Baptism and Cyclone Lola

I thought about it for a long time and decided last week to fly to Sydney on October 25th for 5 days and then TC (Tropical Cyclone) Lola came!

It could be seen from afar, which is not unusual. He kept changing direction and eventually built up to Category 5 and headed straight for Vanuatu. Since the real cyclone season actually doesn't start until November, everyone was surprised and a little taken by surprise, as they had only recovered from the two Category 5 cyclones in March.

Well, now Lola was getting closer and closer to Vanuatu, was already sweeping over the northern islands, always changing between categories 4 and 5 and reached us tonight with a milder strength than feared. After my flight was of course rescheduled, everyone prepared for the coming days yesterday: cyclone shutters were installed, a few more groceries were bought, cell phones were charged and water was filled. At red alert, no one is allowed to go out and all shops are closed. Now we sit in the booth and watch the storm outside. We are pretty safe in our house and our apartment is also a few meters above sea level. The people here now know their way around quite well and, if necessary, go to friends' well-built concrete houses or to the church if they don't have one themselves. There is usually no personal injury, but there is a lot of property damage and the fruit and vegetable harvest can be destroyed. You are constantly kept up to date via Facebook and SMS and are well informed about the alert levels and the location of the cyclone. So today (October 25th) we're staying at home all day and tomorrow the spooky should be over, hopefully with little consequences.

The flight is now planned for Friday and so it will be quite a short trip. Oh well. That's probably how it should be.

Besides the sudden change in the weather, I started my first yoga class on Tuesday, which I took over from a yoga teacher while she was on vacation. It's pretty cool that a few options came up so quickly and I'm now taking 2-3 yoga classes a week until mid-December. Michel and I take turns looking after him on the days and in the afternoon Pepe continues to go to kindergarten, which he thinks is great. He now swims and snorkels in the pool and sea without a vest and takes part in football training.

Anton has his first 6 teeth out and has finally calmed down a bit. Now almost 10 months old, he is fully in action, starting to communicate, eating pretty much all day long without being breastfed and we are eagerly waiting for his first steps ☺️

Last weekend we were at the baptism of the son of the president of the volleyball association, Debbie, in the village of Mele. That was pretty exciting for us. The service lasted almost 2 1/2 hours. There was a lot of hustle and bustle, comings and goings, lots of loud singing and at the end the baptism of 36 children between the ages of 0 and 3.

Afterwards we were invited to lunch by Debbie's family. It went from the church to the middle of the village, where Debbie's husband Mike's parents live. The women had already prepared a lot of food there, while the men treated themselves to their first wine or kava. It was mainly the family there and, besides us, another friend with her sons. There were lots of children running around among all the guests, as well as dogs, cats, pigs and chickens. It was a bit of a challenge for us with Anton to carry the big and active baby all the time because we didn't want to drop him off anywhere. When we got the high chair we were able to eat comfortably together. Pepe played with his friend Barak the whole time and was hardly visible.

In the afternoon Debbie drove us home and we ended Sunday relaxing.

Hopefully we'll head off to Sydney on Friday and Michel is looking forward to a relaxing weekend with Pepe.