The Samoan Adventure

Goodbye Samoa!

2008-11-27T12:38:00.014-05:00

Well, Im back in the exact place where I started this adventure some 27 months ago...my parents kitchen table. Who knows if Im any wiser, but Im definitely older. I wrote the following post the day I was moving out of my house in Tafatafa (11/21/08). Thank you everyone for your love and support over the last 2 years. I may or may not start a new blog, Ill let you all know, but for now the Samoan adventure has sadly come to end....enjoy the last blog!

How did this happen? There is no way I have been here for 2 years. I am currently sitting on the floor of my now semi-empty house. Of course I waited until the last minute to pack (5am the day I am getting picked up). The Peace Corps car will be here soon to move me out of Tafatafa…for good. It doesn’t seem real at all. This was such a wonderful and humbling experience…and incredibly frustrating and heart-breaking as well. Most of all I will miss the kids from my school and a certain 6 year old boy in particular. They taught me so much in the way of patience and love.

Yesterday I had my goodbye “party” with the school. I was doing ok until I had to say goodbye to the sea of big brown eyes. I remember when I first came to that same room 2 years ago and all those eyes bore into me with unabashed curiosity. In 2 years I fell in love with each and every one of them. Samoan children are so full of life and many of the adults try to beat that out of them at an early age. I tried to give them an opportunity to be who they wanted to be and to think for themselves, but in the end I think I was the one who learned from them. They showed me how to take joy in the little things in life and to laugh at my mistakes. To have to look into all those big brown eyes and say goodbye…well I’ve done easier things in my life.

It really has been a long and strange trip. How do you just leave a place like this? How do you just say goodbye to people you have lived with, worked with, bent over backwards for, cried with, yelled at, laughed with and just sat and talked to about everything and nothing in particular? I guess there probably is no right or wrong way to leave, so I won’t. I hope a part of me will live on in those big brown eyes. I hope they stand up for what they want, read books from their new library, learn to type on their new computers and ask questions without feeling shameful for not knowing the answer.

“Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better, but because I knew you I’ve been changed for good.”

But before I get into the swampy area of complete corniness (hmm maybe too late), I’ll hop off my soap box and clean out my fridge which has a faint smell of rotten fish and moldy cheese. I won’t be able to post this until I get home as Mary and Dad don’t know I am coming home for Thanksgiving, Mom and I tried to surprise them, we’ll see how it goes…Thanks Samoa for the tears, laughter, patience, smiles, vailimas, friendships and 20 extra pounds.

Signing off from Tafatafa…I’m out!

On the plane..they actually let us on
Me with baby Dan who was Meg's (unbelievably cute) nephew at the airport
Dave, Samoa and I. My last dinner. They made me a pig and sashimi..mmm
My (actually Dave's) beach
Seb (Dave's son) and Dave, shaving the pig for dinner
Sina and Nerisa (my BFF in the vil). Mom gave Nerisa that shirt
The kids peaking into the office
Issac and Malaki

And the 2008 Book List is:

1/22/08 - Heart of Darfur, Lisa French Blaker - This is written by a Kiwi nurse who did Doctors without Borders in Darfur. Not the happiest book, but I really enjoyed it

2/3/08 - Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger - Not so much about football as it was about how messed up this little Texas town was in the 80s, very interesting

2/11 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling - Had to re-read it because its just that good

2/19 - The Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel - I love Ayla!! Very cool book to read when living in a culture that doesn't get you and you don't really get them

2/25 - Northern Lights, Philip Pullman - This was the beginning of my fantasy stage. Very much enjoyed it

2/27 - The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis - Classic

3/4 - The Other Side of Haight, James Fadiman - A novel about living in California in the 60s...I've read better

3/24 - Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronical, Mortiz Thomsen - By a guy who did the "real" PC back in the 60s in South America. Made me realize how much better we have it, pretty funny too

4/3 - History's Worst Decisions: and the People who made them, Stephen Weir - So promising and so disappointing

4/15 - The Valley of the Horses, Jean M. Auel - Part 2 from Clan of the Cavebear. First book was better, but still kinda entertaining

5/31 - The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien - Classic, loved it

6/11 - Prince Caspian, C.S. Lewis - Wanted to read it before the movie came out. Fun

6/16 - Stranger in a Strange Land (unedited version), Robert Heinlein - Wow! I mean really made me rethink a lot of things. Im currently recommending this to anyone and everyone, so read it

6/24 - The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman - 2nd of the Dark Materials trilogy. Good

7/20 - D-Day, Stephen Ambrose - Started out good, ended up dry

7/23 - Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer - My first Krakauer experience...loved it!

7/30 - Three Cups of Tea, Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - Mortenson got lost after climbing K2 and then decided to spend the rest of his life building schools in Pakistan...umm cool! Helping people is neat

8/8 - The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman - Last of the trilogy. Between this book and Stanger I think these were the most influential books I read this year. Very cool

8/14 - Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer - Kid wonders around doing cool stuff, but kinda dumb about it and gets himself killed in Alaska...not a bad book though

8/27 - The Mammoth Hunters, Jean M. Auel - 3rd book from Clan, this is where it starts to get trashy and stupid

9/23 - Acts of Faith, Philip Caputo - A novel about aide workers in Africa. AMAZING! Very intense but soooo good!

10/2 - Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali - Muslim woman who ran away from her family. Also just an amazing story and its true! Ayaan is pretty much my hero

10/19 - All Quiet on the Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque - Been meaning to read this one forever. Novel about boys in WWI, beautifully written and very sad.

10/29 - Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer - History of Mormons and the inspiration of my halloween costume. If you want to get really mad at the stupidity of certain humans, go ahead and read it, I dare you.

Currently reading Until Proven Innocent which is about the Duke Lacrosse boys who got severely screwed over by their own college and the American judicial system back in 2006. Also a book that makes me a little bit angry, but I promise other than that I am really very happy.

Hope you all enjoy my reads and if you have any comments about my reviews or suggestions for my 2009 reading list I would be more than happy to hear them!

My camera takes black and white pictures! That is neat

2008-11-21T17:59:00.001-05:00

Mary Kalergis...call me

Oh wait this pic isnt black and white, but whatever its my life. These are the teachers I work with...need I say more?

Malaki and his mama Ella.

I love Malaki! Can you see his hearing aide?!

My new favorite picture

Sugar and Spice

2008-11-19T15:46:00.012-05:00

Once again, everything is crazy and I never have time to write anything of substance so I decided to just let the pics do the talking instead...

PCV hanging out at my beach...

Girls of 77. That is the beach where I live, true story.

This is Shane and I at Halloween. We found out while in PC that we are like 3rd cousins 4 times removed or some such nonsense. Anyway this is about the only appropriate pic I have from Halloween so i thought i would put it up...

We had a staff tea to thank the pc staff for putting up with us for 2 years. This is the cake meg and I got, complete with a G.I Joe candle and roses...we thought it was appropriate...

This was the map we were keeping during the election. Notice we added Samoa and American Samoa. We also pointed out where Russia would be in case anyone was related to Palin...

On election night all us Americans were invited to the US embassy where they have CNN (gasp!). We weren't suppose to bring in cameras or cell phones, but I "accidentally" forgot my camera in my bag (see if you can find Meghan and her surprised face of me taking a picture...not so subtle that one). This is the back room of the embassy, we were just about to find out that OBAMA WON!!

We had a little "gathering" at my beach fales last weekend. These are 3 of the 4 girls of the new group 81. They presented me with an awesome thank you card for helping with their training because they are just that cool. From left- Blakey, Chris, me, Erin (who will be moving into a village just 3 away from mine so she can check in on my projects for the next 2 years. yay!)

This is Dylan. Dylan and I are the technical volunteer trainers for the new group 81. This is just one example of how distracting Dylan is when I am trying to work hard (or hardly work, Im not sure any more?) in the office...

We had no power or water and we were all stuck in the office on a Sunday...since the office turned into a sauna in a matter of 5 minutes we decided to do what any good volunteer would do in a such a stressful situation...go to the third floor balcony and make ava of course! Im the taupo (i.e. ava mixer)

Dennis the Menace meets Samoa

2008-10-31T18:14:00.008-05:00

Very busy the last few weeks. I had a few minutes to throw up a few pics from our last fiafia for the new group 81. Very mixed feelings about going home in a couple of weeks. I love so many people on this funny little island, I just don't know how Im gonna say goodbye to them all....

Group 77's last Fiafia! I can't believe its almost over! ps- remember when we came to Samoa there were 16 of us. Ive been having a lot of fun and going back and reading my first blogs from when I came here. I guess a lot has happened in 2 years...

Meghan was really excited about Molly's headdress...

She's special..

To be the taopo for a fiafia (which is what Molly was) you have to wear all sorts of fun stuff. You also must be covered in coconut oil so you skin is all shinny and people can stick money to you (this is a really fun culture). I am helping Molly with her coconut oil here, I think we used a whole bottle...

77 girls getting a little sappy at our last fiafia...silent tear..

This is Meghan's Samoan father, Tagiau, who is pretty much the coolest man alive. He made me a sling shot (as in he whittled down a tree branch and hooked it up) to shot at the stupid island dogs, pigs, chickes, students, etc. It is pretty much the best present I could ask for. He also taught me how to shot it...Im still working on my aim with moving targets...

2008-10-21T23:01:00.001-05:00

yeaaaahhhhh....its all part and parcel of the job...

Do NOT insult Journey!

2008-10-15T18:16:00.009-05:00

Very busy with new group training. I guess I didn't realize how much work I was signing up for. Oh well, its nice to be busy. Thought I would throw a few pics up on the old blog since I haven't done that in a while....

Tattoos of group 77. This was at our COS conf. It is everyone who got tattooed over the last 2 years.

Samoan sunset over my house. Pretty.

HAHA! This will just never get old. Meghan and I had to dress up for Teacher's Day the first weekend of Oct. The dress code was all white puletasi's and white hats. The good news is we got free cake and ice cream. I mean it just don't get no better.

One of these things is not like the other...Me posing with the teachers of my school at Teacher's Day

Us on the bus going to teacher's day

Yay new group 81! Not really the best picture, but if you can't tell, they are really tall. And a special note to Matt's family (who apparently read my blog) he is in the green shirt on the left side. He is doing really well and enjoys making fun of me trying to teach his training.

Welcome ava ceremony for the new group. From the left is Christian, Sharon (who works in our office), and Aaron

Shane was the ava boy and was pretty confused for most of the ceremony, but what else is new?

I'm important, I swear!

2008-09-30T20:26:00.002-05:00

Well, term 3 (subsequently my last term in Samoa, sad face) "started" last week. I actually will be lucky to go to much school at all this term because I was "hired" (big into the quotation marks recently) to be a volunteer technical trainer (at least we think that is what the term is). Which basically means I am helping out with the new training group that comes in next week. Which also officially means I will have been in Samoa for exactly 2 years, holy cat's potatoes! Anywho, I am helping out, with my buddy Dylan, with the life and work training aspect of things. I am really excited about it because I have soooo much information to give to the new SPED (special education) volunteers. So that is neat. Other than that, I have pretty much been spending my time sitting on a bus going back and forth from apia to my village. Things be good and busy though, plan on being home beginning of Dec and making an east coast tour. anyone, who wants to join or wants to let me crash on their floor let me know. Love to you all

Go Peace Corps GO!!!!

2008-09-12T19:36:00.012-05:00

The sewing seminar finished today and was a huge success! Today we had a presentation of all the items the women made throughout the week. TV3 came this morning to do interviews and shot footage of the work and the women sewing. All very exciting...I think I deserve a vacation now..right?

I took this as I was walking up to the fale this morning. The women were busy hanging up their work at 6am (I arrived after 3 cups of coffee at 730am, no samoa before coffee, strict rule)

The women finishing up work with their main projects hanging behind them

Lise being interviewed by TV3

Lise, the women who I worked with to organize all this, and I. The women made me this puletasi during the week. My contribution was the reversable headband. Yah me!

Pretty women posing

This one is for you mom

Lise and Suega, a rep from the min of women who helped teach the seminar, working on my puletasi

Sewing is tiring!

Suega cutting pieces for my puletasi

This is Pila. Pila loves to dance. I love Pila

Concentrating reallllly hard...

And Sa..moa (get it? Like "Some More")

2008-09-09T20:53:00.009-05:00

My man! Malaki and I hangin out at the sewing seminar

Me driving Sally crazy at girls weekend with my camera holder/sock. This is probably my most efficient project over the last 2 years

And there's a nice one...

So this was lunch for the kids the other day...sugar cane. You peel it down with a machete and then chew off pieces of it and suck the sugar out, then you spit the rest into the woven basket in the middle...I remember school lunches being a little bit different...

The heaven shinning down on Manono... Stephanie's old home :-(

From left Diane, Ricky, Jacob, Meghan, and Dylan. Chillin out at Manase on the north side of Savaii. ps- Mom and Dad this is the place I was gonna take you guys if we had gone to Savaii

Commanding the blowholes to blow

Climbing down into the Sua Trench...thats me hanging off the ladder

I'm a Professional Middle-man

2008-09-09T18:57:00.012-05:00

I wrote this in village and didn't have time to spell or grammar check it...sorry in advance...

Apparently my life in Samoa is not going to slow down any time soon, not that I am complaining, but too all my devoted readers (mom) forgive me for the extended amount of time between posts. Ok so let us rewind a bit…My wonderful, crazy Godmother and her wonderful and somewhat-more sane husband came to visit me the last week of August. As always it is soooo refreshing to see familiar faces. Ricky and Diane were so gracious and def spoiled me for the entire week (oh and I loved every minute of it!). They came to see my school and watched the kids sing one day. I also took them on a tour of my island (Upolu) and the big island (Savaii) for a day. We saw fantastic beaches, blow holes, visited super-cool peace corps volunteers, and generally just had an all around good time (this is my brouchuer for people to come visit me because its just that cool here, call my secretary at “Laura’s Tours”).
After I sent them home last week, I finished up the last week of Term 2, but the fun was only just beginning…On Saturday of last weekend the girls of 77 (am referring to the 3 other girls who are the same group as me, that would be group 77, we all came together in October 2006, and while 7 boys from our group have gone home already, the girls are all still standing strong) had a little gathering. Meghan had extra vacation days so she was allowed to rent a car and the 4 of us drove/giggled around the island. We spent the night out at Lalomanu that night. It was very nice and relaxing hanging out all together…oh and kinda hilarious. I found it pretty awesome how 4 very different girls from very different backgrounds can get along so well. Yah us!
The first Monday of the break between 2nd and 3rd term was actually one of my busier days. So once upon a time I talked to the Women’s Committee in my village and they expressed interest in obtaining sewing machines in order to make clothes for their kids and possibly start a small business selling clothes and whatnot. Well, writing the grant and purchasing the sewing machines was easy, hell it was even a piece of cake getting the machines from Apia to Tafatafa, the headache we’ve been dealing with for almost a year now is getting someone to come out and teach the women proper maintenance and use of the sewing machines. After months of back and forth with various NGOs and Ministries in Apia we were finally able to convince the Ministry of Women to come out and teach a week long seminar to our women. Monday was the first day and it was amazing. The Ministry came out at 930am and stayed until 430pm. In the first day all the women (there were about 12) made a pair of shorts and a collared shirt! At the end of the day I walked around to each lady and they held up their work and told me who it was for in their family. It was so amazing looking around the room at all these women sewing clothes for their kids and husbands and knowing I had some part in that. I couldn’t really stop smiling. I left the women briefly at 2pm to walk over to the school and teach a computer class to Year 8 (even though school is on break, they still have to go because Year 8 exams are coming up in October and this is the big crunch time). All in all a very busy and satisfying day.

Rick, Crazy and I at the blowholes in Savaii

Crazy enjoying Samoa

Sally cracking us all up in th beach fales

!!!!!! I love 77 girls! !!!!

Me and the Women's committee posing with all the goods we received from a NZ grant! Yahoo sewing machines!

All the ladies sewing me new clothes..

Chickens want to sew too!!

More women sewing...you might notice the little house in the middle left with the bright tin roof...that is my house and that is the school building peeking out of the right side of the frame...nice commute eh?

Malaki helping Ella with her sewing. Does it get any cuter?

Who is sick of seeing all my computers??

2008-08-22T17:29:00.004-05:00

Ok I realize I'm going a little overboard with all the pics of my computers, but this week I actually started teaching computer classes (yes, me, Meghan gave me a book...I know things ok!) and it was just so exciting I wanted to share this with everyone!

So when I first saw this pic after I took it I almost cried. I mean its just so cute! That is Duane who is usually a huge troublemaker. He was so excited to learn how to use the mouse that he actually sat still for 5 whole minutes. Marie is helping him.

Ella loves playing puzzle games on the new laptop.

Computers, maps, Samoan children, oh my!

Gloria and friends checking out their new computer. Yay sustainability!

Career Day

2008-08-16T17:14:00.012-05:00

One of my many secondary projects is working with Avanoa Tutusa which is an NGO started by Peace Corps volunteers that does different projects with youth development. Every year we put on a career day for year 12 and 13 students at the National University of Samoa. We invited businesses and government agencies in Samoa to come and have a booth in order to inform the kids on different career opportunities that are available after graduation. Needless to say, a LOT of work was put into this and thankfully it was, once again, a huge success.

Our fearless Avanoa Tutusa leaders, Tim and Erin. I also like the little girl bathing in the waterfall in the background...everyone is having fun at career day!

Eric's job was to serenade us. His booth was for the music school he works for.

Students checking out a booth

My boys from the Red Cross had a great setup

Tim being interviewed for the paper

Meghan and Miss Samoa! I was so slick after this pic, the only thing I could think to say to her was "I like your sash."...God! Idiot!

Dr. Thomsen! This is the same doctor that helped Dad and I with the 2 different health clinics when Dad visited. He is pretty much the man. We asked him to give the keynote speech for career day, since, like I said, he's the man.

What does 1500 Samoan kids in a fale look like?

Our panel of speakers. That's Tim and Dr. T on the end

The students flooding into the fale for the beginning of career day

Cat-a-pil-a

2008-08-13T20:38:00.006-05:00

So this week I taught one of my reading groups "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" which was a favorite in my extended childhood. I thought it would be fun to have them make caterpillars out of egg cartons, what a hit! Here are some cute pics I thought I would share

My classroom. I've never had the kids this quiet and this concentrated...it only took me 22 months to figure it out!

Fai Mai and Leilolo showing off their caterpillars

They were so proud of the caterpillars...I mean that is just cute!

