Word on the street is that Qatar Airways has been keeping the world moving through the whole pandemic. I don’t know how true that is, but it was true in our situation. Normally we fly the “short” way around the world across the pacific, but this time we’d have to go the long way around.
It is really good to be back with our Kovol friends. However they are really busy these days, cutting new gardens and digging up all the yams planted last year. So there are not many people around but they keep coming by for a little break from work or to help us with language. Philip is planning on going on a two day work trip this week. They will be cutting big trees and bushes to clear a new garden area. This is a huge job and they normally like to do it together and help each other out in that way.
Regarding the future, we’ve decided to extend our home assignment 6 months and are now aiming to return to PNG in Feb 2021. Right in the middle of our exhausting newborn phase was the deadline for deciding what to do with our rental with our choices being to move to the Netherlands in July or extend our rental for 6 months. Since we don’t have a fixed, predictable income we need to pay for our rent in advance and agree with the landlord on the duration and the minimum we could extend was 5 months. Exhausted and just about coping we couldn’t face attempting to move our family to the Netherlands navigating both the Covid restrictions and the new Brexit restrictions on me traveling to Europe.
So now the plan is to head to the Netherlands in December instead. We’re very much looking forward to spending some time there; Oscar’s grandparents haven’t seen him for about 3 years!