All the things your Mother told you not to do

Remember all those things your mother told you not to do and we told/tell our kids what to do??? Well they sure are fun.

We started our day with boat chores and school. I have finally finished washing the linen - YAY! and mother nature even provided a second rinse. For breakfast I used up the last of the local bread and donuts (really just sweeter bread) for French toast. Pretty good. Josh really likes his psychology book - thank god the author has a sense of humor. Dennis assigned some geometry - not so much of a sense of humor there. And Dennis and I ran the newly repaired sound cable for the TV.

On to the fun stuff. We met Moondance in town for our trip to the big box store. We had been told we could just flag down one of the green "buses". We waited a good long time and then decided to hitchhike - sorry Mom, but very safe here. We didn't get far walking before it poured down rain - was cool and refreshing. Caught a ride as soon as the rain stopped with Tom (talking to strangers and hitch hiking) - in the back of his pickup. Much better than any old enclosed bus!!! And he would take us all the way there. We had one stop at a store called "Punjas". Got snacks and a cold beer. It appears Tom (who works at the airport) has opened his own little store in Banana (yes, really the name of a town. I told you those Brits were not a very imaginative lot). The big box store "JML" was closed when we got there at 1400. Seems they are open 08--12 and 16-19. Tom offered to take us into Banana, to his home. When we got to his place, his father in law was preparing a pig for the big celebration tomorrow. Was a little gruesome, but they had killed it and were just finishing up burning off the hair. The hole to cook it was dug up, and by the time we went for a walk and came back it was buried in the cook pit. Tom then took us back to the Captain Cook Hotel (that guy sure got around) where we were hoping to get something cold to drink while we waited for 1600. Sadly that was not to be. The bar - in fact the whole place seemed to be closed today. Reopening tomorrow. The security guy let us hang out in the atrium, so we read our books until 1600, then walked over to the JML store. Well, that was pretty anticlimactic as well. Lots of stuff from costco, but nothing earth shattering and the only beer they carry is Budweiser. Seems the Punja store has the Heineken distributorship, so that would be the place for that. But, at 67 AUS per case - I think we will tough it out. We still have plenty of beer, and lots of crossings to do, so I think we will be okay.

Next up - find a ride back to London. So, we asked the government van - no luck (and not overly nice about it either). The Italian couple came by, but the did not have enough room in their rental car. We asked a man with a pickup at the gas pump, and he said he had about 30 min of work to do, but would pick us up if we still needed a ride. Well, sure enough 30 min later we still needed a ride. So he brought us all the way back to London. This time I rode up front with him and his little girl. His name was Robert - call me Bob. The little girl was Kayla. He is from Christmas, went to school in Scotland (6yrs - lived with his uncles), worked for Norwegian cruise lines for 8 years out of Fanning, and has been back on Christmas for the last 3 years, works for his Dad who owns JML. Kind of incongruous listening to a local person speak english with a scottish accent. The little girl (3 yrs old) was very cute and babbled the whole time. Did I say no car seat??

So, we survived our day of living dangerously. We are very tired, but have spaghetti in our bellies and are getting ready to watch a movie. Life is good. Going to go in tomorrow and watch some of the Independence day festivities. Also need more bread, and may try to get internet from a place that we can pick up from the boat. We'll see. Movie time now.

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