Savaii Samoa

We had exciting visitors this week to our school- the Savaii Samoa rugby team came on Thursday to spend some time with the students and perform some songs and dances for them. The kids spent all day Wednesday rehearsing songs and dances like mad to perform for the team and they did a wonderful job. It was great seeing how excited they were and how much they enjoyed having an audience to perform for. After our school's performance the rugby team responded in form and sang some great children's songs for the students. It was a lovely day and a great way to end up the first term of the school year. Everyone had a lovely time and enjoyed it thoroughly. Plus the team gave us some money for a special treat so yesterday we had a cake and ice cream party as well, which was almost equally thrilling for the kids! Now we're on break for two weeks and then school will resume for second term.

The Ambassadors

This week the new ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa came to visit and he spent an evening with the Peace Corps. One volunteer from each sector of work prepared a presentation to give an overview of the kinds of work that we are undertaking here in country. There only being 2 special needs education volunteers in our program, I had the 50 percent chance of being asked to present, which I was. So the 8 chosen volunteers made up our power point presentations and we practiced our traditional Samoan dances that we learned in training so that we could perform those as well. It was a nice evening, and was kind of exciting to present what's going on here to someone "official"- plus it was neat hearing about other peoples' projects as well. This was actually the second time that we've had a representative from the government come and we've held a presentation session for them which is kind of nice- we're quite used to being ambassadors of the American way of life with Samoans, but it's neat to get to be an ambassador of Samoan life to Americans as well.

55K

Happy mother's day! I know yesterday was technically mother's day, but here in Samoa we get the day after mother's day off so today sort of felt more the holiday than yesterday in many ways. In either event, mother's day is a very big deal here so a bunch of volunteers from our group returned to Falevao to visit their families for the weekend. Most of us, in fact, rode our bikes. There are some members of our group who have extensive biking experience and have been riding around a ton since they've been here. I definitely use my bike to get around town and for convenience's sake, but had yet to endeavor a long-distance trek for leisure. So yesterday was my inaugural attempt. The ride is just over 27 kilometers in each direction. We got up nice and early and noticed a big rain cloud in the distance. After about a nanosecond of pondering it became clear that we aren't capable of riding faster than the wind, so we realized we were bound to be joined on our journey by water. We took off anyways and actually the rain turned out not to be torrential, so it provided some cooling and cloud cover along the way without making the ride miserable. It took about an hour and 20 minutes to get to Falevao where I for one spent the large portion of the day resting and laying around being as lazy as possible. Late afternoon rolled around and we hopped on our bikes for the return journey. I must say, we stopped to take a break about the halfway point back and I was thoroughly finished with all that lovely fresh air. Mostly, actually, it was just that I hadn't felt my butt in about an hour and I kind of missed the sensation. Despite my desire to stop early and camp on the side of the road, however, we made it back in one piece and flopped down to a pizza that someone else made for dinner. Overall we biked about 55 kilometers yesterday which I was quite proud of since I don't even know the longest distance I've biked before, having never been a serious biker. I'm sure it's paltry to anyone who rides regularly, but hey, I'm a runner not a cyclist. And I only got chased by one pack of dogs the entire time. Quite impressive. And I'm not even sore today, more suprisingly (other than the residual numbness in my behind).

Antsy Pants

I’ve been a bit antsy lately. I think I’ve decided that seven months is my maximum limit for being on a 50 square mile island before I start doing the pee-pee dance in my brain. Unfortunately for my island fever, I do not have plans to leave Samoa until October 9th. So in an attempt to come up with ways to restore equilibrium to my psyche, Andy and I decided to take the weekend off and go be tourists at the beach. (Did I mention that we live on a beautiful island where you can go stay in a small hut on the beach for the weekend?) We packed our backpacks and jumped on an insanely overcrowded bus, that happens to be driven by my Samoan brother (small country), and headed east for Lalomanu. We spent the weekend eating ridiculous amounts of food that other people cooked for us, laying around and reading, snorkeling, and napping. We actually even sprung to go out on a boat for a snorkel trip which is way out of our price range but was really cool- we got to snorkel around the edge of an underwater volcanic crater and see turtles and eagle rays and all kinds of stuff that we don’t usually see when we snorkel off the coast. Plus we got to be on a boat. (You’d think, living on an island, that boats would be rampant here, but in fact unless you count the ferry to and from Savaii it’s quite difficult to manage to land yourself on one.) And then on Sunday in the pouring rain we jumped back on the bus and two hours of butt-bumping on uber-comfy wooden bench seats later, we were home and ready to start our week. It was great. We were gone for something like 48 hours but it was quite revitalizing. It was also kind of fun to play tourist, since everyone assumed we don’t live here. And just as a souvenir, to make sure I remembered our little vacation long after it was over, I brought back fleas with me that are now happily cohabitating my bed :)

Tsunami Day

At 4:30 this morning I was jolted awake by movement. Before I even knew what was happening I was up and in the doorway- apparently those endless drills in elementary school really paid off on the old subconscious. The earthquake lasted for about 30 seconds (I think, I really have no idea) during which I pondered whether there are actually any places in my house that have “structural integrity” in the true meaning of getting some place safe in case stuff starts to collapse, which I believe to be quite within the realm of the possible. The shaking was minor, though, and I went back to sleep after the adrenaline wore off. At about 7:00 this morning my phone started ringing off the hook. Indignant that people were attempting to encroach on my sleeping time when school doesn’t start until 8:30, I tried my hardest to ignore the phone for about an hour. Finally I gave in and admitted that there was no way to sleep through the incessant ringing anyways so I got up and spoke to a parent who was curious whether there would be school today. The bus had left already so I told him yes, thinking it odd for him to query why this day was different from all other days, and went about my way getting ready. The bus returned a few minutes later with no students. I yelled after the principal and bus driver to find out what was going on and they said that the prime minister had cancelled school for the day because of the earthquake. I gotta say, my first impression was “Whoa. This beats the heck out of rain cancellation. I feel like I’m seriously missing something here.” Then the Peace Corps called and it turned out that there had been tsunami warnings all over the south pacific because the earthquake, which had originated in Tonga, was like a 7.8 there and created quite a stir. Turns out the tsunami was relatively minor (like 20-30 centimeters high) and not particularly damaging as far as I know. So anyways I got a free day to hang out and read and watch Grease. It sounds quite dramatic and exciting, though- school cancelled for impending tsunami!