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...