This time next month ...

... I will be finalising the last of my packing for Vanuatu, ready to head off for a great week.  A lot has happened in the last 20 days that has made me feel quite a bit more prepared.  We have been doing the training that UnitingWorld has up online, and putting in some comments on the training forums.  I find that I am quite willing to jump to some potentially rather disastrous conclusions, so the training has been great for me so far.  This morning I did the child protection training, with questions like this:

Choose A or B as a precursor for this statement ... "be responsible around children"
A) I will always
B) I will never

I got 100% correct.  This is a good sign I think...

I know I'll be adding some of the following things with me when I go ...
- combined sunscreen/insect repellant.  My doctor recommended this stuff because it means you don't have to apply sunscreen as well as repellant separately.  I know though, that the time when I get bitten most by mosquitoes is in the evening, so I suspect I'll end up taking different insect repellant as well.  Insect bites definitely = bad.
- A laptop, so I can type blog type things.
- a mini hairbrush.  It is from the stuff we sold at the garage sale, and it has a picture of Winnie the Pooh on it.  I mention it not only because it's very cute, but because I forgot to take a brush last time I went to Vanuatu, and it drove me nuts the whole week.
- My sense of humour - as much as I like to think I can get all "chilled" on "Vanuatu Time", my nature is pretty much on time.  If I am late, it is because I basically intended to be late, and even then, I'm normally only like ... 5 minutes late - so I can't even get the "fashionable" bit right.  So will have to work on patience and fun stuff like that.

We are having a catch up this Sunday so we can run through some of the finer points of our trip.  I keep forgetting who I have spoken to about what, so it will be great to get the whole team in one room!

We should hopefully be posting a bit more over the next month or so ... can't wait to see how things go when we are getting the last set of details ready.