Two Coconuts

Lucky dog

2010-05-10T15:50:00.000+13:00

A quick update, Brett and I decided to have our dog Lucky shipped over last month from Tonga! It was a long and complicated process, but she made it here and is adjusting to American life - leashes, dog food, toys, being indoors at night, colder weather, lots of attention from people, etc. and she's loving it. Thanks to all our friends still in Tonga that helped us with getting Lucky here! She is still skittish around new people here after being in Tonga, but is getting used to it here. And we bought a house since being back, so we will soon have a yard and more space for our pets. It is still a process adjusting to life back in America, but we are both working and still enjoying all the good food, friends and family, activities here, and hot showers. I still have dreams often of being back on the beach in Tonga or swimming in the reefs. And I have been working more on the Tonga travel guidebook, with two contributing writers that were also peace corps volunteers with us. The web address for the book and publishing company is http://www.otherplacespublishing.com/tonga.

Ofa Atu!

Writing a Travel Guidebook

2010-03-22T07:17:00.003+13:00

Hello everyone, I wasn't going to keep updating this blog, but I've got some news relating to Tonga. I will be writing a travel guidebook on Tonga! There is a new publishing company that is putting out travel guidebooks written by Peace Corps volunteers since they have lived in the countries they will write about and have extensive knowledge on culture, things to see/do, places to stay, restaurants, etc. So I'm very excited about this project and to be able to share my knowledge of Tonga. It will help that I also worked with the tourism bureau there, and I'll be getting help with research from people still in Tonga, although I have a lot of information already.

The book will tentatively be done by October of this year. I'll post more information and a link to the publisher's website soon, so watch for that or let me know if you have any comments/questions.

Cyclone rene update

2010-02-16T16:21:00.002+13:00

Just a quick update, we've talked with friends from our island group of Ha'apai and it seems they were very lucky and there is minimal damage to trees and buildings and no injuries or deaths as of yet. Amazingly they already have power back, we were able to skype with some friends tonight, and they're just waiting for water to be turned back on. Some of the bigger trees were knocked over, and a few tin roofs blown away. Altogether I think our peace corps friends waited out the storm in a small house for three nights or so. So we're thankful that everyone is safe and there was minimal damage. Now we know what it's like to be on this side of the world waiting out the storm to see what happens. We're still adjusting to life here, missing Tonga but thankful to be here with family and friends and figuring out job possibilities (Brett has started substitute teaching and I'm doing some freelance advertising work from home). So that's all, check our other PC Tonga friends' blogs for updates.

Cyclone Rene

2010-02-15T05:35:00.003+13:00

Cyclone Rene, category 4, is headed to Tonga right now, and will pass right over our island group of Ha'apai and our town of Pangai. We have been out of Tonga for exactly one month now, so we are really watching this storm and thinking of all our friends there now - they are in a safe consolidation point. We had a couple of cyclones while we were there, but none this strong and with such a direct hit. There will most likely be a lot of damage from the strong winds, a lot of the buildings and houses are flimsy. The last big cyclone to hit the island was in '82, and most of the buildings were destroyed, livestock perished, and bush land destroyed. If this kind of storm was headed anywhere else - thailand, or the US coast etc., people would evacuate inland. But unfortunately on this small island nation that's not possible, people bunker down in the strong cement buildings and wait it out. And Tonga is such a small nation, this isn't even making much news around the world, and when it does it is focused on American Samoa or Samoa- even though there was hardly any damage there. The storm has picked up and become stronger as it heads directly to Tonga. If you look at the storm path below, it's amazing, it looks like the storm path curved to go right over the Tongan islands and right at the worst stage of the storm. The second image below is a satellite image of the storm right now over Tonga, the worst part is about to hit our island (the red dot on the image). We'll post more as we hear about the effects after the storm, but please keep Tonga in your thoughts and prayers as this storm passes over them.

