Ahhh Thailand

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

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?

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!

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!

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

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!

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??

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....

...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...

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

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

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!

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....

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

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...

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.