Friday, March 27, 2009

Land Ahoy

We're in the capital city on the main island of Tongatapu! When the plane was coming in for the landing I was amazed at the size of the island, and all the land everywhere. It's definately larger than our little island in Ha'apai. From the airport it takes half an hour driving to get to the guesthouse, there isn't anywhere in Ha'apai that you can drive for that long. It's a really weird feeling for Brett and I to be back here after being on our little island for 3 months now.

We were amazed by all the food choices, and restaurants on every street. Even getting off the plane there was a little restaurant with a sign for panini sandwhiches and pizza, real food! Yesterday when we got here we walked around, I got a vanilla latte smoothie and cheesecake at a little cafe, and we walked by the market and a few stores to see what they had. The market had so many vegetables and fruit that we don't get in Ha'apai this time of year - cucumbers, lettuce, tomatoes, pinneapple, avocado, etc. And I spent probably a little too long lingering through the aisles of a food supermarket looking at yoghurt, cereal, real cheese, and even the flour was packaged and not in little baggies like at our chinese stores. There's also so much car traffic here, in Ha'apai we normally just walk down the middle of the streets! I also noticed I slept really well last night - the first time we got here and stayed at the guesthouse it was so hard to sleep with all the roosters and noise, and now I'm just used to it.

I had a volunteer advisory meeting today, we have this weekend to hang out and then Brett has some teaching trainings early next week and the middle of the week we start more peace corps training. We're here until Wed. April 8th, then back to our beach house.

1 comment:

former teacher api fo'ou said...

I am amazed! I have been reading your blog and really enjoying it. I was a teacher in Api Fo'ou College in Nuku'alofa in 1988/89 and the way you describe life in Ha'apai is closer to my experience than the way you describe Nuku'alofa! We had one japanese restaurant and that was it - no coffee shops, no shops come to think of it and very few facilities. Still I did love Tonga!