Leilolo working

Horton hears a who

2008-08-09T15:44:00.013-05:00

Mountains and mustaches this is a busy month!! So Condi came. Yeah…that happened. Recently my secondary projects are taking over my life. So in Peace Corps you have your primary project, for me that is basically Malaki or teaching special needs, whatever floats your politically correct boat. Since Malaki now has a hearing aide, a trained teachers aide in his classroom, and weekly classes in Apia for children with hearing disabilities I have taken the liberty of getting involved in a few secondary projects. Secondary projects can really take on any form and can be quite fun…unless you try to do too many.
The Women’s committee approached me recently (after a year and a half in the village they finally realized I am here) and asked if I would help them organize a first aide training day. Neato in a speedo, I thought. I immediately contacted the Red Cross who was more than willing to come spend a day training the men and women of our village how to do CPR and other basic first aide training. So we were all set to go the last week of July, but one must remember that nothing is that easy in Samoa. Wouldn’t you know that the wife of the President of the Mormon church in our district (and the mother of one of our teachers) happens to pass away that week and of course the funeral is scheduled the day that our first aide training would have been (hope that doesn’t make me sound too heartless). Ah, well. E le afaina (no problem) as I have found myself saying way too much recently. We re-scheduled for August 7th to start at 9am at Leapaga’s house (the house across the street from me where my counterpart Sina lives). At 9am on said day at said house I found myself sitting with 3 chiefs and 1 lady from the women’s committee. Anger doesn’t even begin to explain what I was feeling in the moment. Then to my astonishment (although I guess I really shouldn’t have been) one of the chiefs said “oh well, Lola didn’t tell us what time the program was going to start.” This was the same chief who called me at 6am that very morning to confirm that the program started at 9am, but yeah sure, I guess I could see how this was all my fault. With gritted teeth I told the one lady to start making phone calls as I took off down the road running to as many houses as I could telling people to come to the first aide training that they had insisted I organize. By 10am we had about 12 people which I felt was a pretty good turn-out considering.
The rest of the training went smoothly. Everyone seemed interested and asked questions and at the end of the day our chiefs asked the Red Cross to come back for a second training later that month. I’ll call that a success
In even more exciting news…OUR COMPUTERS ARRIVED!!! Of course getting them off the port and to my school on the opposite side of the island was about as fun as a root canal, but we did it! Everyone is very excited and we all want to thank every person that helped make this happen.
In other current developments, my counterpart, Sina, was offered a job as a teacher’s assistant at Salealua Primary school which is about 4 villages down. Ella (Malaki’s mother) found a little girl in Salealua who also has a hearing disability and Donna (who runs our little Apia program on Fridays) negotiated a job with the Ministry of Education for Sina at Salealua School. It was bittersweet moment as it is an excellent opportunity for Sina to have a job on her own at a new school, but I was sad to see her go as she was excited to help teach computers with me and she was enthusiastic about my library program and helped check-out the books to kids every day.
Career Day is next Friday, which is when we at our little NGO, Avanoa Tutusa, invite all the kids in year 12 and 13 to attend a career fair at the National University of Samoa. Last year we had over 1000 kids and 40-50 business present. This year we are inviting schools from Upolu and Savaii. It is a LOT of planning and negotiating and will be wonderful to see go off successfully.
I’m also still working with the women’s committee to organize a sewing day to help them learn how to use the sewing machines I helped them attain through a grant from New Zealand. Is there not anyone in this country who will come teach our women to sew for a day?!
So that’s that. Hope I don’t sound too whiny. I just add those bits for satirical purposes…for your enjoyment really…

Crate of computers from America!!!

I love crate!

I also love this man! This is Leapaga wth my i'e (sarong, wrap, what-have-you) on his head to keep the sun off

Leapaga and the year 8 boys unloading the crate at our school..ps the crate weighed 284 Ilbs...its true...I saw it on the box

Super Peace Corps to the rescue!

Unloading the crate

Happy teachers with computers!

Completed computer lab! Yah! I can go home now...jk

Mr. H- we did negotiate a trade, right? Computers for Samoan children?...expect this crate to arrive on your doorstep any day now

Samoans doing CPR!

What is Samoan for CPR?

Leapaga really liked his CPR doll...he is my friend...

me and condi

2008-08-01T20:25:00.002-05:00

Condi did a fly by of samoa and she wanted to meet some classy volunteers. I had a sign under her chair that said "Happy Birthday Mama" as it was my mother's birthday, but I didn't have to stones to ask her to pose with it, plus the other volunteers kept telling me I was gonna get shot if I asked.

Me, Meg, and Dylan front and center cheesin' at madame sec. Meghan couldn't stop staring at her shoes and I couldn't stop thinking about how she needed to eat a cheeseburger....Dylan is thinking about what he is gonna do later that night..

Hearing aides, butt boils, HECKMAN!!

2008-07-14T18:40:00.014-05:00

Phew! July is just a little silly…really. Father dearest arrived on July 2nd…his plane was an hour early (typical) making the arrival time 430am. Of course I was wide awake making coffee and crepes. Dad came to Samoa this time around with a residential friend (by that I mean he is a resident who works with Dad and is one of his “Buds”), Jayme Stokes, and his wife, Laura Carr, who is an audiologist. Dad arrived from America looking like a young Humphrey Bougaurt and we put him on the plane 6 days later looking like Keith Richards after binge-drinking for a week and climbing coconut trees, but I digress.
Shortly after arrival our band of merry pranksters headed to Apia to fuel up on coffee and Mama’s cookies. We then scooted up the hill to the National Hospital where dad gave a riveting speech on Thyroid cancer. We mingled and schmoozed with some of the Samoan Docs who said “Gee I wish I had known you were coming, we could have put some cases together for you.”* (This was extremely “funny” to Teuila, our peace corps medical officer, and I because we had just spent the last 3 months sending emails, letters, making personal visits, and calling every single doctor in the $%&*%^ hospital informing them that my father and Jayme were coming that week. All you can do is laugh and go have something to eat.)
After a little tour of the hospital, Dad did his impression of what happens when you jump out of an airplane and your parachute doesn’t open for a couple hours. Jayme, Laura, and I wandered around Apia for a bit.
The next day (Thursday, July 3rd) Dad and Jayme went up to Med Cen so Dad could give another talk and Laura and I headed to SENESE school where I take Malaki every Friday. Laura gave an information session on Cochlear Implants to the teachers at SENESE and Loto Taumafai early intervention. She then proceeded to test a number of children with varying hearing disabilities until about 5pm. Many of the kids had been tested before and had hearing aides made in Australia, so Laura was able to re-test them and then fit them with their new hearing aides and send them on their happy, noisy way. Malaki was one of them since he broke his last hearing aide a few months ago. Three cheers for collaborative leadership and all around do-gooding!
Friday, the dynamic-Americano 4-some did rounds at the National Hospital which I found super interesting (interesting is such a nerdy word). I saw my first gun shot wound and quite a few other fun things. Laura and I then headed across the street to Loto Taumafai for more hearing tests while Dad and Jayme apparently ran a marathon and did a Whipple. I think they might have been joking….
That night we went up to the condemned American embassy that we only use for special occasions such as 4th of July, which, as it just so happened, was on that day. I don’t really know how to explain 4th of July in Samoa so it is probably best for you all to just use your own imaginations…yeah….
Saturday we loaded up all the medical supplies we could stuff in a garbage bag and headed towards the Manono Warf. Stephanie (think Asian who I went to Thailand and ‘Nam with) and I have spent the last few months planning a one day free health clinic for the people in her village (pretty much the same idea as what the Hanks fam did in my village last year). Stephanie’s digs are just cool because she is the only Peace Corps Volunteer on Manono island. One can walk around Manono in about an hour and a half and doesn’t have to worry about mangy island dogs because there ain’t none and you don’t have to look both ways when you cross the “road” i.e. sand path because there ain’t no cars neither - not sure why that needed to be in Southern Virginia hick language, but apparently it did. Anywho the clinic was totally awesome. Dad, Jayme, and Dr. Thompsen from the Ministry of Health (who helped us last year) ran the main room while a group of PCV helped with the check-in area and a craft room for the kids. Laura ran more hearing tests for the kids.
Sunday and Monday we spent laying around the beaches and patting our selves on the back for being professional do-gooders.
So that is that, pics bellow, hope you enjoy
PS- Ramesh-call me

Malaki saying thanks for the portable hearing test....notice the huge one in the foreground...that is what we have in Samoa to test kids hearing...the smaller one is Laura's from America...that will hopefully be donated to Samoa
nice face Laura

This is one of Sally's kids from Fasitootai. Laura is fitting him with his first ever hearing aide!

Nice skirts! Jayme and Dad showing off their presents from Teuila at the 4th of July party

Dad and I bringing a little bit of Charlottesville to Samoa. Dad is holding Jim Heckman's auto scope that conveniently says "HECKMAN" in case we forgot. I am also wearing a shirt from "2 Sides" restaurant only the best place to get burgers and bloody marys in cville....oh and johnny is the owner

CUTE! This is Jayme taking a little boy over to Laura's "quiet" room for hearing tests at the Manono clinic

Jayme, Dr. Thompsen, and Dad working hard at the manono clinic

Dad looking for some lost change in Stephanies nephews ear lobes.

Stephanie and her nephew. Aren't they pretty?

The whole gang of PCVs at Manono plus a few happy and healthy samoan gremli-I mean children

Dad and I on the dock of Manono. That is my island, Upolu, behind us

The kids of Manono waving goodbye to our boat

the sick commander and chief of our trip. This was out at lalomanu...he was still in charge

Me holding Dr. McPukie up at lalomanu

a new link

2008-06-28T18:00:00.002-05:00

I just added a new link, the Borealis Expedition. These are some pretty amazing girls I know from camp who are paddling for 90 days this summer to the arcitic circle...and get this...its the second time they have done it. Very envious of their travles and just in awe of their general hard coreness. Check it out if you have time.
In other news, Dad arrives Wednesday. Gonna be a very busy week running around the national hospital and having a health clinic on Stephanie's island, Manono. Looking forward to some all-american chaos!

Ode to chicken in a bag

2008-06-25T17:47:00.003-05:00

Last Thursday my teachers informed me that there was an all-principal meeting in Siumu on Friday (as in the next day). That’s nice, I’m glad it doesn’t concern me…oh how little I (still) know. Apparently because of this big to-do we (as in all of the teachers) were required to spend Thursday night at the school in order to prepare the umu (remember- the ground ovens Samoans make with lava rocks that are heated on a fire) with lots of pig, taro, palesami, etc. OK…I knew I would at least get a good story out of this or just very little sleep.
They told me to come to school at 4pm that night, but I am now very good at this game. If a Samoan tells you to be somewhere at 4 do not even think about being there any earlier that 6. Feeling very proud of myself for at least understanding this part of the culture (it only took 18 months) I wandered up to the school a little past 6pm. The teachers were all sitting outside, not really doing anything, which wasn’t really that much of a surprise. I have also learned to always bring a book to any Samoan function because there will probably be 6 hours of nothing to the 1 hour of whatever the event is, you may think I exaggerate, but you are wildly mistaken…
So, I settled down on the steps and got out my book when little Sina trudges up to me with a rice sack slung over her shoulder. She plops down on the step next to me with great effort and swings the sack around so it falls between us. By the way, Sina is maybe 5-years-old. I give her a nod of acknowledgement, which she returns. After a few seconds silence she points to the bag and says matter-o-factly, “O le moa”. That pretty much means “It’s a chicken.” Half way through translating “No, no, silly that is a rice sack,” I realize the rice sack is actually quivering a bit…
Instead, I say in Samoan, “There’s a chicken…inside the bag?”
“Yup,” as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“Uhh…well is it…dead?”
“Nope,” and with that she lost interested and trotted off to play with the other kids leaving me with the chicken…in a bag. Wellllll, okkkaaaaay. Better play this one cool and just keep reading and pretend that what is sitting inside the rice sack next to me isn’t sitting in the rice sack next to me. Maybe 5 minutes go by….

Malaki and Sina with her beloved chicken in a bag

Then I think the chicken in the bag all of the sudden realized “OH SH#*! I’m in a bag! This is definitely not going to bode well for my future!” And with that realization, the rice sack made a blood curdling “SQUAAAAACK!!” and flew about 3 feet in the air and proceeded to bounce off toward the toilets. At this point, half of the teachers began berating little Sina for being so careless as to leave chicken in a bag for the dumb white girl to look after while the other half of the teachers began chasing after chicken in a bag. I did the most understandable thing in such a situation which was to pee my pants laughing.

Its a chicken in a bag

Later that night when I realized there was going to be no food making (at least not by us, but the 6 or 7 year eight boys that were there were pretty busy…) I decided to go to my house where there was…you know…a bed. As much fun as it would have been to sleep on the cement floor with all the teachers and the pre-pubescent year eight boys (calm down Kyla) I opted for my quiet house instead. After I had just fallen asleep (Samoans in my village have a knack for sensing the moment that I fall asleep and then knocking on my door to ask for something) one of the year eight boys knocks on the door.
“Lola, we need to use your refrigerator.” The good news was that the chicken in a bag had found a friend…the bad news was that they were spending the night in my refrigerator…and thus was the end of chicken in a bag.
Tune in next week for elephants stampeding through the village!

The sad end to chicken in a bag

2008-06-17T18:13:00.008-05:00

Everybody loves pictures...right?

Malaki and Luisa learning to make koko Samoa...a little heavy on the sugar

Malaki at school with his fellow hearing diabled friends! yeah! Look how cute they are!

Ok I just had to put this on here. Anyone who has worked in Samoa before can see the frustration oozing out of this picture. These are all of my teachers. These are all of my teachers on their cell phones...every one of them. They are all either playing this "snake" game that makes a sound like this "shhhoomp! ding!" over and over again or they are going through the list of ring tones on the loudest possible volume...over and over again. Now times this by 5 hours a day then multiply by 5 days a week...do you see where I am coming from??

AHHH!!! The finished and cleaned new computer lab/library! The kids spent all day yesterday cleaning out the room (which was really gross and Im sorry I don't have before pics) and sorting through old books. That is Sina my counterpart leaning on the new computer tables.

This is a view of the computer lab from the opposite side of the room. Pretty nice eh?

Kids reading when I didn't even tell them to!

All the kids sorting through the old, gross books.

the man from mars

2008-06-13T17:49:00.003-05:00

The finished product that actually has nothing to do whith what this blog is about...

For some reason the first day/week of new terms are always the most interesting…for various reasons… Last Monday was our first day of term 2. I would like to show all of you how my first 5 minutes of school went and maybe you will understand why I have to recite in my head 50 times a day “I am making a difference.” So, I walk into school in my new school outfit all excited about my gifts for the teachers from America and all the medical supplies I brought for our disaster of a medical kit (see my blog entry for the first day of term 1 if you are curious) and this is what happens- there are two teachers sitting in the office and they look up and say in Samoan-
“OHHHH Lola!” slight pause to look me up and down which I am disturbingly use to and say “You got fat.”
Through gritted teeth I say, “Why thank you, how nice of you to notice!”
“OHHH Lola’s angry.”
Perceptive bunch they are.
We then proceeded to sit in the office and rotate between eating and staring at each other for the rest of the week. That is very, very boring. Good news for me, I am reading Stranger in a Strange Land the unedited version which is 655 pages long, therefore I did not die of complete boredom and insanity. Oh the best part about presenting the teachers with their presents (gifts are a big thing around here) was when they did not thank me, they thanked…John i.e. Dad! Because Dad is the “chief” of our family he’s really the only one of any importance, so even though he had nothing to do with the gifts that Mary and I picked out he gets all the credit! Pretty cool, huh? I think after he retires he should come to Samoa so he can finally find a family that will do what he says. Speaking of Dad and Stranger in a Strange Land, which I am absolutely loving by the way, Jubal Harshaw may be my favorite literary character yet! Anywho, Jubal has many a wonderful quote in this book, one of which very much reminded me of all my friends and their father’s and it goes something like this
“A little more money won’t do you any good- because daughters can use up ten percent more than a man can make in any normal occupation, regardless of the amount. That’s a widely experienced but previously unformulated law of nature.”
He also has some pretty awesome quotes about religion (which is probably why many people wanted to ban this book back in the day) I would be more than willing to discuss these with anyone via email.
Well, I hope everyone is as proud as I am that I survived another first week of term, only one more to go! Oh the other good news is that I got an email from one John Quality Heckman to inform me that he put 4 computers plus a laptop in a crate and sent it off for Samoa on Monday. Which means that the computer lab of Nene Primary may be up and running by July!! I also convinced the school committee to give me 70 tala for more paint for my bookshelves and computer desks. This is pretty exciting as this is the same committee who didn’t even want a computer lab when I first asked. It’s also exciting because now I get to spend the next month covered in paint!

fire dancing

2008-06-06T04:20:00.003-05:00

I am in Apia for a long weekend because a new peace corps group (group 80) arrived on Wednesday and we will be celebrating with a Fiafia tomorrow night.

I was lucky to be in tonight because it was the "Siva Afi" (samoan for fire dancing) competition tonight. Let me just say this is one Samoan custom that just never gets old. The guy in this video qualified to compete in the finals on Saturday. Pretty amazing. Enjoy

im back

2008-05-28T15:30:00.002-05:00

Back in the SP (south pacific in case you needed a little help). Pretty useless right now after that wonderful red eye with a baby doing an imitation of a dying dinosaur next to me for the entire 10 hours. The ipod picked a wonderful time to stop working too. Eh, what can you do? Just did a little shopping and planning to go hide in my village for a little while, not quite sure how I am going to get everything out there since "budget cuts" won't allow peace corps to actually use the 45 cars we have parked in the driveway at our office. Wow, apparently when i am tired i am bitter. Anywho, for those of you who I saw in the US of A it was wonderful to see you and I had a fantastical time, for everyone else I will be back in 6 months, call my secretary, we'll do lunch.

The American Adventure

2008-05-02T11:36:00.002-05:00

Did you know that in America there are no cats and the streets are filled with cheese? True story. I made it back to the US for the first time in a year and a half. I can't believe I haven't set foot on American soil in a year and a half! That is a long time. It also is a long time to be on an airplane to get here. I left Samoa at midnight on Monday/Tuesday the 28th/29th night in April and arrived in LA 10 hours later at 215pm Pacific time. I then had a 9 hour layover. I would say the bulk of my culture shock occured at this time. I was planning on meeting my friend Louis who is getting his masters out in LA instead of sitting around the airport waiting for my flight. Louis was running a little late picking me because apparently they have this thing called traffic in LA. It was fine because there was a Starbucks 3 feet outside of customs. Welcome to America. There was also a little store where I could by my favorite magazine, flavored water, and swedish fish. All in one place! And I didn't have to walk 10 miles and sweat off 15 lbs! Who knew life could be so easy?

