Circling the wagons...

So, this morning's language class went well! Hopefully I can pull of the challenge of getting the seven participants to be able to converse confidently in Bislama (an English based form of Pigin spoken as the lingua franca in Vanuatu)!

I'm supposed to have another class of six on Wednesday evening, but thanks to Tropical Cyclone Jasmine, it looks like that may be postponed and I'll have to run a make up class next week... not such a good look for the first week of "term"!

Speaking of old TC Jazzy, it seems we're getting conflicting reports about what to expect. (When looking at the maps, please note that we live in Vila, the Nation's capital.)

At midday today the Vanuatu Meteo was predicting this...

The Australian Bureau of Meterology was predicting this...

And the Joint Typhoon Warning Centre was predicting this...

Whichever way it plays out, it's going to get pretty darn close and we're in for some wild weather! Hopefully we won't lose comms, but this cyclone does have the potential to pass right over the top of us, so it may be best to expect a Tropical Cyclone Uma situation and hope for the best!

TC Uma took out much of Port Vila, along with electricity, water, and communications in February 1987. It also wiped out an estimated 95% of housing in Port Vila!

Fingers crossed we don't have that happen again!

The Man's visiting staff member is incapable of listening to reason and still reckons that he's going to be able to fly out to Australia on Wednesday... Hahahahahahahahaha!

Just what I need... A cyclone lockdown for days with my sexy man, a doberman, a retriever, two cats, and a whining staff member!

I told him to start swimming!

Thankful Thursday

Almost forgot!

Today my three things for Thankful Thursday are:

1. My bedroom door: Which I can close at night to keep my cats out. I'm looking forward to a good night's sleep no longer playing cat mattress! Little buggers think sleeping on me is a great idea!

2. My friend Kez: Who cracks me up completely and is just a wicked as I am. Her insanity keeps me sane(ish).

3. My language course: Although the set up and course material creation is a hard slog, I'm really looking forward to having a bit more purpose and a bit more money each week! Yay for me! I hope people like it!

What are you thankful for this week?

Summary Sunday on a Monday (again)!

Ok, so my excuse this week is that all of a sudden I have work coming out the wazoo! I'm busily trying to knock over all the pre-paid work from an Australian client, when out of the blue someone contacts me to run some language classes for them! All well and good (and very exciting), but I now have to put together a 10 week language course and workbook for the classes which start next week!!!

All the while we have been fighting third world telecommunications problems here in the past week (where else in the world can a single air conditioner take down an entire telecommunications system?!), so the ups and downs of the internet have not assisted with getting my work done!

Also over the weekend I have been distracted by the greatness of my pickles, after I cracked open this jar of them and got stuck in... DELICIOUS!!!!

Yum yum yum!!!

Anywho... I hope my excuses are acceptable to the general public! And with that out of the way we can now get on with this week's (last week's?) summary...

1. How far along?: 21 weeks 2 days.
2. How big is bub?: According to What To Expect and Pregnancy Lite, bubs weighs in at about 400 grams and is about the size of a spaghetti squash, measuring in at about 20.3 cms.
3. Weight gain?: The weight it slowly coming on but I think most of it is baby and baby related paraphernalia as I'm only about 1 kilo over my pre-pregnancy weight.
4. Stretch marks?: No new ones! I've started slathering on the body butter after showers in the morning though!
5. Maternity clothes?: I've given in! I bought a couple of pairs of maternity yoga pant things and a couple of Bonds maternity singlets when we were in Melbourne last weekend and have taken to shirking my underwire bras in favour of my super comfortable (but very cleavage revealing) singlets! I'm getting incredibly lazy with my clothes! I've always been big on comfort but this is taking it to another level!
6. Sleep?: Still up and down. Some nights are better than others. I keep waking with pins and needles in my arms!
7. Best moment last week?: Feeling Our Monster's kicks getting stronger... Daddy gets to feel them more and more frequently now!
8. Food cravings?: No food cravings, in fact I'm struggling food apathy again and I'm finding it awfully hard to find things that whet my appetite!
9. Symptoms?: Reflux. :o( And MASSIVE boobs! The man looked like all his Christmases had come at once when the lady at the bra shop in Australia said "Hold on a minute and I'll get you the G cup to try on"!
10. Exercise?: Still doing my yoga twice a week... but I'm toying with the idea of going an extra day or two per week.
11. Gender?: A very wise mummy friend of mine said over the weekend, "If the gender was supposed to be the most important bit then babies wouldn't come out head first". Not a bad theory I reckon!
12. Movement?: Every week it gets more and more although I still think we get more movement in cooler temperatures.
13. Belly button?: Working its way to the surface...
14. What I miss?: Thanks to She, I went on the hunt and found me some pasturised Fetta at the local supermarket, so I'm not missing that any more, but I still miss margaritas and, strangely, cigarettes!
15. Labour signs?: Nope.
16. What I'm looking forward to: Getting some of this work out of the way so I can relax a bit more again!

The bump is looking rather cute rocking out in my maternity pants and singlet!