First Impressions

Since our arrival we have been in classes every day from 8:00am to 5:00pm. Some are on safety, PC policies, cultural integration, and medical information but the majority of the time has been spent in language classes. I am finding I do not learn a new language as easily as I once did. I can see the words on paper and pronounce them but my feeble old brain doesn't seem to be able to remember them from one day to the next. Hopefully that will change soon.

We have been finding our way around town bit by bit. It is really crazy. There are taxis everywhere and everyone drives like they own the road. The roads are narrow and very crowded and pedestrians definitely do NOT have the right of way here. There are also these funky buses that are always overloaded. They fill up all the seats and then start putting smaller people in larger people's laps. I haven't quite had the nerve to try the bus yet! Here in Apia there are a lot of people who seem to do a lot of hanging out - not particularly causing trouble, just standing or sitting around.

I really should describe my room. It is a typical (sort of) hotel room. One double bed (mine) and one single bed (my roomie's). The floors are all tile. There is nowhere to hang up your clothes so we are still living out of suitcases. We do have a couple of shelving units we can put some things on but for two of us it really isn't enough. We have two chairs made of bamboo with a cushion on them- very uncomfortable unless you use a pillow from the bed. The beds are actually quite comfortable. The room is air-conditioned, thank goodness. There is a bathroom with a shower and we have hot and cold running water. There is also a small refrigerator.

We are on our own for lunch and dinner. The first couple of times we went and ate in restaurants but our budget is limited so I decided to get food at the store so I could eat in my room. There is a grocery store down the street a couple of blocks and there is an open air vegetable market around the corner from the hotel. Man, they have things in there that I have never seen before. Lots and lots of bananas of various kinds, cocoanuts, papayas, mangos, etc. - oh, and today I even found carrots! I also found another store today that carries a lot of US products, toiletries, soaps, chips, etc., imported most likely from Hawaii. It is impossible to find lunch meat unless it is canned and the only cheese comes from New Zealand. It's not bad but pretty expensive. If you go down one block and turn left you come to Mr. LavaLava, purveyor of (guess what?) lava lavas. Those are the skirt/sarongs that men and women wear. I bought two to add to the one that PC gave us our first day here. All they are is a piece of fabric finished on all four sides and you wrap it around yourself and tuck it in and hope it stays put! I brought safety pins for just such an occasion.

Down the street the other direction is the "laundromat" where you take your clothes and put them in the washer, then the proprietress washes them, drys them and folds them for you. You pay your money and you are on your way. Nice!

So far the weather has not been as bad as I imagined it would be. It is very warm and very humid but not horribly so, plus with the tradewinds blowing if you stand in the shade and catch a breeze it is actually fairly comfortable. However, today for the first time my glasses fogged up when I left my air-conditioned room and stepped outside. That was a real trip. Usually they fog up if you go from a warm room to cold outdoors - I didn't know it worked the other way too.

Hey, guess what I found out. You can see the Big Dipper from here! and you can also see the Southern Cross! although I haven't had the opportunity to check it out. We are right in town and it is a bit bright for star gazing.

Tonight we had a party in our honor given by the current volunteers. They entertained us first, dressed in traditional Samoan attire performing ceremonial dances. Then we had a professional fire dancer. He was truly amazing. I guess PC doesn't think fire dancing fits into their safety and security protocols so they wouldn't let a volunteer do it. We got to meet most of the current volunteers and ate a ton of food. They make this coconut cream stuff that you put on taro that is wicked. Taro by itself is really bleagh!

Oh yeah - the pig pictures! One of the volunteers helped get a new primary school started in one of the villages, and today the village thanked PC by gifting them with two roast pigs - The lady leaning over the smaller one is one of the language teachers and some of my trainee group are gathered around the big pig. These pigs were cooked in the traditional "umu" which is an above ground fire pit covered with palm branches. They didn't quite get done though so we couldn't have them for our party. Apparently they frequently "don't quite get done" but they eat them anyway. Ummmmmmm! We'll see.

Tomorrow we get to go to the beach. I'll let you know all about that next time I talk to you.

Lets see. I know there are probably other things I meant to mention but I guess this is long enough for now. I will try to keep you up to date but it is really hard to get to the internet cafe before it closes during the week and on Saturday and it's not open on Sunday. I want to try to get my picture page back up and working but that is pretty time consuming so I don't know if I will be able to. Until then I'll just keep sticking them in with the entries. You just won't get as many pictures.

Bye for now.

I Have Arrived.

I am happy to report that I have arrived in Samoa all in one piece, although a bit worse for wear!

My grand adventure began with a bang in Bellingham airport when they decided to search one of my bags - the one with all the "junk" in it. That bag took me two whole days to get packed so everything would fit and still meet the size requirements. I watched in horror as they emptied it out one item at a time. At one point the screener make a comment that maybe they should have taken a picture first - just what I needed to hear to make me feel confident that they could get it all back in.

Having passed that hurdle I continued on to LA where I spent Sunday night, thru Tuesday. I met the other 15 members of my group and we all had a great time getting acquainted. I am not the oldest either! There is a man who is 5 weeks older than I am and his wife is right up there too so I guess when the college age antics get to be a bit much I will have them to hang out with.