At any rate, I sat down to enjoy my American luxuries when a nice little family that lets just call the "Fats" sat down next to me to enjoy their "reduced fat" steak and mayo sandwiches from Subway. I was so intrigued by the fact that I could understand what they were saying that I couldnt help but eavesdrop. I shortly after wished I could not understand what they were saying. Now I cannot recall exactly what the conversation was about but I remember wanting to laugh, scream and cry all at once. Something about needing more money for a gym membership so she could lose weight when she goes to visit her friend in London....

It was good to see Louis and his girlfriend Leah. We went to a nice Mexican restaurant and then sat in traffic for old times sake. I got on a plane Tuesday night and woke up in Chicago Wednesday April 30th. Oddly enough Dad was there. He had a meeting in chicago so he met me in the airport and treated me to a 530am breakfast. All I can say about the buffet breakfast at the Hilton after a year and a half of coconuts and taro is OMG!!

After breakfast I got on yet another plane to Madison, WI where my little sister and her good friend Jenn were waiting for me. SOOO good to see them! My first night in Madison I went out to sushi with Mary, Jenn, a few of their friends and Kyla (for more details see Kyla's blog in side bar). Raw fish and good friends..oh and sake make a very nice combination.

That weekend was MIFFLIN which Mary and I have been counting down to since...pretty much our whole lives I would say. Mifflin is actually the name of a street where a lot of college kids get really drunk once a year and most of them end up in jail. what fun?! But for us it meant a rugby game. The rugby game was actually suppose to be the UW team versus alum, but since I don't remember most of college I think it is fair enough that I be allowed to play for the UW alum, right? So I did. Turns out we played on a field that was down the hill from the town dump and oh yeah..it was raining. Nothing like rolling around in fresh sewage to cure a hangover. I have many a picture, as of now they are in an album on my facebook page, but I will work on getting them up on the old blog.

Some more good camp friends came up for the weekend and my friend Jesse even ended up siring the game. Good times. After the game we got social...which....well...you know...

Last Monday I flew out to VA to really come back to my roots. I thought it would be weird coming back home, but you just kinda get right back in the swing of things. I went to work with Dad last Thurs and Fri which was amazing. Apparently he is a big deal, who knew? I even got to see someone's brain! Surgery is neat.

Last weekend I went up to NOVA (for those that don't get east coast slang that is NOthern VirginiA, god we are cool down south). I saw my two best friends from college which was just wonderful and at the same time a bit shameful. One is engaged and one is living with a boyfriend and just got a dog. I play in oceans...whatever.

This week Im trying to finish up all my c'ville stuff, such as looking for jobs and filling out applications because that is all very hard to do in Samoa, what with the pen shortage...I am flying back to Madison early thursday morning and little sister Mary graduates from college this weekend!! Can you believe it? I think she is really still 8 and just put a dead snake on my phone, precious.

Well, that pretty much sums up the American adventure thus far. I will be going back to Samoa on Tuesday May 27th for another 6 months of "duty" (I met a guy in DC last week who was just back from Iraq and told him that I was also in the "service" decided not to go too much into details with that one). Anywho, great to be back in the US of A!

cats out of the bag...

2008-04-19T18:18:00.007-05:00

Its true I got a tattoo...and there might be more...This was back in November. I went with Meghan and Molly from our group. I got the bottom part of the Malu which is the tattoo samoan women usually get. Sulu'ape (the man, the mythe and the legend) is the one hammering ink into my skin. It does not feel good, but it sure looks cool. anywho here are the pics

Sulu'ape and the boys holding me down.

I was having the opposite of fun here. Go badgers!

Close up of the traditional tattoo teeth. He uses the top stick to hammer the bottom stick which has teeth dipped in ink. I would like to say again that this does not feel good.

Finished product

Back view. The diamond shape is called the "Malu" and is the symbol used for Samoan women and for protection.

Sulu'ape (the tatooist in Samoa) sixing up my leg for work

2008-04-11T19:14:00.000-05:00

ps- the video bellow is my entire school signing the Samoan National Anthem!

Who wants some more?

2008-04-11T17:52:00.009-05:00

The computer lab/library!! Those are the computer tables on the left and the book shelves on the floor. Am so excite!

Moega (his name means bed) and Sioasi (his name means George) trying to drink the paint...

More wedding...here the bridesmaids are trying to figure out what they are supposed to do with the wedding cake....they didn't get to eat it thats for sure.

Stephanie having a stare down with the wedding cake

Dylan, Meg, Tim, and I at the wedding. Dylan is in the middle of saying "Yeah, friendship!" and im in the middle of trying to hide my fishing tan

birde and groom with the groomsmen behind. Sweet shirts eh?

Sustainable development!

2008-04-08T17:33:00.014-05:00

What a tumultuous couple of weeks! Somebody got married, I got bit, or should I say attacked, by dogs (again), I helped paint 2 world maps, we had “field day” at school, April fools happened (the war continues…), and we finished season 2 of Veronica Mars (I can’t believe it was Beaver!). I have maybe hundreds of pics from all of the events (save for me watching TV and getting punked for april fools) so I hope the pics I can post do all the events justice.
Last Saturday (March 29th) Ema, a Peace Corps volunteer that came in the group before me (June 2006), was married to Lafi, a Samoan guy from her training village in Vaie’e. The wedding was very nice and although it was my 4th wedding in Samoa it was the first wedding I went to that wasn’t dry! Let me just make a point of saying here that a wedding without alcohol is just weird, seriously. Anywho, my friend Stephanie (who I went to Tailand with) and Sarah (aka Texas) were bridesmaids. Ema’s parents from America came which was special. It was all very fun and for the most part Samoan, which is to say…it was hot?
This last Friday (4/4) we had “play day”. About 2 weeks ago Sina, my counter part, and I went to a sports clinic in apia for children with special needs. It was quite fun and equally educational. So, we were allowed to show off our PE teacher skills on Friday and let me tell you, it is not easy to keep 70 Samoan children entertained for 2 hours in 90 degree heat! But we did it. My personal favorite was playing a game that is basically duck, duck, goose, except substituting the words for samoan, samoan, palagi (white person)! Its these little things that no one else understands that get me through the day. At any rate, the day went off quite nicely I thought.
That night I had my teacher friend, Tina, come over with some boys in her family and help trace the world map and the south pacific map on the wall of what will soon be our new computer lab! Speaking of, the computer desks and book shelves are finished! I have also heard from a certain blond New Englander that our computers should be arriving sometime in June (after I come back from my tour of the United States). So this is all very exciting as I am sure you can all see in my colorful writing style. Back to maps- we traced Friday, Saturday we filled in the color scheme…sort of. Then Monday night I had the kids from year 7 and 8 paint the map. It was only a semi-disaster and it actually looks kind of like a map which is a victory in my book!

77 and 76 girls and Ray at the wedding. Back row from left to right- Sally, Steph, Ray, Molly, Jan, Jordan, Ema, Jame, Texas and then its meg and I in front.

Always the ham...did i mention we were excited about there being alcohol at the wedding?

Lafi and Ema..awww

Here comes the bride...and Stephanie with the umbrella...

Ema, next to her dad at the church.

Can you see why painting a map on the wall with 13 year olds might be difficult?

The map! This was about the only time we had everyone concentrating

Painting the PC logo on the wall above the map...don't want anyone getting confused about where this map came from...

First step- trace the map

Play day! Thats the year 8 teacher playing

Everyone can play "Samoan, Samoan, Palagi!"

This is what Samoan leap frog looks like

the see-saw balance game..thing. These kids are strong!

life is neat

2008-03-14T19:43:00.002-05:00

I added some links to blogs of friends that i think are neat. They are both friends from Wisconsin, Kyla is running around Europe being ridiculous and Ben is teaching in Chile for the next year. So if you enjoy blogs and you enjoy friends you should check them out!
Life in the old SP (South Pacific) is superidy duperdy! I could be going crazy but you know what they say, crazy is in the eye of the beholder...or whatever. I had another busy week running back and forth from the village to apia. I picked up 4,000tala worth of sewing machines, material, scissors, and thread for the women's committee yesterday. Thank you New Zealand aide and thank you to mrs. comings my second grade teacher who taught me how to write.
I found out wed that my principal signed Sina (my counterpart pictured in earlier blogs with cake) and I up for a special needs sports training for 3 days in apia next week. Apparently im going to learn how to play netball....
Anywho, gotta run, trying to decide whether to get on the bus or not...

Good deeds and pears

2008-03-07T18:50:00.005-05:00

Last week was a week of good deeds…and pears! We started work on the computer lab at our school which was wonderful. Michael, who is a new peace corps volunteer living in Satalo which is a village about 10 min bike ride from me, is a very experience carpenter who has agreed to help build our computer lab. We put up screen and coco wire on the windows to help hinder some of the creepy crawlies from getting into the lab. We also discovered that I was a bit short on the measurements, so we could only cover about half the windows. No fear, though I made a trip to Apia this weekend to get more screen and coco wire.
On Wednesday Meghan and I were picked up by a Peace Corps car and taken out to Sapo’e to help set up a computer that was donated to the school there by another peace corps volunteer. I was mostly there for moral support as those of you who know me know that computers are not exactly my specialty (lets not get into why I am starting a computer lab at my school…its all very confusing here in Samoa…).
On Thursday during my afternoon jog I was hailed to a house of a good friend by a bunch of flailing children screaming “Lola sau!!” (Lola come here). The woman that lives at said house, Lise, is a wonderful lady on the Women’s committee in our village. I wrote a grant for their committee to get sewing machines which I have a check for, but we needed to work out logistics about when to pick them up and when we should start sewing classes, etc. Lise had been in American Samoa for the last few weeks so it was good to catch up with her again. As I was leaving she called me back to give me presents from her trip (in Samoa it is rude not to bring everyone and their mom presents after you come back from trips, more often than not presents are in the form of food). She sent her girls in the house and they come back out with a bag which she pulls out a box of chocolate covered macadamia nuts and then she pulls out a pear!! This might not sound very exciting, but when you haven’t seen a pear in over a year the sight of the sweet savory fruit is beyond exhilarating. I, of course, freaked out a little bit, which I think surprised Lise as she didn’t even know what the name of the fruit was.
Later that night, after I chilled the pear, I bit into it while standing in my kitchen and collapsed on the floor in fruity bliss. Im not kidding. So that is my story of the pear.
I volunteered with the Red Cross again last Saturday. We were helping out with the Manu Samoa 15s try-outs. For those that don’t know Manu Samoa is our national rugby team. Some of the players were there which is about as close to a celebrity sighting as I have gotten in awhile. Quite exciting really.

Now that is what i call sustainable development!! It might be hard to tell that this is my entire school and they are all signing the national anthem! Malaki (my brother from another mother, i.e. the little boy i teach with a hearing disability) is in the bottom left corner.

My buddy Michael putting up the screens for the computer lab at our school. He had a lot of eager helpers...

Michael and the boys cutting the screen for the windows

Meghan showing off her work. This is the computer we (and by we I mean meghan) installed at Sapo'e

Estimated Prophet

2008-02-22T20:55:00.012-05:00

So i found some pics from all sorts of random things that i thought everyone might enjoy. Life is pretty swell here. I am starting to get really excited about going back to america for a visit at the end of april...vacation from vacation is good.
One of the peace corps girls in the group that came a few months before me is getting married to a samoan guy next month so we have bachlorette things to look forward to in the next month. Other than that, school has been keeping me the opposite of busy, but Ella (malaki's mom) is now a full time and paid teacher's assistant to help in malaki's class. This is very exciting because samoa has never had paid teacher's assistants before. Sustainable development! That is what i do!

My little pal Sina and I playing with a plate at the wedding. Lets hear it for the bright organge puletasi eh? Do i have style or what?

Meghan and I went to a wedding in my village...like 3 months ago, but whatever. It was our friend Tina and it was at the mormon church. So this is what a wedding in samoa looks like. Check out the cake on the right! Too bad only important people get the cake...luckily since the palagis (i.e. white people i.e. meg and i) were a package deal that apparently made us important. So we got half a round of cake. We were pretty siked.

Dylan, me, meghan. There is no time for fun in peace corps....

This is me and "baby dan" at meghan's house in siumu. Ok i know i say that i love every samoan kid, but baby dan is a pretty cool dude. He really wanted to wear my helmet even though it was all sweaty from my bike ride over. So i thought i would just give him a little practice run on my bike...in meghan's house. Im not really sure why she puts up withme...

This is Luisa and Malaki at school in apia. We made life-size cut outs of them that day and painted them the color of their school uniforms.

My boy Malaki playin with his new christmas toys on the beach.

Santa does come to samoa! He even came to Tafatafa beach...along with the rest of the special ed class of Senese school in Apia. Senese is the school that Malaki goes to on Fridays. He is in a class with 2 other little girls who live in villages and have hearing disablities. The whole crew joined us out at our beach last december. I am playing the part of santa's helper behind the picnic table.

Santa and Malaki

Im not so smart

2008-02-11T19:21:00.000-05:00

Look what I did on the first day of school! Yes, I’m a moron. Last Monday was our first day of the first term (school is on New Zealand system so we start in Feb instead of Sept). I started the day like any other, rolled out of bed, made coffee, put on my spankin new outfit that I purchased in Thailand and set off for Peace Corps round 2. I got about 10 feet from my front door when I stepped on a rock and turned my ankle quite painfully causing me to crash to the ground. My bag flew over my head and my precious coffee spilled everywhere. Well this was a predicament! I tried to gather myself and survey the damage and found a few cuts on my legs and a pool of blood in my right flip-flop (I turned my left ankle). Then I felt the pain in my toe and saw that I had a scrapped most of the skin off the bottom of it (see pic if you can’t remember what it looked like).
So I did what any self-respecting foreign volunteer would do, I sat there feeling sorry for myself. Eventually Tina, friend and teacher, came down and scooped my off the ground, picked up my scattered belongings and said, “I think maybe you should go home.” But, I was determined to get further than 10 feet from my front door on the first day of school. Together we hobbled up the hill to school. I cleaned my foot off at the spigot (same one the kids drink from...) and stumbled into the office.
Ana (our principal) was talking with parents so I didn’t get too much attention initially. Tina, meanwhile, went to get the school “medical kit” which turned out to be a metal box with a ½ full bottle of iodine, a couple of cotton balls, and a mystery ointment. I decided to go with my gut and sent one of the kids to get my Peace Corps issued medical kit from my house. I felt a little snotty, but the pain won out. Tina told me to put my feet up on a chair which I was thankful for because usually that would have been a major culture faux-pas. She then went to work snipping off all the dead skin which may or may not have been the right thing to do, but she was doing it so lovingly and cracking jokes the whole time about being my nurse. How could I stop her?
Later that afternoon when I was limping home on the road I went by my neighbor/protector/samoan father figure Leapaga who was sitting on his porch staring at nothing (a favorite pass time of samoans). He yelled in Samoan if I had hurt my lef and I said yeah, because I was a stupid palagi (whiteperson). Then he suggested that I should just go back to sleep. I thought that was the best idea I had heard all day.

WOHOO!! This is my computer lab/library...just not quite put together yet. But it is all there and ready to go. I hear the computers will be in country any day now...

This is my counterpart and bff Sina. Her 25th birthday was on 4 days before my 25th birthday (that would mean christmas day). I was deteremined to celebrate my birthday this year because Samoans don't usually celebrate their birthdays (most dont even know their birthdays). So I made a brownie/chocolate cake and put in some american flags from grandma so Sina and I could have a b-day party on christmas. That is my boy Leapaga behind us (also sina's father).

Where is Casey Jones?

2008-01-31T23:24:00.000-05:00

Well I survived the Savaii mid-service conference. What a glorious week. We arrived at our beach fales Monday afternoon. OUr APCD, the man, the myth, the legend, Fata Esera, allowed us some "free time" before a session that lasted about 10 min. We then committed ourselves to a few cocktails and a bowl of ava of the beach as we watched the sun set of the the south pacific waters.
I should maybe mention here that the point of this mid-service conference is to get together with the group we came to Samoa with, 77, in the middle of our service to discuss various topics pertaining to our service in Samoa. Fata is a pretty laid back guy so most of the conference was pretty laid back, but we did get to share information on various secondary projects we were involved in a the different kinds of diseases we had picked up over the past year. All very enlightening. Afternoons were mostly put aside for personal refelection and un-facilitated group discussion i.e. napping. All in all it was good to hang out with the old gang, even if we are down to 9 at this point.
We arrived back in Apia this afternoon for errands, etc. I have a couple meetings up at the hospital tomorrow. One meeting is with the one and only Samoan eye doctor who can hopefully find a safe home for the eye glasses mom sent over recently. Another meeting is with the head of the hospital in order to get permission for Chief Dad to come back over to Samoa next July and do some surgery and speeches. Should all be very interesting.
School starts on Monday which means 3 weeks of watching the kids weed and clean. No worries, I have lots of books to entertain me!

oopps

2008-01-27T22:51:00.000-05:00

How could i forget?!
I also read Dreams of My Father, Barak Obama and it was really quite lovely.
Am in Apia for the night before we head to Savaii for our mid-service conference. Mid-Service! That means half way done, or half way undone, whatever frosts your cookie. Of the original 16 of group 77 we are down to 9. I might just add that all the girls are still here. That is neat. Wish me luck on the boat!