A stranger in a strange land

2010-01-25T05:21:00.005+13:00

It's a strange feeling to come home after living overseas for almost a year and a half. We watched out the plane window as our little green palm-dotted islands disapeared, and coming into our first landing back in America we watched row after row of cement, buildings, and houses come into view in LA, with hardly anything green. After living abroad you come back with a different perspective, it definately changes you. Have you ever thought about how weird some things are in our own country, or what some foreigners must think? For example, coming from a tiny Pacific island to a main-land and flying for 4 hours over nothing but land was a different feeling. Hot showers are amazing. The first shower after Tonga the feeling of the water was like air it felt so much lighter than the water we had. And food, you never realize how many different flavors there are, and it's like tasting it for the first time after going so long without certain foods. But I have to say, the pineapple is disapointing here, we're spoiled now after the fresh, sweet pineapple we had in Tonga. And water, we don't have to wake up every morning and haul our drinking water in from a water tank outside, and we don't have to boil water and wait for it to cool. In LA we had a layover for a night, and in the hotel Brett walked down the hall and came back with bottled water, forgetting that we could drink the tap water again. The most amazing feeling right after leaving Tonga was just having clean feet and clean fingernails. The whole time over there your feet are just black. We'd clean our feet often, but no matter what they just turn black with dirt and sand and whatever. Wearing flip-flops the whole time your feet just get dirty. And we'd clean the floors in our house often, but they'd just get dirty so fast from living on the beach and having dogs. And I don't know what happens at night, but you go to sleep clean and wake up with dirt under your fingernails. I don't know. So it's nice to see that our feet are actually pink again (but we do still have calouses on our ankles from sitting on the floor mats so often). And after sleeping under a mosquito net for so long, we felt exposed at first sleeping without one here. But it's nice going to sleep now in sheets that aren't damp from humidity. And driving again is weird - to be on the right side of the road and not the left. And on our island we really were rarely in cars and when we were it was very slow going over the roads we had, and short distances so I noticed now I get a little car sick here.
So those were some of the basic differences we noticed right away coming back. But we also had some reverse culture-shock. Some people say the culture-shock is worse coming back to your own country after living abroad. I think it's better though when you expect it, we didn't expect to come back and things to just be normal again, we knew there'd be an adjustment. One of the first things we noticed was how connected people are now to the Internet, everyone has fancy phones they're constantly typing on, it's a little annoying. It was nice to be somewhat detached from that overseas. People here are becoming more detached from real conversations and interactions when they're just using facebook or things online to communicate. And it's very easy here to go days without having real interactions with people- you can sit at home online or shop around malls or places and not really talk to anyone, and the neighborhoods are more isolated - you can't walk down the street and be in town. In Tonga if you left your house you were greeted by every person you saw in town just blocks away, and even if you didn't leave the house the neighbors would come over to chat. You just had no option of isolating yourself. And commercialization, what can I say. In Tonga, you wore whatever clothes you had, no matter if they didn't match or were stained. You couldn't even buy clothes on our island, unless they had them at the market on Saturdays and then they were used old clothes that probably wouldn't fit. People didn't buy decorative vases, pictures, pillows, etc. for their houses. They just had the basics that were needed, sometimes not even that. Most of the time you sat on the floor and that was perfectly fine. We didn't have many options for shopping on our island because it was so hard to get stuff to our island. We already know what the stores are like here, but still knew it would be a little bit of a shock. At first we avoided going shopping. Then we went to the mall with Brett's family, I started converting prices to Tongan and things are so expensive here! We went to the Mac store, and I was overwhelmed by all the things they had, knowing that on our island computers are so old and constantly breaking down. Later Brett and I went to Target, and that was the biggest culture-shock I had coming back - just seeing row after row of all these products and things that we couldn't get on our island, but here they had a whole row of selection. For example body wash, which we couldn't get in Ha'apai, but here there was a whole row and it all looked the same - moisturizing, deep moisturizing, hydrating, sensitive skin, exfoliating, etc. I had to stop and breathe, and just grab one after looking at them all for 5 minutes or so. Walking around I glanced over at the food section, saw a huge row of different spices, and had to look away again. Brett said he had the same overwhelming feeling when we were shopping at a department store. I kept handing him dress shirts I was finding, and it was all so much and he said he was just thinking he didn't want any of them - he just wanted to wear scrubby t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops like in Tonga where fashion didn't matter. Here we have to dress up again.

So that's a little description of how we've been dealing with coming home to America. Thanks again to all our friends and family, it's been great seeing people again and sharing stories about life in Tonga. And we are missing the hot weather now, as we sit in about 4 degrees fahrenheit weather here, and we miss all our friends back there. We also turned our cell phones back on (our old cell phones look ancient compared to the new technology now), and we bought a cheap vehical to get around in. I have had a few job interviews scheduled already, so we'll see how things go.

A little update we just heard from Tonga - they suspended travel for volunteers on the only ferry because it's under investigation for safety issues. It actually left port and headed to the outer islands when it wasn't supposed to just recently. So it might be hard to get supplies now in Ha'apai if the ferry has to stop. And they might be moving volunteers off the outer islands in Ha'apai, since the ferry is the only mode of transportation to get to those islands. Good luck to everyone that's still there, hopefully they will get a new ferry soon.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

2010-01-19T16:46:00.004+13:00

We are leaving the Kingdom of Tonga and our little island of Ha'apai. Brett will be medically seperated for his leg, and I will get interrupted service status. We knew this might be coming and had thought about it for awhile, but still are very sad to be leaving early.

