People and animals leaving

There are some changes we recently heard about from the group in the capital on Tongatapu, 5 volunteers are leaving Tonga. Four are from group 73 - Lara and Trenten, Alexis, and Enrique. One is from our group 74, Cassie, she was in our training village in Vava'u, we'll miss her. Lara and Trenten were a married couple from Hawaii that we got to spend some time with while we were on the main island, they'll be missed as well. Our group 74 is now down to 20 people, we started with 24. I've heard that the most people early terminate their service during training and the first three months at site. We've been here about 2 1/2 months now in Ha'apai.

Cassie on the left, me and Monica in Tu'anekivale in Vava'u training

Trenten in blue and Lara in white at our group 74 swearing in ceremony

Some changes here in Ha'apai - our neighbors Mosese, Akata and their kids moved to Nomuka, an outer island today. Along with them went 2 of the bigger dogs, and 8 pigs in wooden crates. So it should be a little quieter around our house now. After all the dogs and puppies we've had around this whole time we're down to 1 big dog and 2 little puppies. At the height of it all there were 5 big dogs and up to 12 puppies.

I've started working at one of the MAFF offices this week, the Fisheries office helping out with things for a few hours a day. I found out the new officer in charge isn't coming anymore, so they're looking for a new person to fill that spot which will be my boss. And I'm waiting to get the computer center staff sorted out. Brett has been teaching this week. This afternoon they cancelled classes because it was raining just a little bit, sprinkling really. But they thought it would rain more I guess. The school rooms get really loud with the noise of the rain and kids won't concentrate or if it's raining over lunch they just won't come back to school.