ping-pong

2008-01-25T15:05:00.000-05:00

New Years Resolutions:
1) Get in shape
2) Eat better
3) Drink less
4) Blog more!
I’ll get back to you in a year and let you know how it goes…So I really actually don’t have that much to report, but its still January which means I have to keep with my resolution at least ‘til the end of the month. Even though I have been back for over a week I am still totally messed up with the time. I can’t fall asleep until 1am and I wake up at 11am. I know I should force myself to get up earlier, but technically I am still on vacation and it is rainy season so there really is no reason to get out of bed. Which means this week has been pretty lazy to say the least. After rolling out of bed I make some coffee and scrambie eggs. I then proceed to stare off into space for about 30 min followed by commencement of “work”. I am currently having what we refer to as a mid-peace corps crisis which is the time of one’s service where one freaks out about what one is going to do after Peace Corps. This crisis can be channeled to do productive things such as re-write my resume, make a personal statement, inquire staff about letters of recommendation, etc. Since Meghan is in Australia I borrowed her computer for the week to get some work done (did I mention that I currently have 2 of my own computers here and I can use neither of them to type documents?).
After work time is play time/work out time. Running, biking, or kayaking are the choices for play. I went for a nice little sunset paddle yesterday and thought about maybe never leaving Samoa. All in all, not having to go to work every day is pretty awesome. I remember this time last year I was going out of my mind because I was so wound up about getting out there and doing Peace Corps things and saving lives and changing the world, etc. It is nice to actually sit back and enjoy time on a beautiful little island for once.
Speaking of projects, it seems that all of mine are going splendidly currently (lets all knock on wood now). While I was tromping around Southeast Asia, my new “counterpart” (I use quotes because we didn’t really give her a choice as to working with us or not) Sina, who is also 25 and lives across the street from me, was trained to be a sign language teacher’s assistant. She took the class along with Ela, Malaki’s mother. The Minister of Education also agreed to allocate funding for teacher’s assistants, so the plan is to have them work in Malaki’s classroom at school next year. Yahoo for sustainable development!
Before I left I also used funding from an anonymous and dearly loved source in the US to buy supplies for our computer lab at the school. All the lumber, fans, paint, nails, etc are bought and ready for the matais (chiefs) of the village to put them together. I was also informed by another anonymous and dearly appreciated source in the US that there are 4-5 computers on their way to Samoa as we speak!
In addition to all this wonderful news, I helped the Women’s Committee write a grant for new sewing machines that was submitted in December. I am also helping the committee to get funding and paper work together to submit a grant for a new committee house. The hope is to have funding by next month, start construction by March, and finish the project by May. That means construction from March to May which will most likely take longer because it is Samoa and oh did I mention that my bed is approximately 5 feet from the committee house? Who needs sleep anyway? Maybe I will move down to the beach. Seriously though, I am very excited for them to get a new house.
Teachers assistants, sewing machines, computer labs, OH MY! So for those of you who think I am just spending my time lying on beaches and deep-sea fishing…well you are pretty much right, but I do get stuff done in my spare time.
Alright and since it is a new year I thought I would tack on a little list here. When I first came to Peace Corps a wise and veteran volunteer named Julya gave me the suggestion of writing down all the books I read while I was here and the date I finished them, since, she so astutely alluded to, you will be reading a lot. So for all those who are dying to know what I read in the past year (mom) here goes…
The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff, 12/7/06- Not bad, Hoff is kinda on his soap box for this one
They Marched Into Sunlight, David Maraniss, 12/29/06- Awesome book on Vietnam and what was happening in America in 1967, starts off slow, but give it time, its worth it!
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams, 1/5/07- Ehhh, enjoyed the sarcastic humor, but..ehhh
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha, Sarah Erdman, 1/24/07- About a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, beautifully written, really captures volunteer life
Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost, 2/20/07- Hysterical account of life in the South Pacific, wanna know what our life is like? Read this
In a Sunburned Country, Bill Bryson, 3/23/07- Ugh! If you wanna read 300 pages where Bryson tells you 300 times how big Australia is, be my guest
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, JK Rowling, 3/29/07- You love it or you don’t
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, JK Rowling, 4/4/07
The Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test, Tom Wolfe, 5/1/07- Awesome! Drugs, hippies, music, counterculture. Its probably a good thing I wasn’t alive in the 60’s
Harry Potter 3, JK Rowling, 5/27/07
On the Road, Jack Kerouac, 5/28/07- Read this in high school and just couldn’t appreciate it as much as I did this time around. Great classic
Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder, 6/17/07- And this is when I became interested in medicine. Amazing book about an amazing person (Paul Farmer) who dedicates his life to helping others
Left Behind, Tim Lehaye, 6/23/07- Oh my god the anti-Christ has risen and we are all gonna die!
Poisonwood Bible, *ekk forgot to write down author!, 7/26/07- Wonderful fictional book about missionaries in Africa, I wanna go to Africa…
Harry Potter 4, 8/1/07
Harry Potter 5, 8/8/07
Harry Potter 6, 8/13/07
Harry Potter 7, 8/26/07- Ok I know I went a little crazy here, but this was the last one and I wanted to be on my game!
1776, David McCullough, 9/22/07- Interesting historical novel, but a little boring…
Hope In Hell, Dan Bortolotti, 10/1/07- About Doctors Without Borders, my new dream
Band of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose, 10/11/07- Even if you don’t know anything about WWII, just read this! Anyone can read Ambrose and it’s just so good!
Getting Stoned with Savages, Maarten Troost, 10/18/07- Troost goes back to the South Pacific for more fun adventures, ps- the first one is better
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hoseini, 10/22/07- Oh my god, rip my heart out! Wonderful book about awful things that can happen in the world, especially in Afghanistan
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey, 10/26/07- Tragic comedy, very funny though. Had to read it after “acid test”
LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien, 11/19/07- Had to see what all the fuss was about…very long winded but not bad if you like elves and dwarves and magical places
The Te Of Piglet, Benjamin Hoff, 11/21/07- Apparently Hoff felt people were so inspired by his preaching in his first book that he felt the need to write a whole new book to preach some more…
Emergency Sex, *oops!, 11/27/07- About 3 UN workers; a doctor, a lawyer and a slut, whoops, I mean secretary. The doctor and lawyer stories were wonderful; the secretary goes over the line. I did very much enjoy the book over all
A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson..only got half way through the 500+ pages- The next time I pick up Bryson somebody shoot me
Heart of Darfur, Lisa French Blaker, 1/22/08- Kiwi nurse working in Darfur with Doctors without Borders. So good, SO sad and extremely inspiring. Can I go to Africa now?
And now I currently reading Friday Night Nights courtesy of Papa Hanks. Tune in this time next year for the ’08 reads!

Fortunate Son

2008-01-18T20:20:00.000-05:00

Back in good ole samoa. The rest of our trip was a bit hectic and unfortunately I didnt have time for any more updates.
It was very hard to leave Pai in Thailand. We even thought about cancelling our tickets to Viet Nam and just staying in Pai for the rest of the trip. There were 3 days that were pretty rough there...our last night in Pai we ended up staying up until just before the sun. That afternoon we boarded a 4 hour bus through the mountains to chiang mai where we boarded a 13hour sleeper bus to bangkok. We met up with Doug and Kira for dinner one last time in bangkok and then woke up at 4am the next day to make our 630am flight to Hanoi which we found out once we arrived at the airport had actually been cancelled. Luckily air asia put us on the 1030am flight ot hanoi.
So we arrived at our hostel in hanoi very hungry and VERY bitchy. Our plane was to travel down the coast to Hoi An which is apparently tailor heaven, but we found out that would be another 16 hour bus ride there and then another 16 hours back and at the moment we were a little travelled out so we decided to save Hoi An for the next trip. Instead we signed up for a 3 day, 2 night trip to Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba island. It was a very nice little excursion. We got to kayak in Ha Long Bay (YES!) and spent the night on a boat with a bunch of traveling Europeans, aussies, kiwis, etc. They all thought we were pretty cool because they never meet Americans travelling outside the US. I agree, we are pretty cool.
After our 3 day excursion we came back to Hanoi for shopping and site seeing. I sorta dragged Steph to the Viet Nam military museum which was very interesting. Its strange to see pictures with captions about "enemy movements" and "enemy ships" and realize that we were the enemy. The museum itself was pretty bare bones, but it was obvious that the Vietnamese were very proud about having "conquered" the Americans and the French.
Our last full day we signed up for a bike tour that travelled outside of Hanoi into the villages. Turned out Steph and I were the only ones that signed up. So we were lead through rice paddies and small villages by this nice little Vietnamese lady. It was very cool! It was amazing to feel like the only ones to have this unique look at villagers and their work. It seemed so untouched by Western influence.
The next day was a bit unreal. We were in 4 different countries, held 4 different currencies in our wallets and somehow it was January the 15th almost the whole time. Our flights went from hanoi to bangkok, where we had an 8 hour lay over, then Bangkok to Sydney and Sydney back to home sweet home.
To sum it up, Southeast Asia rocks my socks off! If any of you reading this have an opportunity to go there, GO! The best part is after 3 weeks of buying all my meals, flights between countries, hundreds of presents and clothes, and hostels I just barely spent $2000USD. Seriously that place is amazing. There will be more pictures to come, but I have a few Viet Nam pics on my facebook page for the moment. Hope all is well wherever you are!

fia ai pai?

2008-01-05T07:17:00.000-05:00

We made it to Pai in the north and we cant leave! This place is so cute! Pai is a little town in the valley of the mae hong son region. Its like a a smaller version of madison wisconsin, but even more hippy and with an asian twist. Our plan is to stay here until mon and then take an overnight bus back to bankok on then off to vietnam on wednesday. But as a singer said at one of the bars here the other night, "If you wanna make God laugh, try to make a plan."

Oh my god the food is so good here! This is one of the 800 food stands in the weekend market in bangkok

AAHHH!! What an awesome mannequin! We spent our first 2 days in thailand shopping at the weekend market in bangkok. Our bags have already gained about 10 lbs...

I found doug!! Doug is a good friend of mine from my camp in wisconsin. We worked together the past couple summers and he is now teaching english in bangkok. We meet up with him and his girlfriend Kira in Chiang Mai for new years. It was great to see a familiar face again and clearly i was excited...

This a cool little hot air ballon thing they sold everywhere on new years for people to lit and then let off into the sky. They were meant to bring you good luck in the new year

There she goes...

Christmas picture! Doug and his girlfriend kira are standing behind stephanie and i. We are at this nice little bar on the riversidem where we started off the night

This was by one of the walls of chiang mai where everyone gathered to count down the new year. People were setting off tons of those little hot air ballons plus fireworks. The sky was soo beautiful.

oh and we had to let off fireworks of course...

A monk giving blessings at doi suthep

On new years day we went up to wat doi suthep which is a gorgeous temple on a mountain in chiang mai. Unfortunately we were a big hungover from new years eve so the windy roads werent very much fun for either of us. But in chiang mai instead of taxis you ride in the back of these covered trucks which we thought was pretty sweet regardless of the fact we wanted to vom the whole way.

People are really stressed here...

So we went on a cheesy trek in chiang mai and then we came to Pai (further north in thailand) and did a 2 hour elephant ride where we got to play with them in the water and wash them and whatnot. So much more fun! This is steph and i on Tongbao. She was the biggest elephant in our group, but sooo sweet! When we were playin the river she would lie down and let us climb on our face and then try to shake us off. We have a sweet video of the whole thing

New years in chiang mai

2008-01-01T09:02:00.000-05:00

...rocks my socks off! So I am in the north currently and for new years Steph and i met up with my camp friend Doug and his girlfriend Kira and some other PCVs. We had dinner and a few drinks by the river. People all over the city were letting off these big plasters bags with a candle type thing in the bottom that would float up in the sky like a small hot air ballon. So the sky was fully of these glowing specks which was obviously beautiful.
After a few drinks we headed to one of the city gates where there were hundreds of hanging yellow lights and we watched fire works from there and did our own countdown. It was a bit chaotic, in a good way, and everywhere you looked ther was something fun to see. A much more unique new years than any other. I made doug join me in a round of "bum and a fish" because thats just what you have to do with other manito-wishers...right (camp song...i know we are dorks...whatever).
Steph and i took many great pics but we dont have our computer/camera cord to put them up right now, but they will come. Today we went up to the temple Doi Suthep on the mountain. It was very beautiful with tons of gold and monks all over the place. I totally dig there orange robes.
Tomorrow we are heading off on a daylong trek with bamboo rafting, hiking, hill tribe seeing, waterall visiting and elephant riding! Yahoo! Hope all is well with all my faithfull readers and everyone had a safe and fun new years!

Ahhh Thailand

2007-12-30T04:44:00.000-05:00

Well we made it to bangkok against all odds. Apparently if you are flying from Samoa to Thailand via Sydney you still have to get an Australian visa. On the flight from Sydney to Bangkok the crew over served some jack ass in first class and then when he was harrassing the first classers they decided to move him back to economy class and guess where the only free seats were? So after spending the last 2 hours of our 8 hour flight being called a bitch and having this drunk jerk-off reach around his seats to our seats and knock our food off our trays and sexually harrass us and shout racial slurs as the egyptian family behind us AND throw pillows and magazines and the flight attendants we finally landed. (Side note- the crew did bring out hang cuffs at one point but didnt want to put them on the dude because then he would atomatically have to go to jail upon landing for 2 months and since he was a first class flyer that would just be bad for buisness). Anywho, we stumbled into bangkok and somehow manged to find our hostel and internet (had to let mom know i was alive). Walking back from the internet cafe that night we saw an elephant walking in the traffic with a blinking light on its tail. Ahh Thailand (reference to the movie "Volunteers" circa 1980s tom hanks/john candy making fun of peace corps in thailand...must see it if you haven't).
Saturday we awoke unsure what day it was or where the hell we were, but knowing that there was shopping to be done! Oh and it was my birthday. So we spent the day shopping at the weekend market and then had a couple drinks that night to celebrate the quarter century.
We are trying as hard as we can to pretend that jag lag doesnt happen to people like us, but im not gonna lie today was a bit of a struggle. We went back to the weekend market of a few hours because really, its just that awesome. I mean seriously this place is HUGE! And they have everything you could ever want! The down side is that Asians are tiny and after a year of eating taro and coconut cream i am not. There fore none of the clothes fit but between sefa and myself i think we have bought about 45 bags...whatever they cost like 3usd a piece...and they make us feel pretty.
After more market shopping we came back to our side of town and treated our selves to thai massages. amazing. Now we are heading back to the airport to fly to chaing mai in the north of thailand to meet up with my good friend doug young (from wisconsin) his girlfriend and a couple of peace corps volunteers from thailand (Go peace corps GO!) for new years. Life is a highway. Happy new years!

christmas in Samoa

2007-12-26T15:41:00.000-05:00

Twas the night before christmas
and all through my hut
all the creatures were stirring
even the dino-rats and cockroaches...
Ok apparently i suck at rhyming. So, christmas eve was actually pretty cool this year, mostly because i was substantially less homesick than i was last year. I spent christmas eve day running around apia trying to get everything i needed for thailand since i am leaving the morning of the 27th and christmas and boxing day are holidays here. For this reason christmas eve in apia was more obnoxious than shopping in new york during christmas season...ok probably not but it felt like it. Large crowds scare me these days (good thing i am going to bangkok tomorrow) so apia was a bit overwhelming. The highlight of my day came when trying to cross the road and a cooler bounced out of the back of a bus. Wouldnt have been to big of a problem if the cooler wasnt full of fish. Gross. Of course no one on the bus noticed so the fish stayed where there were for who knows how long.
At any rate, got a ride back to Tafatafa that afternoon and had a few glasses of wine while watching the christmas episode of grey anatomy (season 2) and making a cake for the next day. why cake on christmas, well i will tell you. Sina, a girl who lives across the street from me, turned 25 of christmas and as i was also turning 25 a few days later i decided that we should celebrate our birthdays together on christmas. So i made a cake that was actually a layer of brownies covered in chocolate icing with a layer of chocolate fudge cake and an other layer of chocolate icing. Apparently i like chocolate.
So after i was done with all this i laid down to go to sleep only to be awoken at 1230 by music or something....after listening for a few minutes i realized it was singing so i got up to investigate. When i looked out my window i saw the methodists dressed in their sunday best (i.e. all white) singing samoan christmas songs in the road! It was just a full moon a few nights ago so it was bright enough to see them. I went and sat on the steps of the womens committee fale next to my house and listened to them walk up and down the road carolling for a little while and then went back inside to fall asleep hearing them singing. Even though being far from home on christmas it is nice to be away from the commercial christmas and remember what christmas is all about...
More to come on christmas, but for now i have to run to the boxing day festivities. Hope everyone had a merry christmas!

aaaand was happen?

2007-12-08T22:28:00.000-05:00

Well, its been a bit hectic 'round these parts the last few weeks. School ended this last week and we had prize giving last Thursday. In samoa they do prize giving as a sort of graduation in all the schools. The top 3 kids in each grad get prizes that usually consist of pots and pans for their families...that is unless the kid is in one of my reading groups. Thanks to mom and grandma, the top kids in my classes got candy, stickers, and books. Which I was extremely excited about, forgetting that in Samoa no one person owns anything, but the family owns everything. Therefore, when you give a child a present they turn around and give it to their parents who do whatever they see fit with it...It is a beautiful custom in many ways because I always see the kids sharing everything they have, but when you make presents specifically for certain children...anyway...it was great
After prize giving all the teachers went back to the office and divided up the mea alofa (gifts) from the parents i.e. money and tinned fish. Then we all thanked eachother for a wonderful year and i apologized for being a stupid palagi (white person) and we laughed and cried and hugged and then went home and passed out...
Well i was going to write you all a list of all the books i have read over the past year in samoa but then i realized i was hungry and there is a fish burger down the street calling my name. so more to come..

Well la-di-freakin-da!

2007-11-07T23:23:00.000-05:00

Just some pics for viewing enjoyment. Just finished giving my final reading exams so school is pretty much over for me even though i have to keep going for the next 4 weeks. Sigh.

I caught a mahi-mahi!! It weighed 9.5 kilos and tasted delicious!!

This was my "house" for last weekend. There was a big fishing tournament in my village so I just stayed on the beach all weekend, couldn't be bothered with the 3 minute bike road to my house up the road.

The girls of group 77 at the Halloween "gathering"

This was for the fiafia for the new group 79. From left to right is me, meghan, stephanie (who I am going to Thailand with!!), Jordan, and Ema. Steph is all decked out in traditional garb for the ava ceremony (because she was the one mixing the ava) where as I am wearing nothing that is traditional samoa at all.

My Samoan washing machine...

...And the Samoan dryer

Things that make me uncomfortable...I mean really!

2007-10-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

Things that make me uncomfortable… I mean really!

