Flexibility

Sometimes it's hard to be flexible. And I'm not talking the kind that
allows you to do the splits. But living here in PNG, we find we have to
exercise our flexibility much more often than is always comfortable.

Take yesterday for an example. Matt has arranged with our co-translators to
work every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But yesterday, a community meeting
was called to discuss some village issues, as well as the upcoming election.
And it went on, and on, and on. Usually, Matt hopes to get started working
by 9am, and then he actually gets started whenever people show up.
Sometimes promptly at 9. Or 9:30, or 10:00, or even later. But because of
the meeting, it was after noon before anyone showed up to work. Thankfully,
we actually had a beautiful sunny day, so there was power to keep working
thru the afternoon.

On top of all the waiting for the co-translators to come so that translation
work could begin, we had another instance where we had to be flexible. In
the late morning we received an email from the helicopter pilot. He asked
us if we would be willing to be picked up on the 22nd, rather than the 28th.
Considering that the 22nd was THIS Friday, rather than our original next
week Thursday date, our minds started scrambling, thinking of how we would
need to change things, what I would need to start thinking about
inventorying and packing in the next day or two, how we would need to let
people know the changes and such. The afternoon was (in our minds at least)
a flurry of activity as we tried to figure out how we would need to change
our schedule around to accommodate this change. But then, in the late
afternoon, we received a "whoops, I got the date wrong" sort of email, and
found out that he was actually asking us if we'd be willing to move our date
BACK one day, from the 28th to the next Friday, the 29th. So in a split
second, I went from thinking about how much extra food we'd have out here
for the next stay, to trying to stretch it, and diapers and all that out for
one more day!

Gotta love needing to be flexible.

Thankfully, once our co-translators showed up, Matt was able to do a very
productive 4 hours of work in the afternoon. And thankfully, while it was a
little disappointing to go from thinking that we'd be home this week,
enjoying hot showers, a washing machine, friends, etc to now having an extra
day in the village, it really doesn't make it hard for us at all. We have
enough food. I'm going to have to skip on my "one a day" disposable diaper
today, but we'll make it thru. =)