Quite surreal to be celebrating Chinese New Year in an atoll with my parents, Elkie and Morton our guest!

On New Year's Day,  the girls all dressed up in qipaos that Elkie brought for them. Took some family photos on the flybridge and received red pockets.

From glamorous qipaos, we then changed to work clothes and went to Morton’s farm to help out. Girls cleaned the turtles’ home. Morton showed us how to pick eggs. The hens are sitting on their eggs and Morton said to just put your hand under and scoop out the eggs. Easier said than done. As soon as Elkie put her hand near the chicken, the hen would poke her hand. Scary and hilarious. Found some long sticks to wiggle the eggs out.

Next job was to collect coconut as feed for the animals as Morton ran out of animal feed due to the delay of the supply ship.  Hard dirty job. It was boiling hot. The girls and I went around picking up coconuts from the ground and feeling to see if they're dry/ dead or alive with liquid/pulp. Grant was in charge of hacking coconut open to see if there's pulp inside. Poor Grant. A few of them splashed brown vile fluid full of maggots all over him. Disgusting and smelled horrible.  Alex and Arabella were whining and complaining about being bitten by mosquitos, why they had to be picking up coconuts on New Year’s Day, blah blah blah. They would later find more enjoyable farm jobs that they would do everyday, but they didn't enjoy their first day on the farm.

In the afternoon, Morton took us to the open sea side to pick sea snails maoa. The tide was quite high and the waves were big. We got knocked down few times. Hard to find the snails but girls and boys did well. All in all we collected 100.  Morton showed us how to cook the snails and we made spaghetti with maoa in garlic and butter sauce (just like spaghetti alle vongole). It was delicious!!!

That's our very unusual and memorable Chinese New Year Day in Toau.