Alright it’s official. I have now been in Samoa for a whole year. It is a very odd feeing to have people from the new peace corps group (which came last Wednesday) say to me, “I can’t wait to get to the point you are at now where you are so relaxed and know what’s going on.” Well, I have to say that was news to me that I was in the know. Apparently I am good at look cool, calm, and collected…who knew? At any rate, I was pondering my new status of “senior volunteer” in Samoa the other day on the bus, as there is nothing else to do on the bus but ponder meaningless things, and I began to think about how, even though I supposedly look under control to new peace corps volunteers there are still quite a few things in this country that make me a bit...well…uncomfortable. Now don’t get me wrong I am sure I do many things that make the people of Samoa feel a bit squimish…I can’t think of what but I am sure there is something. At any rate, this blog is not meant to be culturally insensitive by any means because I really do love this place (it’s a freaking tropical island what’s not to love?!), but there are just a few things, cultural differences if you will, that make me feel a bit uneasy and I thought maybe some of my devoted readers (thanks mom!) would find some humor in some of the predicaments I have found myself in over the past year due to these certain differences. So here goes…
1) Creepy crawlies- I’m talking specifically about centipedes, cockroaches, and rats all of which have tried at length to snuggle with me at some point and I just don’t find anything romantic about this. Actually just this week I felt something tickling my hip in the early hours of the morning just as the sun was coming up. I was barely conscious, but I pulled down my sheets and hoisted up my boxer shorts to take a closer look and out leaps (I kid you not, it jumped) a gecko. I mean really! Although the geckos might be better looking than the rats, centipedes, and cockroaches I still don’t really want them playing around my…well…you know, in the early hours of the morning. The centipedes in particular are probably the most vial creature I have ever encountered. Now I hate snakes, luckily there are none here, but centipedes make up for it. Imagine a creature about the size of a small snake or about 6-8 inches, but it has hundreds of legs enabling it to move faster than let’s say a human with only two legs. Oh and there poisonous. And ugly. Gross.
2) Lice- Ok the lice themselves don’t bother me (I actually have not yet housed the little guys but some girls have donated their heads to these little suckers to hang out in 6 or 7 times), it is the matter in which many Samoans dispose of these little mites. I had heard rumors of this process, but did not believe it until I was witness to the de-licing of a child just recently. So a woman sits behind a child and slowly and meticulously inspects each and every strand of the child’s hair. When they find a little white mite they don’t simply dispose of it but they eat it. That’s right. They mush it against their teeth to crack the heads off and then they swallow. Now that is one way to do it and I am sure there is nothing wrong with it if you have been doing it all your life, but personally it makes my stomach groan in protest.
3) Fish food- I love the fact that living next to the ocean I eat fish at least once a day. And it is good fish. I also love the fact that when I eat lunch at school we don’t use silverware. Especially since the fish is usually cooked whole and you have to get all the bones out yourself. What I can’t seem to get use to the parts of the fish the teachers at my school seem to view as a delicacy. I know they must think I am mentally unstable for only picking out the white meaty part and then discarding the rest of the fish as trash, but that’s what we do in America, make waste. And I do applaud the fact that nothing is wasted from their fish including the liver, heart, gills, eyes, brains, and even the scales, although I have to admit I still have to avert my eyes when this is taking place because my stomach thinks this is not at all funny. The part that makes me most uncomfortable about these little lunch time culinary adventures is the sucking out of the fish eyeballs and then sucking the brains of the fish through the eye sockets. I just can’t seem to get used to that. To my credit though, I did try mahi-mahi eggs this weekend. Not bad. I had to turn down the heart though which everyone thought made me weak. Its all yours guys.
4) Baby food- So you don’t really see much Gerber’s baby food around these parts, but Samoans clearly make do as they are some of the strongest people I have ever encountered. One method, which I have witnessed in Tafatafa, of feeding children who lack teeth (some children’s baby teeth have rotted out due to a very sugary diet) is very similar to a mama bird feeding her babies. A Samoan mother will take a cookie or cracker and chew it up and then bring her child’s mouth up to her mouth and transfer the now chewed cookie or cracker. Oddly enough this doesn’t really make me uncomfortable any more I think because it makes sense. Its not like there are blenders around here, might as well do it yourself.
5) “Hey Baby”- So many, many, many soles (a sole is a Samoan man between the ages of 15-50) think that the most persuasive and attractive pick up line to white girls is “Hey Baby!” I really wonder what these guys think I am going to do. I mean I am in the middle of running around town (this would never happen in my village because I know everybody and the boys in Tafatafa are very respectful and treat me like a sister) with a million things to do and then some scetchy looking dude yells “Hey Baby!” Oh yes! Let me just drop everything I am doing so we can run to the closest church, get married, and then I can start having your children. I mean really!

more pics

2007-10-01T16:39:00.000-05:00

Meghan and I with the days catch. We are both holding on the the biggest yellow fin tuna i have seen yet. That is a marlin to my right that is of equally ridiculous size.

Bringing in the boat after a day of fishing. Ive started to go down to Dave's beach in my village Sun afternoons because they usually come in have a couple drinks, cut up a tuna that they just caught, and eat sashimi. Tough life

During the awards ceremonies we were all goofing around and dancing. I think our district should have gotten the most spirited award

The U-10 boys got third place overall. The people in the yellow shirts and rainbow i'es our the teachers from our district. As usual I was told about this "uniform" the day we left for the soccer games so I didn't match...oh well we had a good time anyway

This was after the U-12 boys district team one the final in Apia. From the left is Manaia, Mariota, and James from my school and the fourth boy is from a village about 10 min from ours. I just love this pic for some reason.

This is ben and the barracuda we (and by we I mean the boys that were fishing on the boat as I was leaning over the sides trying to get ride of my internal organs) caught. Pretty nast looking sucker...

Sina is one of the teacher's 3 year-old daughters. Maybe the cutest thing on this planet. Her family will ask her who her mom is and she will yell "Lola!" Should that freak me out?

Its my life!

2007-09-28T23:41:00.000-05:00

I caught a fish..and then i puked...4 times. But it was deep sea fishing and awesome!

In true samoan fashion, they children holding up a i'e to give shade for the teachers...Respect thy elders!

Our under 12 boys lined up with the team from Sefa's district for the final game. We won by the way...

This is Malaki and I during one of his sign language lessons. We were taking a break to wave hello. If you look really closely you may notice the hearing aide in his right ear...yeah! He was recently accepted to a program that meets in Apia every friday. It is taught by Australian volunteers and caters to children from the village with hearing disablities. Very cool.

I made fish!

September??

2007-09-03T15:05:00.000-05:00

Wow! What happened?
Well, my family has come and gone along with our trip to New Zealand. It would probably take about 10 years to load all the pics from their visit so i would recomend looking at my mom's websit which has some great pics http://homepage.mac.com/bonniehanks1/PhotoAlbum1.html. So the fam showed up in Samoa Aug 15th looking very bleary eyed and in great spirits...We drove into Apia to get some lunch and then headed out to my village where everyone was eagerly waiting their arrival. The village put on a welcome ava ceremony for them, where i had to mix the ava. They got me all decked out in traditional dress which was pretty fun. All the matais (chiefs of the village) were really great and so nice to my family. The village served us food after the ceremony and then we retired to the hotel as everyone was pretty beat.
The next day we went down to my beach and out with my buddy dave on his boat. He took us to the island nuusafee which is a tiny desterted island off the coast by my vil. SOO pretty out there. We did some snorkeling and hanging out and whatnot.
That Saturday I took my fam to my training village, Maasina, which was very fun. I was glad they could meet my host family and see how gorgeous that place is. My mom also took a video of me speaking samoan to my host mother, if you are interested to hear what it sounds like check it out http://youtube.com/watch?v=NkfGGst5Hsk. By the way, the baby i am holding is baby Lola, named after yours truly.
On Monday we ran a health clinic in my village that my parents, my village and I have all been organizing for quite some time now. I informed the village awhile ago and they let us use the school. About 70 people showed up all ages and all sorts of issues. Some other PCVs came out and helped check in people and hand out water and crackers. Dad worked with a Samoan Doc in one room seeing people and writing prescriptions. It was a really great day and went much smoother than i expected. At the end of the day we had another ava ceremony and my village presented my dad with a matai (or cheif) title name. For those of you who know my father...well you can imagine how excited he is to be a cheif. It was all in good fun though.
The next day we headed out to New Zealand for my first vacation in 10 months! We went to Auckland, Christchurch, Mt. Cook, and Queenstown all in one week. It was beyond beautiful, but not nearly long enough. I plan on going back to NZ after my PC service next year and possibly traveling around for a month or so.
When i came back to Samoa the South Pacific Games were already underway and Apia is totally crazy. I went to my village for a few days, but came back this Fri because the rugby 7s were being played fri and sat. So i was pretty much the happiest person in the world because i got to do nothing but watch rugby for 2 days straight and man do samoans know how to play rugby!! We actually lost the gold medal game to Figi (who would be the best 7s team in the world if it werent for a little team called the all-blacks), but it was an incredible game and came right down to the end. Sat night I went to the miss tutti fruiti contest which is a faafafine show i.e. a drag queen show. My brother/sister (or faafafine) was helping with the scoring of the show so i got in for reduced price...It was pretty hilarious all in all.
So its monday now and i am headed back to the village only to come back to Apia tomorrow because my kids are playing soccer at the mini-south pacific games tues and thurs. Its great to be running around and busy so i dont remember how much i miss my family. In other fun news I got my tickets to go to Thailand from Dec 27-Jan 16th with Steph who is a PCV here. I think Bangkok will be a pretty ok place to celebrate New years...who knows. Oh and I also got a new bookshelf and toaster/oven for my house so i can make cookies and i have a place to fold my clothes and put my books!! Yeah life is good!

You might be a hippy if....

2007-08-11T15:08:00.000-05:00

...you join the peace corps and make make hemp braclets with Samoan children. So I brought a bunch of hemp to school Friday because I knew we wouldnt be teaching and I wanted to give the kids something to do instead of lighting things on fire...Ive seen it happen. So I sit down with a couple year 8 girls and realize that explaining how to make macrame in samoan is a little more difficult than english. I told them it can be a little hard at first since it usually takes most american kids forever to learn. So they watch me do it for about 3 min and then they start making their own. Im not even kidding these girls seemed like they had been making hemp jewelry since they were born. It was unreal. I was planning on them taking the whole day, but they all finished in 20 min. I couldnt believe it. In summation Samoan kids are more crafty than americans...I think...

Yeah...she's ok...

2007-07-27T17:40:00.000-05:00

Malaki is my little 5 year-old buddy who is deaf. I help him and his family 3 days a week with sign language and learning letters and numbers and whatnot. We recently got him a hearing aid from an Australian NGO which has been very exciting. The thing is, in Samoa if you have any sort of disability, you are a misfit. Believe it or not, if you have white skin you are also a bit of a misfit. I recently came to this realization and it dawned on me that this is more or less how my village views Malaki and I, as the misfits. Not that this bothers me, mind you. I feel that both of us play our parts very well. If you already stand out, why not play it up? For instance, Malaki usually gets pretty excited when I show up at his house with my bag of goodies i.e. legos and alphabet flash cards. Often times he jumps up and down and does this spastic dance. How could I not join? His house is right next to the road so we often begin his lessons doing this crazy, spontaneous dancing for each other and half the village that is watching from the road. Oh look at the misfits. Good thing they have each other to be weird with. To be honest, I am glad too.
Things are going very well out here in the middle of the ocean. I have stopped counting the days I have been here and started to relax and enjoy the overall experience of it all, such as lizards falling on my head while I working at my table in my house. So many funny little things happen to me on a day to day basis I sometimes wish I had a tape recorded 24 hours a day.
My family is coming to visit in 3 weeks and I have never been so excited to see all of them! It will have been 10 months since I last saw them. We are organizing a free health clinic for the whole village which should be very fun and equally chaotic. My village is also quite excited and has already started talking about ava ceremonies and dances. I am thrilled that my family will be able to experience Samoa as it really is and not just a tourist attraction, although I am not sure they quite understand what they are in for, but that’s all part of the fun, right?
Term 2 is slowly winding down, which means substantially less teaching. I started my reading program at school, which is going splendidly. I tested all the kids in years 4-8 and put them into groups of 6-8 depending on their reading levels (we are talking English reading levels by the way). There are also 2 boys how have pretty severe ADD, so I have started helping them 1 on 1. I really enjoy this schedule much more than what I was doing because now I can walk into an empty classroom in the morning and I have a few minutes to get things organized and get my brain in the right place, i.e. finish my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee. Then I go and pull kids out of class for an hour or so to come and work with me and if they are driving me nuts I can just send them back to class. All the kids are also really excited to be pulled out of class because I give them stickers and words of encouragement and I don’t punish them in the typical ways that most Samoan teachers often punish them…I’ll just let you think about what that means…
Now just because things are going well, doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate email and packages any less. It is so wonderful to come home after a rough day and have a little chocolate in my fridge. So thank you all that haven’t forgotten me and keep it coming! Love to you all!

Slider...you stink

2007-07-13T23:02:00.000-05:00

Few more pics to enjoy. Gotta run to see Harry Potter 5!!!

Tupu, the flower boy at the wedding...umm does it get any cuter?

So these are my "friends" in Samoa...yeah...

Left to right- Dave, Aaron aka beautiful man, Tim aka sketch ball, Dylan, Todd

After finishing the...ahem...half marathon. Thats right, I danced across the finish line (mostly because I was so happy I wasnt last). Nice shirt too, eh? Virginia is for badasses!

A Funeral, a wedding, and an exorcism

2007-07-02T16:32:00.000-05:00

Phew! What a crazy couple of weeks? Someone told me it was almost July, that cant be true, it was just March. Well, things are going exponentially better around these parts. Being busy is good. I am totally in love with my village at the moment. I am almost hardly ever at my house any more. Its nice to have friends to visit and hang out with.
So two weekends ago I attended my first Samoan funeral. Im not sure exactly how well I carried out my part, but Im usually forgiven for most mistakes because if you didn’t notice…Im white. Anywho, the funeral was Sat, so I woke up at 345am (yes, 345am) to catch a bus with the whole village to Apia at 430am. Didn’t really understand why we were going to Apia, but I don’t ask those kinds of questions anymore. So we got to the funeral home (“fale oti” – means house dead, gotta love it) and we all stumbled out and sat in this little chapel where we sang one song and then got back on the bus and went back to the village. Apparently we did that because we were driving back with the hearse or something…again, not asking questions is usually best in these cases.
So we got back to old Tafatafa and went to the family’s house of the dead guy (the live sort of across the street from me) and had a little memorial service. Trouble with those things are you sit all around an open fale and you have to sit cross-legged because pointing your feet at people, especially in formal settings such as this one, is very rude. For those of you who don’t know, I have enough metal in my knees to set of airport alarms, so sitting cross-legged for 2 hours is not exactly my idea of fun. Anywho, after that fun event we walked down to our church (Mormon! Yeah!) and apparently there was some sort of service. I say apparently because I passed out cold…in the front row…I actually fell of the bench at one point to look up at a really pissed of Mormon Bishop. Whoops.
After the church thing, we walked back up to the house to put the casket in the ground. Around these parts they bury their family right out in front of their houses in big sealed cement boxes. My buddy Meghan, in Siumu, actually sleeps about 7 feet away from her dead relatives. Pretty neato. So did that, and then everyone was all excited to go back to the church and hang out some more to which I said, ya know, Ive been doing this for about 9 hours now and Im tired, so thanks, but no thanks…in so many words…I then passed out for 4 hours. And that, in a nutshell was my first funeral experience in Samoa
Now this last weekend I was privileged enough to go to my first Samoan wedding. The wedding was a guy from my village who was marrying a girl from Siumu (Meghan’s village, but she wasn’t there). It was a Mormon wedding so not a drop of alcohol in the place…yeah… I was lucky enough to be aloud to dance with the youth group from our church (see pics below). The actual wedding took place in the Mormon temple, so as I am not baptized Mormon, I was not allowed to attend that, but it appears that in Samoa people aren’t too excited about the actual wedding they are more excited about the food at the reception. So we all went straight to the reception at Vaitele and waited for the wedding party to arrive. Luckily I have become well versed in “Samoan time” so when they said the wedding party would arrive at 10am, I knew that really mean 12pm and I brought a book for entertainment. Once the wedding party arrived we took pictures and what not and then ate. It was a fairly nice event so in Samoa that means LOTS of food. And food that I could eat! Ive been going at it Vegetarian style in the village these days because I just cant look at the meat any more…for various reasons. After food we did our dances and then the typical mother/groom and daddy/bride dance. That was all neat and fun. Then to my great dismay they announced that they were throwing the bouquet. As I am already the talk of the village because I am 24 and should marry a samoan man and live here forever, I was pushed right up to the front. After being here for quite sometime I knew that if I had anything to do with that damn bouquet it would be the talk of the village for quite sometime. So once the group of girls was all assembled and the bride turned around to throw it, I made a mad dash back to my seat to avoid being any where near that thing. As I was almost back to my seat, I looked over my shoulder to make sure the bouquet was safely in an excited Samoan girls’ hands when what should I see but this flower asteroid coming right at me! Apparently all the other girls had rushed forward as the bride threw the bouquet with an arm like McGuire. So there I was, in the middle of the floor, all alone, with this…this…thing coming right at my face! I had to put my hands out to avoid being pelted with the damn thing and the next thing I know there I am standing in the middle of 150 wide-eyed Samoans holding the bouquet. Needless to say, I have heard of nothing else in my village than candidates for my husband. Sigh.
To top off the last week, we had a group of Pacific islanders come visit our school and assess our curriculum. I am slowly realizing that Samoans do not trust people from different islands (see blog entry about one of the teachers missing 3 weeks of school because a woman in Figi was putting a curse on her). So after this group left, all of our teachers and the school inspector reconvened to “debrief”. The school inspector looks at me very seriously and says, “Did you shake that man’s hand from New Guinea?” Having no clue where this was going I said, “Uh, I shook a lot of people’s hands. Why?” This answer was followed by much tongue clicking and shaking of heads (the international sign for disapproval). Oh lord, what now? School inspector looks at me very forlorn and says, “That man told me he put an evil spirit in you, to make you fall in love with him. You must be very careful tonight as he may have put spells on the pigs around your fale as well.” Oh…ok. So I got that going for me.
Mere coincidence I decided to hang out with one of my teacher’s later that day and we went to another village to pick up a witch doctor that had to come to our village anyway for someone’s legs…or something. Hung out with him for a bit and he didn’t seem too concerned for the “evil falling-in-love” spirit that apparently possessed me, so I think I will be ok.
Anywho, that’s about all I got here. My mom wanted me to let you all know that my out fit in the fiafia (pics, below where I am wearing a halter top) is not at all samoan dress, because I could never show my shoulders in any real samoan event. It was just a peace corps fiafia that is why I was allowed to dress that way. Mom didn’t want you all to get the idea that I was being to “skanky” (that was her word) over here. Love you mama.
Well hope all is well back home or wherever you are reading this from. Miss you all! Send granola bars and chocolate!

Ive got a golden ticket!

2007-06-30T17:26:00.000-05:00

I learned today that 13 miles is a very far way to run/walk. But know what? I finished my first half marathon (please dont tell my orthopedic surgeon)!! So that was fun. Anywho, spent the last 3 weeks in the village and have many funny stories and tales of explorations, but as always am in a hurry (and hungry). I wil give you a hint that the next blog title will be "a funeral, a wedding and an exorcism". So yeah, here are some fun pics. Please enjoy and feel free to leave comments so I know that people actually look at this and I dont feel like I am just writing down nonsense for myself. Kisses and coconuts!

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

These are the year 8 boys behind my house one morning when the pipes burst. They came trudging down the the hill from the school (as they are sleeping there these days to catch up on school work for their national exams in Oct) as I was making my coffee. I was just deciding whether or not I wanted to go fix the pipes when they showed up not only to fix the pipes but to entertain me. Moega, in the back, was absolutely no help and merely stuck his tooth brush in the water each time the pipes would burst apart and continued brushing his teeth. Cute kid. Just another morning in Samoa...

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!

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on....

