I was awoken the other night by a strange dream…but was that a dream. Did I just feel…no I was sleeping. But then, I could have sworn that something just…maybe was it a large cockroach that just ran over top of me. And am I still dreaming but did I just feel something fuzzy on my hand? As I was lying in my bed slowly coming out of comatose to semi-functional I could tell that something was not quite right. Yes I was quite certain that something had just scurried across the front of me. Maybe I was still asleep. So in my delirium I decided to do a sort of full body shake to see if A) I was awake and B) if my instincts were right and it wasn’t just me and critter in my bed. So as I did this full body worm wiggle, sure enough my foot connected with something about the size of a soft ball that went flying off the corner of my bed with a little squeak. My response was a calm and rational “WHAT THE…!?!” as I tried to jump from my bed to the light switch on the other side of the room forgetting about the mosquito net that surrounds my bed. So after untangling myself from my mosquito net I flicked the light on to see that our friendly neighborhood rat had somehow managed to get stuck under my bed and had used the mosquito net to climb up into bed with me. Right….that is just too easy to make jokes about, but lets keep it PG here.
I managed to coax my new bed mate out from under my bed only to fall over myself trying to catch him in a card board box (keep in mind I had been sound asleep not 30 seconds ago). Unfortunately he escaped through one of the many holes to the outside. I then proceeded to do what anyone in this kind of situation would do, I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And then I set every mouse trap I could find all over the house so now I have to walk on tip toes not to set of an explosion of traps. Fun times had by all.
I also experienced another first last week when I was going for a jog in my village. I was going by a house and all their dogs started barking at me, which is par for the course. I had my ipod on (though only in one ear because you have to be able to hear all the people yelling “FA LOLA!” so you can say FA back or else things just get ugly) so I was kinda rocking out to my self trying to ignore the pack of ravenous dogs barking menacingly at my heels. Next thing I know this sucker sinks his teeth into my calf and doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to let go. Again, I calmly turned around and asked him to please let go because I needed that leg to continue my run. Fortunately he complied, but his friends were jealous and wanted to know what the white girl’s leg tasted like. It was at that moment that I became a dog hater. I actually tried to kick them and now I hope they all die.
Aside from dogs and rats, things just couldn’t be more peachy. I had a funny food experience this week. Everyday at lunch all the teachers eat in a little one room house off to the side of school. There is some sort of rotation of the families in the village who make us food and on Tues I think something got messed up (not like I understand what is going on) but all we had for lunch was some boiled taro, pesupo (this “meat” substance in a huge can with white chunks of fat in it and tons of this ewwy brownish snot looking grease. I don’t know how people eat it, Ive never touched it), and eleni (tinned sardines in tomato sauce…yeah…). Luckily my teachers knew I was “le masani” or not used to these kinds of food (besides taro of course) so I had an easy excuse to go make my own lunch. I have never done this before, but I was so hungry and decided to take the opportunity to show off the fact that I can actually feed myself. So I went down to my house and made a tuna sandwich, nothing fancy just tuna, bread, cheese, mustard and lettuce and then brought it back up to where the teachers were eating. They were kind of just like oh ok, no big deal. So I started eating and it was so delicious and I was getting all involved in my sandwich when I looked up and a teacher was just staring at me with this disgusted look on her face like “oh my god I can believe you are actually eating that.” When she saw me looking at her she changed it to a quick smile and I just had to inwardly crack up because for the past however many months I have been watching samoans with that exact same expression while they suck the brains out of fish heads or crunch open pig bones to get the marrow out and here I was with a tuna fish sandwich and you would have thought it was the most grotesque thing this poor woman had ever seen. It kind of put things into perspective for me. To them, I am the weird one. Who knew?
Leading the sasa (the dance where I get to yell and scream and be silly while eveyone else sits on the ground and does certain dance moves that I tell them to) at the new groups Fiafia.
This is the part of the sasa where we "fai le lotu" or pretend to pray....that is neat
One of these things is not like the other....Practicing our dances for the wedding at the mormon church.
Bride and groom and the wedding party. Very American eh? Check out the bride's bouquet...yeah we will talk about that later....
Sitting dance at the wedding. That is my BFF in the village, Nerisa, sitting in front of me.
Me and John rocking out in our guy/girl dance
Daddy dancing with his daughter at the wedding. I mean you cant tell me that he is not the cutest looking old samoan man ever!
