My concert is over and school break has begun. The sun is shining and I am happy.

The choir concert went better than I expected. The kids pulled together and sounded very good for the first concert of the year. I'll see how they felt about it at our choir party today. I got a lot of good comments from parents. It still isn't public that I'm not going to teach next term, but I'll tell them at the party today.

I had my first experience of being a support team this week. People who stay here in Ukarumpa can be matched up with teams who go to the village to pray for them, talk to them on the radio, and do things for them on centre. My family, the Whitneys, are having a flight to their village on Wednesday to bring out their kids for the school break. I went shopping at the store and got some cash for them at the finance office. I'm looking into the possibility of visiting them in the village over Christmas if I can get the flights set up.

The Goroka Show that I went to last weekend was quite an event. It's one of the biggest tourist things to do in the country. People come from all over the country to show their traditional dress, song, and dance. When we first got there the nationals were outside the fence but the whiteskins could go inside and take pictures. There were about 8 groups performing all at once. It was sensory overload! Kundu drums, singing, bright colored costumes everywhere. It was a picture takers paradise. I took one whole roll of film and I recorded some of the music onto a tape. We stayed for 3 hours, which was a little bit longer than I should have stayed. I was so tired that I had difficulty walking back to the van - especially when the whole crowd was going the other direction and I felt that I had to be so careful about protecting my camera and tape recorder so that they wouldn't be stolen. We heard so much about raskols and pickpockets at the Goroka Show. None of us were robbed, but at one point we were close to someone who was being apprehended for robbing.

Another highlight of the weekend was the artifact market. It was much bigger than usual. There were all of the normal artifacts like bilums, hats, necklaces, baskets, and flutes, but there were also more wooden sculptures, clay masks, clay sculptures, penis gourds, ocarinas, and some scary looking medicine man kind of things - like a bilum with jawbones of a possum-like animal called a kuskus. I bought bilums, ocarinas, and necklaces - and a basket. All day whenever we were in the car, the basket sellers came right up to the window to try to sell to us. I got a really good deal on one.