2007-06-08T22:16:00.001-05:00

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?

she wears a ten gallon hat

2007-06-01T22:25:00.000-05:00

Picture time!

Our Cinco de Mayo venue in Savaii. Peace Corps makes us very smart...we can all now jump into the ocean simultaneously! I am so smart...s-m-r-t

Never trust a texan...

Hana, louis and Sina. They are all children of a teacher at my school. I have been going over to their house for dinner a lot recently because they love to feed me. Their other brother is Iemi from the truck pic. They are a very funny family so it kinda makes me a feel a little more at home...

Yeah we could beat you up...and believe it or not I actually was cold here hence the long sleeve shirt courtesy of Mary's rugby team....

This is Ela, Naomi, Malaki and Issac, and this pic is VERY exciting because they are all doing sign language!!! Malaki is the little boy in year 1 who is partially deaf who I have been working one on one with him and his mom. Here, they are doing the sign for Father because Malaki's dad was sitting next to me (except Issac is doing the sign for the letter G, but close enough). You might also notice the large plate of panikeke on the bottom left part of the pic. I go to Ela's every sunday afternoon because she fries up Panikeke for the whole village and my plate is never empty at her house.

After prize giving, we got the trophy for our under 12 and under 14 boys winning the district. They were obviously pretty pumped. The best part is the hand coming out from the truck on the right side of the pic is the Mormon ministers hand, whose truck we all rode in to the prize giving.

This was all of the year 6-8 and teachers and my bike piled into the back of a pick up truck on the way to prize giving a few villages over. In pic from left to right Mercy, Mariota, Iemi, and Tonip. Really funny kids.

Count 'em, 5 mormon missionaries in my house. These are my new best friends. Yes things have changed a bit...

2007-05-26T16:36:00.000-05:00

Wow, its been awhile eh? Well, a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same. I guess I should go back to the bike ride around Savaii. Sally and I met at Dylan’s place in Tuasivi a couple miles from the wharf on Sunday night May 6. The next day we rose bright and early to bike up to Sarah aka Texas’ place in Avao on the north/east corner of Savaii. It was a very nice smooth bike ride with no hills and we made excellent time so we stupidly thought we were a lot stronger than we actually were. Fun to see Texas’ place. She lives next to a nice little touristy spot and I found some nice beach fales where I am planning on staying with the family in August. She has a cute little house in the middle of her family’s compound where we hung out. Tuesday we rose a little later as it was pouring down rain in the morning and headed out for Asao on the north/west corner. Now you would think that after working at a summer camp for 7 years (did I really just admit that?) I would be able to read inclination on a map, but alas, no. So that day pretty much sucked. We curved inland a bit and up and down a lot of mountains (ps- there is only one road that goes in a big circle around savaii so there was really no chance that we could get that lost…). We also thought since the day before was so easy and we were clearly in such fantastic shape that we could take a little detour to see the Dwarf caves. Unfortunately this “little” detour turned out to be off trail biking straight up a mountain for about 45 min. When we finally got up there we found 2 Samoan men who were very eager to lead the two of us into this 4 foot wide hole in the ground. This was about the time we realized this might have been a bad decision, but it’s too late now, so down we went. The caves were actually pretty cool. It was basically a huge underground pathway with water dripping all over and at one point there was a short little water fall we had to slide down into a pool of water that was up to our shoulders. Good thing I wore my backpack. Oh and to all those who like to make fun of me for carrying a headlamp around, I have never been more happy to have one on me in my life. Anywho, we some how got out alive although I ripped my lavalava all the way up the back and had nothing on underneath but my bikers, which may not sound like a big deal to those in the US, but around these parts thats about on par with modeling for Playboy.

Well, we made it to Asau to find out there were no beach fales there and we would have to go another hour straight up a mountain to get to Falealupo beach fales (the same place we stayed for new years). So that sucked, but we made it and that night was the most terrific thunderstorm I have ever experienced in Samoa. Good thing we left all our clothes out on the line. I am sad to say that my “Bucky” shirt became a casualty that night. The next day we slept in and enjoyed the few hours where we didn’t have someone asking us to dance for them or help them with their homework or come over to their house so they could feed us more and we actually read our books and enjoyed…silence…

That afternoon we headed down to Salailua where Derek (pcv) lives with a family. Some of the Peace Corps boys were also biking around the island and we had been seeing them all along the way, but they were a bit faster than us so we never biked with them for long. At any rate we all met up at Derek’s for a nice little dinner and whatnot. The next morning we just had to go about 3 hours to the wharf but unfortunately it started raining and just didn’t stop. Sally and I sucked it up and headed out. Unfortunately for those around me, when I am in situations such as these, i.e. exhausted, wet, and generally not very happy, I go into a sort of camp counselor mode where I try to see the good in everything and cheer up group moral by doing something really obnoxious like singing very loudly and saying cheeky things to every Samoan we passed. Luckily Sally put up with me for 2 months during training so this kind of overly obnoxious behavior didn’t faze her too much. So we made it to the wharf and finished all 120 some odd miles of that big old island. Unfortunately batteries here hold a charge for about 2 hours so I have no picture to validate my effort, but I swear it happened!

The second week of school break we were supposed to have our early service conference at Faofao beach fales with the group of volunteers I came here with (group 77) but wouldn’t you know it, the Samoan head of state, Malietoa, goes and dies (look up Julya Stey’s blog if you would like to see some really great pictures of the event. The parade with his body went right in front of the Peace Corps office). So, we only had one night at the beach fales and two days of language training because the state funeral and national holidays were Thursday and Friday. Pretty good to see all the group, except there were only 9 of us there and our original 16 is actually down to 11 come Monday L On that note, I have had to say goodbye to 7 people who have decided to go home for one reason or another in the last 3 weeks. It has been quite depressing to be honest as many of those people were good friends. We are all trying to look on the bright side of things, which is that a new group of volunteers is coming on June 6 and June 9 is the Fiafia that we put on for them. I don’t know if you any of you remember me talking about the Fiafia that I went to when I first came here, but it kind of blew my mind as it is the first impression of the volunteers. For this Fiafia I get to lead the Sasa which is a dance where everyone is sitting except for me. I get to stand and direct the group as to what dance to do, all while running around screaming and yelling and you know, doing what I do best, being in the spotlight. So Im looking forward to that.

School “started” this week. I am trying to get a reading program started this term as there are quite a few girls who are dying to read books, but just never really had the opportunity before. We will see how it goes. At any rate, been a rough couple weeks with people leaving and whatnot. But, Im hoping that things will start looking up soon, of course, packages full of chocolate and inter tubes never hurt…

somewhere over the rainbow

2007-05-02T15:36:00.000-05:00

Quick update with Trisha Tokanoa- Been in apia since Monday because I had the pukie/poopies (and that is the actually scientific term, go ahead jim look it up) from some suspect crab I ate Mon afternoon. Besides from the effects of said pukie/poopies having an air conditioned hotel room wasnt half bad. Got caught up on the 3rd season of Lost with Davey-Dave who also was a great nurse, buying me crackers, apple juice, and two containers of conditioner (didnt notice that one wasnt shampoo...close enough...my hair is very silky smooth).
Hopefully going back to the village today. Supposed to start up homework hour for the high school kids this week, maybe can get it going tonight, even though it is the last week of the first term. This Fri is the last day before our 2 week break. Yahoo! Schoooooools out for...what season is it? Oh yeah, hot and sweaty. Going to Savaii on Sat for Cinco de Mayo since Samoa is so into their Mexican cultural...riiiiight. After the festivities will be heading off to circumnavigate the island with Sally and some others. Ok gotta run people need computers and I need deoderant. Hugs and taro!

Samoa, not a country in Africa

2007-04-27T21:05:00.000-05:00

Ive recently noticed that my writing styles tend to mimic whatever author I am reading and for the past few weeks I have been reading Tom Wolfe’s Electric Kool-Aide Acid Test, so bare with me…
Well, I believe the “soccer season” has finally come to an end. The games were always fun to look forward to, but I was becoming a little tired of every single Samoan in our district (at least 10 villages) man, woman, child, elder demanding “Lola, Siva (dance)!” every minute I was there, which by the way the games last from 8am to 3pm. This last Wednesday was ANZAC day, which is a holiday in New Zealand. For those of you who don’t know, New Zealand is a group of islands approximately 1600 miles from Samoa, so naturally we didn’t have school. Instead we played soccer. Our under12 boys won the district…I think…And our under 14 boys lost in a heartbreaking 0-1 game.
Remember that time that there was the poor exchange student in your middle school and use to kind of make fun of his accent and giggle when he messed up words? Remember how it was the funniest thing ever to teach him swear words and tell him that it really meant “chair” or “pencil”? Haha, man were those good times…karma sucks. So the other day we are having lunch and I sneezed. One of the teachers says, “Ia, ua ti’o le povi.” Huh? Oh you know, it’s a Samoan thing you say when someone sneezes, it means the cows are crying. Oh cool. Being the disciplined disciple of the Samoan language I dutifully jot it down. Yesterday, teacher sneezes. “Ia, ua ti’o le povi.” HAHAHAHAHA! Hmmm….they are laughing harder than usual. Lets take a peak at the dictionary. Ti’o, ti’o, ti’o….ahhh here it is…yes “ti’o v. (not for decent use)” (The dictionary actually said “not for decent use!) “…to ease one’s bowels, to defecate.” Classy. The cows are….nice.
One week left in the first term and then we have a break from May 4- May21. The first week Im planning on biking around the big island, Savaii with a few other PCVs. The second week we have our early service conference at some beach fales in lalomanu. Early service conference is for just our group after the first 6 months. Have I been here for 6 months?
So I got barby-dolled for the first time the other day. Often time peace corps volunteers have Samoan families who are really excited to dress up their palagi (white person) in samoan attire, hence the phrase being barby-dolled. The other day I had set up a meeting with the matais in my village in a peace corps staff member to discuss a project I was trying to get going with the women’s committee. The meeting was supposed to be at 10am so I was planning on going to school first and was going about my daily morning routine, i.e. no Samoan before coffee, very strict rule, when mama Sally drives up in the truck. I thought she was gonna drop off some clothes but no, Lola get in the truck. But…I…ok, never argue with a Samoan woman on a mission unfortunately weighs more heavily than the coffee rule. I get in the truck and we go to her house where she has made me a beautiful new puletasi (woke up at 4am to finish it!) and demands that I put it on now so she can see. Of course I oblige. Mmmhmm good, now sit. Next thing I know my hair is done up like I am going to prom with flowers and all. It was actually very nice and who knew they had hair spray in Samoa?
I got to mix the ava again at the meeting and this time I didn’t fall into the ava bowl afterwards which was nice. The rest of the meeting achieved absolutely nothing, but lets not talk about that. Am I becoming jaded…
No, I am not. I really do love my village. Recently the days have been flying by. Multiple times I have been walking home after helping a kid with homework or just enjoying a meal with a family and look up at the southern sky and feel like, didn’t I just wake up? Ok mom here is the schedule of the last few weeks of my life because I know you and absolutely no one else wants to know.
650- wake up…coffee….
730- stumble up the hill to school
740-830ish hang out with teachers and try to follow their conversations
830-2 teacher…sort of
2-3 either read or sew or go help my buddy malaki (we can come back to him)
3-5 soccer practice
5-630 dance and song practice with the kids at the church
7- help kids with homework or help my one computer student
8- Lola time
Malaki is my little buddy who is in year 1 and has a big old hole in his eardrum which makes it a bit hard to hear. I am working on getting him a hearing aide from an Australian NGO, but in the mean time we are learning sign language, the alphabet, colors, numbers, etc. But Laura, you don’t know sign language, you might say. No, I don’t and not only that they have a different sign language here than they do in the states, but no fear. I am a peace corps volunteer, hence, I take myself far to seriously. And there is a nice little DVD for Samoan sign language that just came out, so that helps. Anywho, Ive been helping out Malaki and his mom so she can know some of the signs as well. He is my one little project that has been going very smoothly and has had no problems thus far…
Well, Samoa is still here and so am I. Hope everyone is happy and well. Letters and emails always welcome.

And then a little something

2007-04-04T22:46:00.000-05:00

Just a few more for viewing pleasure...

St Praticks day in Samoa. We dont like to have fun here...

Kids, front of my school. Go Nene!

Yeah infected feet!

Little known fact: Samoans hate the sun. Tonipo on the right has his school i'e on his head and his buddy Arona is using his school shirt.

Standing on the "porch" of my school "coaching" the soccer team. You can just barely see the ocean over the tops of houses. I mean its not the worst view....

Its BABY LOLA! This is in my training village, Maasina, with my sister Sele (holding baby lola) and little Vitale on the right, the love of my life. This is shortly before I passed out from heat exhaustion after biking 15 miles in the equatorial sun.

2007-04-04T19:34:00.000-05:00

Oh what a long strange trip it has been…continues to be and will be. Samoan primary school soccer season is in full force. We had our first games the week before last at a village down the road. All the kids were so cute in their matching “uniforms” (random blue shirts and random red shorts). We were the first school to arrive to “game day” and we sat politely under the little sign that had the name of our school and waited for the other teams…and waited…and waited… Eventually the other schools began to slowly trickle in. There were maybe 10-12 schools in all. Of course in the atmosphere of sport and anticipation I, along with the kids, began to grow antsy after the first hour. Fortunately Samoans and I make a winning combination, as they love to sing and laugh at very silly things and I enjoy making an ass of myself. Naturally, I took center stage and directed them in some camp songs I had taught them. I taught them the banana song which, if you don’t know, is a winner with kids and involves dancing around like a banana ending with the grand finale of screaming, “Go bananas, go, go bananas!” It pretty much brings me to tears every time because the kids have no idea what they are saying they just jump around yelling whatever. The kids from the other schools were so in awe of our sweet new song that when we finished they all started clapping and chanting “banana, banana!” That counts as sustainable development right?
Eventually we started playing and it was just so weird to think about all the soccer games my parents drove me to when I was growing up and how all the kids on my teams were always decked out in shin guards, matching socks, cleats, clean new uniforms, etc. And here are the Samoan kids. Just as excited and pumped to play soccer, but their shirts are hand-me-downs or ripped or too big, their shorts don’t match, and cleats…haha! I think I saw maybe 3 kids wearing shoes. But it just goes to show, no matter what the conditions are, mankind just loves sports!
Last weekend (March 24-25) I decided to ride my bike out to my training village, Ma’asina, to visit my training family. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the geography of Upolu island, my village, Tafatafa, is a 30 mile round trip to Ma’asina with some pretty monster mountains in between. First stupid mistake, thinking I am Lance Armstrong. Second idiot move, leaving for Ma’asina at 10am on Saturday, hence biking up mountains when the sun is the absolute hottest on an island where we can spit on the equator. Thanks to our Lord and Savior J.H.C. I am still alive today. It was great to see the family and remind myself how beautiful that village is. When I got there I was happy to see that my family had recently purchased a truck. When I left the next day they graciously drove me over the first two massive mountains (the first 4 miles). The road leading into Ma’asina is a long, VERY curvy, VERY narrow, gravely, loose, road down a steep, STEEP mountain. This was the road that my brother, Manu, decided to teach my other brother, Lafo, how to drive their new stick shift truck (mom, maybe you should skip this part) with me and my bike in the back of the truck. Again, thanks to our Lord and Savior I made it out alive.
Don’t know if anybody heard about the earthquake off the coast of the Solomon islands on Sunday. Peace Corps issued a formal Tsunami warning in Samoa Unfortunately this was at 2pm on Sunday which is right after Sunday feast and national nap time. So as exciting as it would have been to run for the hills, I stayed put in my bed. Luckily the tsunami in question was another 18 incher.
I had one more near death experience today as well as a valuable learning experience. I learned today that it is very important to never tell a Samoan to please stop singing. One of our teachers thought it would be really cute to sing me a nice little song in the English language. Very nice of her, except the song in question was the %$^@$ Barney song “I love you, you love me…”remember that little tune that makes all people in the whole of the US want desperately to be put to death as soon as physically possibly? Right, well I asked her politely to please not sing that particular song. She thought that was funny and decided to show me how you can sing it in Samoan too, and proceeded to show me…the whole song. Sigh, yes that’s nice, but please stop. Well, she just couldn’t understand how I couldn’t like a song in my own language so she sang in again in English just to make sure I hadn’t been mistaken. At this point I put my head down on the table and tried desperately not to drive my pen into my eyeball. Finally she finished, looked at me with a confused look and then abruptly went to class. I went back to reading my Economist glad to have survived the audible torture. The other teacher in the room looked at me as if I had just strangled a kitten. “What has happened? Why would you do that?” I tried to explain that I just don’t like the song, just like he probably doesn’t like certain things. Yeah, no go. Had to go formally apologize for my rudeness. If I ever meet the schmuck who invented that song I will kick him in the shins.

And now for your viewing enjoyment...

My kids pulling away after the soccer games

The "school bus" that took pretty much our entire school to the soccer games. There were about 15 pick up trucks packed with kids from all the villages and they were all singing songs and just happy as can be.

I mean...really...can you get any cuter?

Tafea, Gloria, Uesa, and Emeline hanging out before the game.

All the primary schools lining up getting ready to begin the games!

Mania (his name means "nice" in english so that is what all his friends call him) on the left and Iemi on the right. Some of my favorite year 8 boys who love to rock my pink sunglasses.

This is about hour 2 of waiting for the soccer to start...Kids are still excited though and keeping a very good watch on my bike I might add.

