able to see many sunsets ... we've been really pleasantly surprised at the glorious sunset colors we do get to see. The first sunset below has Jason fishing off the point.

This first month we were here we were completely amazed at just how BRIGHT the moon is here! I have no idea if it is because there are no lights, so the moon seems brigher or what, but even when it's half full, it just lights up everything. This is the first time we saw the moon rise over the ocean ... incredibly beautiful to me.

Our V-Day

Given where we currently are living, our holiday celebrations have tended to be a little more subdued than they might normally be ... and without the constant barage of the media telling us about all the things we "need," I generally do not mind our simpiler celebrations. Although, I do occassionally feel a little helpless as it is just not possible to make things as special as I might usually...

My Mom has been wonderful at sending us a few things to cheer up our holidays, Valentine's Day was no different. In the box she sent last month, she'd included a few 'Valentine's Day in a Box' items, including cupcake tins and a great cupcake hand towel! Yay!

So, we did a bake in our outdoor fire/oven and actually had cupcakes for Valentine's Day!!! So much fun! I got to show off my new outdoor cooking skills when a group of Seventh Day Adventists teachers from Koror came by for a tour of our island home. I won't deny it, I did feel pretty good that I was able to treat them to a cupcake that I'd made over a fire pit!