Our flight from LA was scheduled to leave at 8:45pm Tuesday night but was delayed so we didn't actually get out until midnight. In the interim, having been evicted from our rooms, we wandered around like lost souls without a home. We left for the airport at 5:30pm for an 11:45pm flight - again, hours of waiting! By now it was past bedtime and I was getting tired so I figured I wouldn't have any problem sleeping on the plane and would arrive in Samoa rested and ready to go. Nope!! Ten hours of sitting in a cramped little seat without sufficient leg room for anyone over 5'4" is difficult enough, but trying to sleep in it is virtually impossible. I may have gotten a total of 3 hours sleep during the whole 10 hour flight.

We arrived in total darkness at 5:45am Samoa time, staggered off the plane (down the steps onto the tarmac) and into the "terminal" where we collected our bags and went through customs. No problems there thank goodness. We were greeted at the airport by about 30 current volunteers carrying a big welcome sign and presenting us each with a lei. Then we had a photo shoot, loaded up into PC vehicles and headed for town. By now it was getting light (there doesn't seem to be any dawn or dusk here. It's either dark or it's light - not much in between) so we got to see the countryside and surroundings on the way. It really is spectacularly beautiful! And there are flowers everywhere - so pretty. The current volunteers climbed into the buses with us and rode along so we got to talk to them and find out a bit of what we had gotten ourselves into.

When we got to the hotel we figured they would let us have a nap before beginning our day - hah! Thirty minutes to get settled in our rooms then breakfast and then our first session. At 11:30am (which seemed like 9:00pm to all of us since we'd had no sleep) they presented us all- men and women both- with matching lavalava's which are sarong type skirts, explained what a traditional Ava Ceremony is and how we were to behave, and marched us back onto the buses to go to the ceremonial fale' for the formal welcome to Samoa. I had my first experience with sitting cross-legged on the floor! My back did fine but my feet went to sleep after a while. Fortunately women are allowed to shift their feet to one side or the other and I was able to bring them back to life. I don't know what the guys do - they are not allowed to change position.

Next was lunch then a quickie language lesson of common everyday expressions. I wish I could tell you what some of them are but I was so tired by then that all I wanted to know how to say was "Can I go to bed now?" Next up on the agenda was a tour of Apia, the capitol city where we are staying until June 17th. It really is a fascinating place. There are some of the oldest most magnificent churches I have ever seen anywhere. There is a huge open air veggie market right around the corner from our hotel, there are new modern skyscrapers being built along the waterfront, there is a flea market downtown where it is rumored you can buy anything. But above it all rises these incredibly green hills that are actually volcanic cones covered in lush tropical vegetation. You can see patches on the sides of the hill that appear to be a concentration of a particular kind of tree, different from the rest on the hill. I am told that these are the plantations where cocoanuts, papayas, or breadfruit are being grown. Speaking of exotic plants, I had my first taste of taro at dinner our first night. Strange stuff, but not bad. I guess there are a lot of ways to fix it. And of course any description wouldn't be complete without mentioning the water, the beach, and the reefs. It was a beautiful day and we got some pictures that I will try to get posted as soon as I figure out the whole internet cafe thing.

Anyway, after dinner we finally got to go to bed. What a relief. I woke up this morning to my first real day in Samoa, and I haven't changed my mind yet. I'm staying.!! A bit about our hotel. I could describe it as a good Grade B hotel. It is clean, air conditioned and we have hot and cold running water. I share a room with a gal who is here to do the Integrated Coastal Management program. She has quite a bit of experience working with Marine Science projects and has spent a lot of time on the Olympic Penninsula AND around Deception Pass! Small world

We spent all day today in training sessions but at lunch time J and I went shopping. We went to Mr. LavaLava to pick up some appropriate clothing. I bought two so I'll see about getting some pictures taken that I can post as well. We then went to a small grocery to try to find something to use for making lunches since our budget is minimal and eating out twice a day is too expensive. Grocery shopping is another whole experience that I will save for another day. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of American goods, but you really pay the price!

This afternoon we met the PC Medical Officer and tomorrow we start getting our shots. It's not too bad really as there aren't a lot of preventable diseases here. There is no malaria but there is dengue fever so we still get mosquito nets. We do have to have typhoid shots but most of the others are common ones that we all get as kids and most everyone has already had them.

Tomorrow we also start language instruction in earnest. We will be doing 3 hours of language everyday for the next week. Then, on August 17 we leave the comfort of our air-conditioned hotel and head out of the city to a small village for most of the rest of our training. That will be when I will begin to really find out what this life is going to be like. Each trainee will be placed in a host family home by themselves and it will be sink or swim as far as language learning goes. It will also be an opportunity to really get culturally immersed in the kind of surroundings I will be in for the next two years. I am very much looking forward to it.

Anyway, that's it for now. I know you have more questions and feel free to leave a comment and I'll try to answer them as soon as I can. I still won't know about frequency of internet availability until after we move to the village but I'll try to keep you updated as I can. I will also try to get some pictures up for you,

Until next time - take care and I don't miss you yet! but I am certain I will so feel free to write. Oh yes, speaking of email, please do continue to send them. I will be able to check it as frequently as I can get to the internet cafe so I'll look forward to hearing from you all.