2007-03-17T16:44:00.000-05:00

As of March 14 I have been a Peace Corps Volunteer for 3 months, which is exciting because now I can officially leave the country! Which is pretty neato except I lack the time and the money to go anywhere, but the idea is pretty cool nonetheless. After being in Samoa for a total of 5 months the last 2 weeks have surprisingly provided a lot of 'firsts' for me. Last Saturday and Wednesday I went kayaking for the first time at Salani surf camp about a fifteen minute bike ride from my village. It was soooo beautiful. Their kayaks are open tops and I went out and played in the ocean for a little bit where you have a gorgeous view of the mountains on land and the water is crystal clear and there are tons of beautiful coral all around. While I was kayaking I saw a reef shark for the first time which was really sweet. They are fairly small and I was so excited to see one that I actually tried to follow it. I also saw a stingray try to do an impression of a dolphin by jumping out of the water about 10 feet in front of me and flapping around attempting (or so it seemed to me) to be beautiful and graceful and then proceeded to crash into the water in an awkward belly flop. That was also a first and fairly comical as well.
I had my first Mormon missionary invasion…I mean discussion with two white guys from the states who are stationed here. They came to my house last week to talk to me about the Mormon religion for 3 hours…you got that right? 3 hours? Yeah, so that was…interesting.
I also experienced my first St. Patrick’s day in Samoa…if you would like details you should probably ask someone else.
I was also pooped on by a baby for the first time which was rather exciting. I went to visit my Samoan family last week and little Sally, who is about 1 year old, came running up to me with her hands up yelling “Lola, Lola, Lola!” And being in a good kid-loving mood, I scooped her up and put her on my hip and was dancing around and playing with her when all of the sudden I smelled something a bit…foul. So I put her down and realized that A) she didn’t have a diaper on and B) there were now brown stains all over the shirt I was wearing where Sally’s bottom had previously been. This might sound disturbing to some of you at home, but the part that I found most disturbing was that I actually debated if I wanted to go home and change or not. The thought, “its not that bad I guess” actually crossed through my mind before I caught myself and said “self your covered in baby $h*t you need to go home and change.” So that was fun…
At any rate, besides mormons and poop things are going quiet nicely. I am still coaching the soccer team at our school, although I think I am just in charge of the girls now which is interesting. Im excited that they are actually letting the girls play since you don’t really see girls playing much sport here, but you can def tell that that is the case with our soccer team. One girl just runs after the ball and kicks her legs out like a weed whacker and when someone is in front of her she continues with this performance and just plows through people not only knocking them over, but actually running over them as well. Its quiet impressive. Her lack of body control kind of reminds me of….well me at that age (anyone who saw me try to play basketball at the age of 10 would know that I found it physically impossible to stay on 2 feet for more than 5 minutes at a time, true story).
Well, Im off to be important...to someone...somewhere...aka sit in the office and enjoy air conditioning. Hope all is well. Kisses and coconuts.

oh no ive gone crosseyed

2007-03-04T17:45:00.000-05:00

Samoa is a very strange place. A place of endless summer and carbohydrates. A place that changes you the minute you walk off the airplane. A place that makes your english deteriorate. A place where it is pointless to wear a watch and no one cares what time you show up or if you show up. A place where fashion is a different colored t-shirt with less dirt on it. Take it or leave it, its a funny place.
So the last few weeks have been...i dont even think there is a word to describe the last couple of weeks. I am working on settling in at my school and getting used to certain things such as certain "discplinary techniques" that are a bit different than what I was raised with. After the first 3 weeks of school the year 8 teacher (I work in a primary school so there are years 1-8, and we orginally had 6 teachers but one was in new zealand the first week of school and I think she is still going to be coming back tomorrow...) stopped coming to school. He was very sick, but supposed to come back and never really did. So for a few weeks I had year 7 and 8 which was a lot of fun because they were good kids and a lot of the year 8 girls have very good english and helped me along when I didnt know certain Samoan words. Sidenote, most of my year 7 kids know very little english. When I gave them a little quiz the first day a couple of them answered the question "How old are you" with "I am very well today thank you."
At any rate, the matais in our village decided that year 8 needed to be taught by our principle much to my sadness. So currently there is one teacher for year 1,2, and 3, one teacher for year 4,5, and 6, Im teaching year 7 with 8 kids and my principal teaches year 8. Makes total sense...
At any rate, my kids are funny and cheeky and loving nothing more than playing the hand slap game "down by the banks of the hanky panky."
This week at morning assembly my principal was talking to the kids in Samoan about soccer teams or something and I was only half paying attention, but then I heard her say, "yes and Lola will be your coach." Aaawwhhhaaat? So you can call me coach hanks from now on. We had our first practice on friday and it was all of the kids year 4-8 which was pretty ridiculous. The year 7 and 8 boys were actually pretty good and I got to run around with them a little which was fun to do in barefeet and the pouring down rain.
In Samoan family news, my my mom in Tafatafa just had her 4th baby, a little boy named Fo'i. They came back from the hospital on Thurs and I went over there to see him. Big old boy with a head full of hair. Mom looks pretty beat so I hope they let her rest for a few days, she is all of about 5 years older than me.
Last monday I went crab catching with my family at night on our beach. One of the more hilarious experiences I have had here. A bunch of us loaded in the back of a pick up truck stopped and picked up some donuts and headed down to the beach where half of us trudged off down toward where the lava rocks are, while the other half stayed at the beach fales drinking koko Samoa and eating donuts. So heres how it happens. My "aunt" has this big old flashlight she shines under rocks and the kids i.e. my brothers and sisters aged between 13-24, go after these huge crabs by either smashing their hands down on top of these suckers or crabbing them behind the pinchers under the rock and dragging them out. The they take these big old things and dump them in a rice sack. Awesome. The next night we boiled all the crabs in a big pot of coconut cream, onions, and salt. Wow.
So the goods are goods and the lows are low, but what did you expect? I hope all is good in the "real world" out there. I heard that some people from group 78 Peace Corps Samoa just found out they will be coming out here in June 2007. If you happen to be reading this and just learned that you will spending the next two years of your life working Peace Corps Samoa starting in June, feel free to leave a post or email me with any questions or concerns. I can def help you with the packing list because the Peace corps packing list is only soso really.
Alright enough of that, love and kisses to you all. No worries here, only going a little crazy and could use some cold weather and a mom hug, other than that just gotta leave them laughing when you go...

Wish List

2007-02-12T23:07:00.000-05:00

Alright all of you who I know are dying to send me a package here is the official Laura Hanks Wish List!
1) Board Shorts, or any shorts that are knee-length or longer. Mesh and linen work too.
2) Face cleansing wipes...you know like oxy or neutrogena
3) stickers!
4) Little packets that absorb moisture...for my computer and everything else that is covered in mold
5) emergen-c packets: can pick up in whole foods i think, little packets that you put in water and are packed with vitamins. I have completely od'ed on carbs here
6) coloring books!
7) those clippy claw things that I put my hair up with
8) Sex in the City season 6 or any old dvds you dont want. Unfortunately burned dvds dont work in my computer...
9) Olive oil
10) Your love in a box
Thanks for your caring loving friendship. Miss you all!

2007-02-09T23:10:00.000-05:00

Crazy couple of weeks. About to get disconnected on the internet. But all is well now so here are some pics of the good parts. Also just found out we are a losing the first memeber of our group so we are all a bit bummed. If anyone wants to send anything this way I could desperately use some board shorts or any shorts around the knee length. Oh and olive oil. I will make a better wish list next week. Love to you all!

My class! I dont think most of them had seen a camera before so they were pretty excited. I had them make name tags for their desks out of magazines and markers. Also very siked about that.
This is the wall you see as you walk into my house. My Samoan dad when painting the house wrote "welcome" and then stood back and pondered it for a few minutes. Then I guess he decided he needed me to know who exactly was welcome in my house so he squeezed in the "you." Mom, notice the calendar?
This is the other side of the main room...and my bed. My "closet" is the piles of clothes under the bed on a piece of cardboard.
Ok this is actually a really messy day, but I was in a hurry so it doesnt usually look this bad. But this is my work table where I have a great view of the road and the sunsets. Mom, I dont know if you can see the wind chime hanging between the windows. The back room is through a door to the right of the pic and the front door is to the left.
This is the back part of my house aka the kitchen/bathroom. The sink is great except there are no pipes and the water goes directly on the floor. Notice plant growing through wall next to sink. I am very proud of the shelf next to the sink as I rigged it up with some twine and an extra refidgerator rack. The toilet and shower are to the right.

On my own...

2007-01-20T15:13:00.000-05:00

Now that I finally got my laptop that means more pictures! I found some old one and new ones for you viewing entertainment. First week in my very own house has been interesting and im not at all lonely because I have tons of friends living with me in the form of lizards, ants, a huge rat, and cockroaches! Yeah! No its cool though. I had one funny moment when I was getting in my shower (which is a tin box with a pipe that shoots water out of the top) and I turned the water on and this tiny little gecko shot out onto my arm. He kinda looked up at me with these big eyes like "What the F*$% just happened?" and I kinda yelped and then continued to laugh at myself for the next 10 min. At least it wasnt a snake.
At any rate, school starts monday! Would be nervous, but I dont think I will be teaching at all this week since the first week is usually meetings while the kids do ground work. On top of that Im not sure if my principle is even back from New Zealand yet. Anywho, enjoy the pics. If anyone feels the need to send a package I need spices like I need oxygen. It costs $11 tala for a small bottle of cloves here! Im just saying....
This was when I could finally unpack my bags aka move into my house! This also meant that I could finally open all my christmas and birthday presents! I tried to get everything in there, but some stuff didnt quite fit. It was a fun merry little christmas all to myself. Living alone and existing in a state of nothingness has caused me to create all sorts of fun new ways to entertain myself. On Thursday night Meghan came to spend the night and was caught off guard when I was discussing the rules of my house with the cockroaches in the kitchen. What was even more disturbing was that I didnt find it wierd until she pointed it out...
This was the amazing and glorious last sunset in the world in 2006 in Savaii that I have been bragging so much about. Not bad ehh?
This is in Maasina right after I had blown the conch shell for lotu. Every evening in every village there is about a 20 min lotu or time for prayer where everyone has to go inside and pray. In Maasina our family is in charge of blowing the conch shell to signal everyone to go inside and then again after about 20 min to signal the end of lotu.
77 girls before our Fiafia with the village. And its true that if Peace Corps doesnt work out for us, we have thought about pursuing a 4-some modeling career.
This was our culture day during training. The boys were all hiking up the mountain to the plantation while the girls busied themselves scrapping papayas and peeling bananas. In this pic I am scrapping a coconut, which is usually a man's job hence the two men watching me intentily so I dont screw it up. The big guy inside the hut is Fiafia (means happy in Samoan) and is pretty much my hero. The other guy is the mayor of Maasina. After the coconuts are scrapped they wring out the shavings to make coconut cream which is put on pretty much everything.

I have a house!

2007-01-13T15:34:00.000-05:00

I have a house! Yeah! So I went back to my village last sunday to move in, but I don't think my fam was quite ready to let me go, so I stayed one more night in their house which was fine. Monday morning there was a matai meeting at my Samoan Dad's place and I got to be the taepo. This was exciting because that means that in this very serious meeting with all of the chiefs in my village (matai is like the chief of the family) I was the only girl and I got to mix the ava. Ava is this ground up root that they mix with water at traditonal ceremonies. The ava is put in this sort of cheese cloth and then I get to squeeze and mix it with water in this huge ava bowl. Really cool, I did OK with the help of the matai's sitting around me, except the ava ceremony part of the meeting takes about an hour and a half and my legs completely feel asleep (you have to sit cross-legged the whole time because it is rude to point your feet at people in Samoa and the 4 talking chiefs were sitting across from me and since I had the ava bowl in front of me I couldnt exactly readjust). So when the whole thing was over the matais told me to go sit by my Samoan father on the other side of the fale. Not wanting to show weakness I stood right up and discovered that my legs from my knees down no longer worked or had feeling, thus I nearly toppled over into the ava bowl before I was caught by one of the matais. Gracefull...Im going to be deported...They all laughed and I tried to explain in broken Samoan the importance of circulation to the lower parts of my extremities, but I dont think we really understood eachother...sigh
That afternoon after much anticpation I finally moved into my cute little house next to my school. I love it! It has two rooms and the first room you walk into is my bedroom/living room. The next room has my little gas stove, fridge, sink, toilet, and shower. Its so cute and I LOVE being able to cook for myself again and actually make food from home, like salads! Although, the family that lives across the street from me fines me quite interesting and I don't think they believe I actually can cook because every day they send over one of the girls who is 17 with two plates of Samoan food for me. Haha, it is so sweet. In Samoa everyone lives with a huge family usually extended relatives and all, so I think they believe I am lonely or feel sorry for me that I am alone therefore every night I have company for dinner.
Wednesday Meghan (Meka) moved into her place. She had to wait a few extra days because she is living with a family and they had relatives staying in her place. So I rode my bike down to Siumu in the afternoon to visit her. It only takes 45 min on bike! Her house is also very cute and purple and orange, but in the middle of a family compuound hence lots of people watching her all the time. Regadless, she is happy and I am happy that she is close. Jordan (from group 76 who came here in June and swore in in August) lives 15 min from Meka in the other direction from me. So we are all excited to many girls nights since we are all close and because I got my computer and 3 dvds of family guy yesterday!! I love you mom and mary, you dont even know!
Thursday the 3 of us girls decided to meet at a waterfall between where we live. That took about 30 min on my bike and it was awesome. We spent the day jumping off lava rock waterfalls into little pools about 15 feet below. It was amazing.
So all is going swingly down on the southern side of things. I am in Apia at the moment and will be heading back to my village for a bbq on the beach because it is Uncle Iese's last day before going to New Zealand tomorrow. Yeah. Family thanks again for the packages, they were amazing! I am especially excited about my Bush second term cards. You do know I technically work for that government, right? Love and kisses to all!

quick update

2007-01-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to post some awesome news i found out yesterday. Aaron, Meghan and I were shopping in a thrift store in Apia and we ran into one of Aaron's family members from Ma'asina. She was excited to tell us that my sister Sele in Ma'asina had given birth to a baby girl on Jan 1st! She was also excited to tell us that the family had named the baby Lola, after me! I seriously almost cried in the middle of the Samoan thrift store.
After this joyous news I made my way to the bus station to take the bus back to my village. After waiting for an hour I realized I had missed the last bus and today is a holiday so I am stuck in Apia until Sunday when I am "suppose" to move into my house. alright and kilisi (chris) is pushing me out the door. gotta run, more soon

Manuia Tausaga Fou!

2007-01-02T23:34:00.000-05:00

Or Happy New Years! Well its been a crazy few weeks in the land of salt water and palm trees. Group 77 became offical Peace Corps Volunteers on Dec 13 and we moved to our sites on Dec 14...well...sort of. Quite a few of us were not able to move into our housing because of certain "circumstances". In fact when I hopped into the Peace Corps land cruiser bright eyed and bushy tailed prepared to save the world I said to the driver cheerfully, "So where exactly are we going?"
"To your village [Tafatafa]"
"Yeah, where am I staying?"
"Umm...I dont know exactly. I guess we will find out when we get there."
Ahh the way of the Peace Corps. So we got to my village and found a bunch of guys working on my house and the PC staff talked to a few of them and one jumped in the back of our car and we started driving off. No idea what was going on but eveyone else seemed happy about it. We pulled up to a house in one village over and I came to find out that the mysterious man in the back of the car was actually the pulenu'u (means mayor. Pule means boss and nu'u means village) of my village and I would be staying with him until my house is ready.
Although at first I was sad to hear my house wasnt quite ready, I am so happy to live with a family for my first few weeks in the village. My new Samoan mother and father (Sally and Sagaga) have been so wonderful. They have three children who are 1, 3, and 4 and adorable. They also live across the street from their cousin and his family who are all just as goofy as ever.
I spent most of my first week reading, biking, checking out the progress of my new house, going to dance and singining practice at night, learning how to weave fine mats, going to the beach, etc.
On Dec 22 most of my group headed back to Ma'asina for christmas. It was great to see my family there again. I spent Christmas day bbqing on the beach and snorking around the coral reef.
I was back in Tafatafa for my birthday which was very bizzare because none of them knew it was my birthday. Being a lover of attention it took much self-control not to yell out "Where is my birthday cake!" but i made it and had a wonderful day hanging out with the women's committee and helping prepare for the matai title cermony that would be taking place at my uncle's the next day.
On the 30th I headed out to Savaii for New Years which was amazing. I saw the last sunset in the world of 2006 and she did not hold back! There was a pretty fun crew out at the beach fales, but over all pretty relaxed. I got pretty sunburned from snorkeling all day and at midnight almost all of us were in the water. Let me tell you what, I thought the stars in northern wisconsin were beautiful, but in the middle of the pacific...wow.
I came back from Savaii today, planning on going ot my village but apparently it is a public holiday so it looks like I will be bunking up with Meghan and Aaron in their hotel again (their houses arent ready either but their employers put them up in a motel in Apia rather than having them live with a family. I think I got the better deal, but its nice I have a place to crash in Apia for now.
Hopefully meghan and I will be moving into our houses this Sunday so keep you fingers crossed for us. She lives about 10km away from me and is my second closest PC neighbor.
Overall things have been great here. I dont start teaching until Jan 22 so I am free to do whatever I want until then. I am still trying to find the balance between traveling and seeing friends and intigrating with my village as much as possible, but it is hard being the new girl. And I cant even tell you how much i just want to unpack my suitcase! Since I am living with a family I was only allowed ot bring one bag to their house, which means I have been living out of a suitcase for 3 months now. AHHH! I am also glad that the holidays are over because my first christmas away from home was a little sad :-( But overall things are great! I cant wait to start teaching and really doing what I came here to do. Hopefully my computer will be here soon and I can put up some more pics and write more blogs more often and possibly use more, more often in sentences. I miss you like more than boiled bananas!

aawwwhhhaaaaaaatt?!?!

2006-12-12T16:17:00.000-05:00

I cant believe it is already Dec 12! How did that happen?! Well, as I said before the last 2 weeks in the village were incredible. Our goodbye fiafia was amazing and our goodbye with my Samoan family was a sobfest. It is amazing to me that I could become so emotionally attached to people who I can barely communicate with. I have yet to speak a single english word to my Samoan mother and father, and yet they were both crying the night before we left and told Sally and I that from now on we were a part of the family and if we ever needed anything we could call our Samoan family in Maasina any time. I also became very close with my Samoan brothers which was also an incredible feeling in that I have never had a brother or an older sibling. At first our brothers were a bit standoffish, but in these last two weeks they started treating us like little sisters. Such as teasing, eating our food on the bus home from Apia, making fun of us, etc. But when we said goodbye to the family they all assured us that if anyone ever said anything cheeky to either Sally or I they would be there as soon as we called. It just meant so much to hear that.
Well, I ve got a few more pictures here for viewing entertainment, but I didnt have time to upload the pictures from our culture day (the day in the village where we got to make papya soup, banana soup, Dylan killed a pig, we made the umu or Samoan oven with lava rocks and fire, we gutted fish with our bare hands, husked coconuts, made coconut cream, made palisami, cooked a turkey, etc). It was an awesome day where we really got to get down and dirty. At any rate, Sally should be putting pictures up from it and her blog is under my links to the right.
Swear in tomorrow and moving to our sites on Thursday! Im not sure when I will be able to write again as I will be in Tafatafa until Dec 22 when I will go back to Maasina for christmas. I think we are heading out to Savaii for new years because there is a beach on the west side of the island where you see the last sunset on earth (its the last place before the international dateline). So I will hopefully be watching the last sunset of 2006. Pretty neato. At any rate, hope everyone has a merry christmas and a happy new years and feel free to send letters and pretty things in the mail, you know I like that. I also have a cell phone nowadays and the number is 011-685-773-1374 if anyone gets a world card and wants to call. You can get world cards from lencard. com, but no pressure just if you miss my voice that much you know how to reach me. Hugs and kisses to you all!

