Life gets busy?

Apologies again for the delay...and for all future delays in advance - life on Niue is getting busy!!

The project is fully up and running now and we have employed a lovely lady named Barbara to look after Daisy for us while I work for 20 hrs each week. Daisy and Barbara have great fun together and Daisy is taking great delight in learning the Niuen haka! We only pay $8 an hour for Barbara which is apparently generous - I think it's a bargain. Daisy is continuing to be quite the hit on the island, and seems to love it more and more each day. This morning she has been taken to church by the high commissioner and his fiance for the Easter Sunday service, I have no doubt she's having a great time meeting lots more new faces, and most likely steeling the show - not sure I'd brave taking her to church, but they were quite insistent.

I have met several people now who have only realised who I am once Daisy comes along or is mentioned in conversation "oh - you're Daisy's Mum" quite incredible how she manages to be as well known as she is considering she's only been walking for a fortnight and has no particular form of successful communication to speak of. How I love watching her life unfold!

So, busy times in Niue - in reality it's probably not actually that busy. I have my bit of work on the project and Paul works a full week finishing about 5ish each day but of course has no travel time so when he finishes he's home - so in reality a shorter week. What makes it feel busy though I think is that we're in a destination where it just feels like we should be on holiday. We should be out there snorkeling at every given opportunity, reading books, enjoying long lazy lunches and generally relaxing as much as we can. Don't get me wrong - I'm NOT complaining, but it does take more adjusting to than I expected in that regard. But what a great to place to be working and living this is. And although we don't get to go snorkeling as much as we would if we were on holiday we do seem to manage to squeeze it in at least 2-3 times a week. If the tide and the weather is right we'll usually get out once in the week and then as much as we can during the weekends. And the beauty of the coral coastline and having a toddler is at low tide lots of pools are created on the reef which are just perfect for Daisy to splash around. Yesterday at one such pool named Kalaone Paul was out on the reef and Daisy and I were splashing around when a shoal of fish came leaping out of the water right in front of us - Daisy clearly thought this was fantastic as we proceeded to chase them around the pool.

With Daisy at church this morning Paul and I had our first opportunity to go out snorkeling together since we've arrived, and to celebrate this moment we were gifted the sight of a 5ft reef shark. Well when I say sight...it was within a few metres of us and seemed quite inquisitive of our presence, I wasn't massively comfortable with it's inquisitiveness though I must admit - that's a big fish! So we thought we might head back to the wharf which the shark also decided was a good idea and trailed us for a while until something more intriguing must have caught it's fancy.
I've just realised whilst writing this that I think I may have already become a bit blase about the visibility here, I remember talking to many of you before we came over here about the rumoured 50m visibility in the waters off Niue. Well no lie, I'm not sure whether it's been that since we've been here yet but it's entirely believable. It's easily 20-30m most of the time I would say. And there's always a lot  to see. Sea snakes are another inquisitive creature of the sea, and there are a lot of them here - if you don't see one coming at you on the surface because you're too busy checking out what's underneath you they can give you one hell of a fright! They need a bit of getting to used to but are a pretty cool feature once you do. The array of fish is incredible, I can't even hazard a guess as to what most of them are, but there's a lot of all of them and they're all there just a hanging around on the reef - seriously, who needs sandy beaches when you get all this with a bit of coral?
Next week we're planning on starting the theory for our PADI tickets so we're very much looking forward to that and really getting out there exploring the waters of Niue. So with that will come many more stories of our exploration of the ocean surrounding us.

Until  next time Xx