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!