This is when I had to dance all alone in front of the womens committee with three of the boys in my group being idiots behind me (that is chris crawling on the floor to the left) during the fiafia. Apparently its Samoan tradition. I am also cracking up in this picture because all of my brothers were standing outside the fale making faces at me and saying "auleaga!" which means ugly. They are so sweet! This was when I had to act like a princess, but later I lead the Sasa and got to tie fabric around my head and scream and yell and crawl around on the floor. It was awesome! I kind of totally freaked out a little and let out a blood curdling scream at one point, but it was a great time regardless.

My brothers!! From left to right is Lafo, Aropa, Peau, and Talemanu is on the bottom. We had a sort of fundraiser for our church this night at our house and the boys did a Samoan hip hop dance which was hot! Manu has also taken to dressing up in his wife, Sele's, mumu's to make us laugh. He is also the one that took us spear fishing.
Dylan and some of the boys from Maasina. The little boy on the right is named Seosi and is kind of my "uo" or boyfriend...he's nine, but its cool.

Peace Corps, what?

2006-12-07T18:03:00.001-05:00

One week left of training! I just took my language proficiency test and I feel like my brain has turned into Samoan mashed potatos. We have our farwell with the village tomorrow night and I am sooo sad to leave them. Our family has become so utterly ridiculous it is a bit unreal at times. Wish me luck trying to look like a princess doing our girly dances tomorrow!

My house! So this is the before picture of my house for the next two years in Tafatafa. Apparently she is getting a make-over as we speak. All we need is a little paint and some cheesy christmas lights and I am set! The school where I will work is about 20 yards to the right of the pic.
Our boys! The boy in the hat is Paulo and is one of our "brothers." Not exactly sure the relation, but whatever he is hilarious. The only non-Samoan is Dylan, our little Peace Corps poster child.
This is our neighbor Ita (means angry in Samoan). She is the cutest 3 year-old ever and pretty much runs the village. The mouth is meghan, another PCV in my group. In this pic Ita is pointing out a picture of herself on Meghan's camera.
This is the view of the bay we live on from out families plantation. Yeah....not much else to say about that...
We begged and pleaded for our family to take us to their plantation even though girls really dont do that sort of thing. Their plantation is behind out fale on the mountain behind the village. It was a super hot day, but we found some sugar cane along the way and Aiva was showing us how to scrap the sugar cane down with a machete. It should be noted that when I tried to walk off with the machete at one point Aiva yelled "Lola! No!" and promptly took it way from, worried I would hurt myself. She is 10 years younger than me...
This is Sally and Silina "doing homework." We try to do our hw in the fale everynight, but it usually ends in an uno game or uncontrolable laughter.
This is our catholic church in the village. The house I live in is 2 over to the left (cant see it in thei photo. After it rains there are 3 beautiful waterfalls that come down the mountain behind the church. Oh and the ocean is directly behind where I am standing taking this pic.
This is me and Talemanu's wife, Sele and my boy Vitale. Every night after I shower the girls massage my feet and do my hair. This particular night I got some flowers for an extra special effect. This pic is behind our fale next to our cook shack.
Silina being herself. This was one of the first days Sally and I were learning how to husk coconuts, scrap them with a machete, and make shavings and coconut cream. Nowadays we are totally pros.
This is my dawg, Vitale. He is my brother, Talemanu's, baby. Probably the cutest thing alive and might possibly come back to America with me.
This is me after church in our village, Maasina. The girls from left to right are Silina 8, Aiva 14, and Hanna 11. The boy is Aropa 18. This pic was taken in the fale I live in. Notice ocean directly behind us.

2006-12-04T18:59:00.000-05:00

Im still in the village technically, but we came into Apia to meet with out bosses and organize a 90 day work plan for after we swear in on the 13th (Yikes its so close!!) I thought I might upload some more pictures for everyones viewing entertainment since I never have very much time to write and my computer died after I was here for week. Things are going wonderfully in Maasina and I am going to be very sad to leave my goofy and crazy Samoan family next Sat. The big news in the village this week is that I got to go spear fishing with one of my older brothers!!! It was amazing, even though I didnt exactly spear any fish, but whatever Im working on it. Sally and I also got invited to spend Christmas with our family which we are super siked for as well. Alright, not as much time as expected so there will be more next week. We have our farwell fiafia with the village on friday night and then we will be back in Apia on sat. Miss you all, send mail!

our village kids! Yeah!

This picture is on the porch of our training center with some of the kids in our village. Meghan is the PCV next to me and she will be teaching computers in a village about 15 min away from where I will be working. Molly is the the other pcv on the right and is teaching music in Apia.

almost there...

2006-11-24T17:30:00.000-05:00

Here are a few pics of what I have been up to the last few weeks. I have many many more, but for some reason the computer I am on right now doesnt want me to show them to you and the lady next to me sucking on her candy louder than anything I have ever heard is about to force me to make decisions I will probably regret. Therefore I will get back to you all with more pics later.

This is a pic from the bus on the way to our village.

During my volunteer visit on Savai'i, Julya and I were weeding her garden when group of her girls came up to help us. They were gnawing on some sugar cane and enlightened us to its delicious qualities as well.

This was a beautiul waterfall near Julya's house. We actually hiked down the hill and went swimming in that small pool underneath the waterfall.

On the way to Savai'i for my volunteer visit with Julya! This was our view of Savai'i as we left the warf from Upolu. The boat was pretty small and the ride was quite bumpy so to keep from sea sickness I promply passed out following these pictures. In the picture on the left from left to right is Aaron (from my group 77), Kevin (current volunteer), Derek (current volunteer), Rob/Lopi (group 77), and Todd/Koli (group 77).

Lost in translation

2006-10-30T18:37:00.000-05:00

I don't even know where to begin. I don't think the best writer in the world could even begin to describe the last week of my life. So, I guess I will apologize to everyone at home because much of this blog will be lost in translation.
We arrived in the small village of Ma'asina last Saturday afternoon. The village is maybe a quarter of a mile long with all of the fales lined along a road looking out on a large ocean bay. Behind the houses is a massive mountain covered with rainforests and a massive rock cliff on the right side. There are also 2 gorgeous waterfalls streaming down the side of the mountain. It was probably the most overwhelming and unbelievable place I have ever seen. When our vans pulled into the village we were ushered into a sort of fale, which is basically a large room with a roof and no walls right next to the water. The people of Ma'asina were waiting for us and we had a traditional ava ceremony. Afterwards the women brought us breadfruit mixed with some sort of sugary mixture and coconut juice. At this point my buddy Chris who was sitting next to me leaned over and suggested that we pour a little coconut juice out for the poor peace corps volunteers in Kazikstan. After our light snack, our trainers announced our names and our host family names and we grabbed our luggage and headed to our host family's houses. Sally and I were paired together again and our host family lives pretty much right across the street from out training fale/center. Our compound is made up of 3 fales and a little cook shack of sorts in the back. Walking up to the house was totally overwhelming and exhilirating. There were children, pigs, chickens, dogs, and cats running everywhere. There is a nice little volleyball court in the front and most of the area in between the houses and behind them is covered in lava rocks. We went inside the first house where our host mother and father's room was. Our host father is the talking chief of the village and our host mother is so happy and animated. Neither of them speak any english...or they haven't spoken any to us yet. When we walked into this house we walked into a big sort of living room I guess, which is where we ended up having all of our meals. Our host parents room was off to the right. If you walked straight across the room you would go into the kitchen area and then Sally's room was the second one on the right. Continuing through the house you can walk out the back door and take a sharp right to head over to the fale where I lived. My fale was pretty much a big room with no walls, except for my room which was all closed in. My room was a very nice size with a mosquito net and a mattress on the floor. Our toilet and shower were right behind the house I stayed in. After we dropped off our bags we went out front to play frisbee with some of the kids. Between 6-630 the church bells sounds for everyone to go the their houses for evening lotu (prayer). After about 15-20 min my host brother blew a conch shell which signaled that everyone should be in their houses. This is then followed by about 30 min of prayer. My first experience with this evening lotu was completely overwhelming (sorry I know I keep using the same adjective, but it is really all i can think of to describe the situation). There I was sitting on a floor in this fale next to the ocean surrounded by wonderful Samoans who have graciously taken us into their houses. They have so very little, but yet they were all so happy and thankful for eachother and everything that they do have. I was just so in awe of their way of life I almost cried about 5 times. After lotu was dinner. In Samoa it is tradition for guests to eat first while everyone else stares at you. We also ate on the floor siting cross legged. At any rate, we tried to not seem awkward and stumbled through dinner with our 4-5 Samoan phrases.
I think that most of you would not be surprised to hear that after a week in the village my best friend is an 8 year-old (her name is Saliuega and she is the bomb!). But, some of you might be a little surprised that I spent my Saturday night sitting in a Catholic church with about 10 Samoan children screaming samoan songs at the top of their longs. It was awesome! They wanted to "teach" us the songs before church the next day...It was hilarious! I also must confess that i fell in love with a Samoan while I was in the village. His name is Vitale and he is the son of my host brother. And also he is apporx 1 1/2 years old and the CUTEST thing I have ever laid eyes on. When ever he would see me he would just sort of have this blank stare and then I would smile at him and he would jsut get this huge grin across his face, everytime!! One of the last days of the week I was going to class and I gave him a hug goodbye and he actually cried when I left! When we left the village at the end of the week I tried to smuggle him out with me, unfortunately I got caught.
It rained a lot during the week, but we were able to take walks after lunch most days and by the end of the week almost everyone knew us and would wave and call "Malo Lola ma Seli" when we walked by.
We have our volunteer visit this week where we go and stay with other volunteers for a few days and observe their life and work. I believe I am going to Savai'i which is the "big" island. I think I will be taking the 1 1/2 ferry tomorrow morning. I can't wait to check out Savai'i and hang out with the PCV's there. But for now it is back to class in Apia.

Bucket of Diamonds

2006-10-19T22:06:00.000-05:00

While I was standing on volcanic rock looking at the bluest water I had ever seen with the whitest beaches behind me and palm trees swaying in the wind, a fellow trainee walked up next to me and said, “We seem to have stumbled upon a bucket of diamonds, huh?” I think that pretty much sums up my first week in this beautiful country.
Saturday we had our Fiafia that the other PCV’s put on. I’m not really sure how else to describe this, but wonderfully filling and ridiculous. I met quite a few very unique people and it made me that much more excited about spending the next 2 years of my life here.
Sunday our schedule said “1000am - Cultural Exploration” This roughly translates to - get on a bus and hang out on one of the most gorgeous beaches you have ever seen. Our group spent the day swimming, sleeping in the beach fales (or thatched roof huts open to the breezes), trying to crack open coconuts on washed up coral, snorkeling, exploring, and just enjoying the serenity. I think the pictures might do a better job describing just how breath-taking this place actually was.
Tuesday started out a regular day with classes starting at 8am, but after lunch we were scheduled to have “Water Safety Training.” Well, obviously if you are going to live in Samoa you will need to know how to swim in currents and know what fish are poisonous, etc. So, if you are already working on all of that, why not take a boat out and go snorkeling on the coral reef? I love the Peace Crops’ logic. So we spent the afternoon Tuesday playing in the waves and the snorkeling. I would like to just say here that the ocean is so cool! Yes I already know what a dork I am, but seriously I have never seen so many beautiful fish! We also even saw a super poisonous stone fish, which is like a chameleon and blends in with whatever it is next to. Luckily we were with a few PCV’s who study marine biology and could point all these things out.
So, to sum it all up, life has been rough, send cookies. We will be heading to Ma’asina, our training village on Saturday. From what I have heard it is a gorgeous village right on the water. I am extremely excited to be in a rural area and live with a Samoan host family. So far I have yet to meet a Samoan who wasn’t smiling or eager to say hello. At any rate, no complaints here, but mail and care packages are always welcome. Could def use some decent coffee grounds for sure! Kisses to all!

Paradise found

2006-10-16T23:50:00.000-05:00

Just a few pics from the beach we went to on Sunday after the Fiafia. Crazy weekend, lots of fun meeting the other volunteers and playing on the beach Sunday, Internet cafe is closing so more later. Water Safety tomorrow so more playing in the ocean!

we like it hot, hot, hot!

2006-10-14T18:30:00.000-05:00

Thank God I grew up in Virginia! People are dropping like flies from the humidity here. We are constantly covered in a sticky layer of sweat and there a certain funk that has started to resonate from everything I touch. But to be honest, I’m pretty OK with it. All of our classes are outside under a thatched roof in the courtyard of our hotel, which is approx 10 steps from where I sleep. Luckily our hotel room has some kickin’ air conditioning. Yesterday was a pretty fun day overall. In the morning we talked about life and work and many people in my group found out what schools and villages they would be working in. I, on the other hand, got called out to “please see me following this meeting.” How did I already mess something up?! Calm down mom I’m not coming home. Apparently the curriculum is changing in regards to special education and our trainers were curious what other “skills” I possessed. Well, aside from building forts and playing in the woods I mentioned to them about my dorky love for history and that I could possibly teach children math and science on the basis that they had absolutely no understanding of math and science to begin with. I also have spent a lot of time talking to the volunteers that arrived here in June and are based in the villages which just sounds amazing, so I mentioned to our trainers that I would love to be placed in a rural area if at all possible. At any rate, I am no closer to knowing where I am going to be, but I am totally ok with that. Honestly, I cannot say enough good things about the Peace Corps as an organization and I am not just saying that because I know that they read these, but they really do have there stuff together. Leata, our language teacher is one of the most wonderful and animated people I have ever met. Yesterday she took all the girls out shopping for fabric and then took us to a tailor to have pulasi’s (traditional tops and bottoms for women) made. Then after lunch we had our first language lesson and our group was divided into 3 groups and got to have classes in our air conditioned hotel rooms. Leata was my teacher and I can honestly say I have never had so much fun learning a language! We laughed through the entire lesson. Leata kept reminding us over and over again that “i” is the smiling letter because you have to smile ever time you say it.

At any rate, we have our first Fiafia tonight which is basically a big celebration with dancing and other ceremonial activities. The other PCV’s are putting it on for us and should be a really fun party. In sum, everything is wonderfully warm and exciting on the other side of the world. More to come…

Talofa!

2006-10-11T22:06:00.000-05:00

I made it! After a glorious 10 hour plane ride and extremely fat ankles I am sitting in an internet cafe in downtown Apia, Samoa. What a crazy day! We were greeted at the airport this morning by some very groggy looking volunteers form the Peace Corps. Most of them have been here since June, but a few have been here a year already. The other volunteers gave us all beautiful lais and put us on a bus to go to our hotel. They were all really fun and excited to tell us about what they have been doing in Samoa. Most of them work in the small villages which sounds amazing. Once at our hotel we had breakfast of papya and eggs. Then after a few classes we loaded on the bus again to go to a school where some volunteers worked to have an ava ceremony which is a religous ceremony done in villages where everyone sits in a circle and prays and drinks kava juice. We of course had absolutely no idea what was going on, but the we got to drink some kava out of a coconut shell which tasted kind of like muddy water, but made your lips and tongue go a little numb.
It was all a bit overwhelming, but amazing at the same time. Apparently the next 11months will be very intense training until we swear in as offical volunteers on Dec 13. This Saturday the peace corps apparently throws all the volunteers a party so we can all get to know eachother and hang out in town. At any rate, until then I will hopefully get some sleep and find my creative brain cells so I dont sound quite so bland for everyone at home. Oh one other thing...packages!!! Anyone who feels the need to send me some air mail or a little surprise my address is
Laura Hanks, PCV
Peace Corps
Private Mail Bag
Apia, Western Samoa
Miss you all dearly!

Californication

2006-10-10T13:45:00.000-05:00

It is Tuesday morning and almost impossible to believe that yesterday morning i woke up in my bed in Charlottesville and Sunday morning in a bed in Fredericksburg with Ned and Carlisle. Well, I am officially a Peace Corps Traineed, not quite volunteer status yet, but exciting none the less. I arrived in LA yesterday about 1030am local time and checked into my hotel. I am sharing a room with another volunteer named Sally who is from upstate New York and also working in the special education program. At about 2pm yesterday we checked in with the peace corps and began our staging classes. There are 16 of us in our training group with only 4 girls, which I found surprising. Everyone seems really cool and there is so much energy in the room which is really cool to be around people equally excited about the 2 years we are about to embark on. Last night we finished about 6pm and I was lucky enough to meet up with katie heitman and Louis Marquis, 2 friends that I worked in Wisconsin with, for dinner. Great to see familar places one last time in this smoggy city.
Today we have classes all day which concentrate on safety issues, fears and anxieties, getting to know everyone, etc. We are checking out of the hotel around 7 or 8pm and then all heading to the airport together where we will get on the plane at 1145pm and arrive in Samoa at 545am. Once in Samoa we will have 10 days of training while we stay in a hotel and then we will move in with our host families.
Phew! Sorry this is very dry, but the internet is expensive here and I am trying to get it all out. At any rate, I was freaking out a little yesterday once I realized that I really did sign up to do this and it really is going to happen, but at the same time I am very excited. I feel like we already have a great support network within our training group which will probably come in handy in the next few days. I am not sure how else to express the barage of feelings that are going through my head right now, but I do know that I am looking forward to getting on that plane and spending the next two years on a beautiful island with some pretty amazing people! With that being said...here we go!

ps- On an unrelated sidenote, my poor little sister had to go have surgery on her ankle after she broke the bottome of her fibula playing rugby. Those of you that do know her I am sure she would love a call and your love.

planning and procrastination

2006-10-04T18:22:00.000-05:00

AAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!! That is all there really is to say about packing and reorganizing everything you own to prepare for a 27 month journey. I have spent the last week anaylzing and reanalyzing what was absoutley necessary to take...just so everyone is clear a vegatable peeler is NOT absolutely necessary. So after to saying goodbye to some very dear friends in the northwoods of Wisconsin, attending a going away party, running millions of errands in town (I walked 10,929 steps today thanks to my new pedometer...yes it is necessary), boxing up everything that is not coming with me, moving out of my room so my dad can create his ideal office space, and rocking out with some sweet southerners at a Skynard concert I think I can say I am ready to go...sort of.
So why am I going to the middle of the pacific for two years? Why not?! For the last 23 years of my life I have been blessed with a loving family, a roof over my head, wonderful friends, and food in my stomach. About this time last year I realized I had been taking almost all of that for granted. I wanted to give back something to people less fortunate than I and hopefully make some sort of an impact. My hope is that in the 27 months I am in Samoa I can help improve at least one person's life. yeah, I know it sounds cliched, but I am looking forward to reaching out toward an entirely new group of people and i am sure I will have my share of adventures along the way! But, for now I am looking forward to reliving glory days one last time this weekend at UMW. More to come...