We will miss all our great friends here in Ha'apai, our neighbors, and our work counterparts. We will miss our beach, and the sound of crashing waves every night as we fall asleep. We will miss the sunsets on our beach, we've seen a sunset almost every night for the last 16 months. We will miss the amazing coral reefs, fish, and whales (not the sharks). We will miss seeing volcanoes out our back door. We will miss trying to converse in Tongan (although we'll try skyping with our neighbors back in Tonga in Tongan). We will miss the fresh fish, tropical fruit, and lobster (not the lack of vegetables). We will probably miss the incredibly hot weather once we're back in the freezing cold Midwest winter. We will miss the easy-going island pace to life. These things and many more we will miss. We went to help the locals in another country with our skills and English language, but learned so much in return. Not every country needs to be "westernized", and I hope Ha'apai doesn't change too much in the coming years.

We have been able to do some amazing things during Peace Corps here, including swimming with humpback whales, teaching adults how to use computers who have never touched a computer before, teaching kids English and how to play soccer, creating a website for tourism on our island and teaching locals how to use it, helping the US Navy with a humanitarian mission with our local connections and being adapted into the culture, establishing an Internet cafe, and more. It's funny that on this little remote island we almost feel more connected to the community than we did back home in a big city. The important people in town know us and sometimes come to us for help - the judge, the assistant governor, town officers, the police, local business owners, etc. We never walk down a street without someone yelling out a greeting. And we now know how to survive every natural disaster possible that could hit our island. We have had many ups and downs here, but looking back we wouldn't change a thing.

We are very excited to see our family and friends back home. Thank you for all the love and support while we've been here in Tonga. We are actually surprising everyone back home, so this will be posted later once we are already home. Then we will post some more about our last week in Ha'apai, going away parties and such. We are looking forward to whatever comes next for us - either looking for new jobs again or spending some time traveling. We will keep up the blog for a little while longer going through our culture shock back home and first few months or so. Then if we start a new blog we'll post a link. Below is our "wall of love" of cards and things we've gotten in the mail while in Tonga. Thanks again everyone for following our blog, and also let us know if you have any job leads for either of us.
And good luck to the rest of our group of volunteers with the coming year, and new volunteers just starting their service on our island, here are a few blogs you can watch for updates from our area: http://tongabunga.blogspot.com, http://johnoutsidethelines.blogspot.com, http://juleigh.wordpress.com, http://aliciapeacecorps.blogspot.com, or just check out www.peacecorpsjournals.com to see blogs listed by country.

Ha'apai Tourism

2010-01-10T15:48:00.003+13:00

My big project recently has been the website I created for the Tourism Bureau here in Ha'apai. They have never had their own website before, there is no place to go online that lists all the accommodations and activities in one place. So this is a big step. There is a main website for tourism in Tonga, but it mostly focuses on the main island of Tongatapu, and the tourist destination of the Vava'u islands north of us. I would have created the website in Dreamweaver with a better design, but my main goal has been to make sure it's sustainable and that my counterpart can edit and update current information. So we used google blogger and set up a navigation bar at the top, and I've taught him how to use it. It's been amazing so far, he's been updating and publishing information on his own now about activities, history, culture, and more (we still need to work on editing some of the English though). It's a good feeling to be in a place where you can make this kind of an impact with the Internet and technology. And the tourism office was very surprised that you can make websites for free now. Tourism here is a difficult thing sometimes, but a huge boost on the economy. I think it's the biggest in Tonga after remittances from overseas. On such a small island here with so few operators and guest houses there are small town politics. And Tonga is known as the Friendly Islands, but they aren't good with customer service and hospitality. The people are amazing if you come as their guest, but it's a different story if you're a tourist. Ha'apai really does have a lot to offer tourists though - pristine coral reefs with lots of fish, swimming with whales, important historical sites, long sandy beaches, etc. You just can't expect five-star hotels, air conditioning, or gourmet meals.

So check out our Ha'apai tourism website!
http://haapaiholiday.com/

Brett and I head to Nuku'alofa on the main island tomorrow for some mid-service training with Peace Corps. We haven't left Ha'apai now since the beginning of August. We have done a lot of smaller trips though around our islands here, just this last weekend a bunch of us camped out on the liku "wild" side of our island by some cool rock formations.

Bring your own TP

2010-01-05T08:21:00.004+13:00

When you visit a Tongan hospital, there's a list of things you'd better bring including toilet paper, mosquito coils and matches, food and water, hand sanitizer, and sometimes your own bed sheets. We made a visit to the hospital overnight on Saturday for me, I'm not sure why I was so sick, it was mostly my stomache so probably something I ate. After talking to our Peace Corps nurse a few times she suggested the hospital to make sure I was staying hydrated. So in our whole time here in Tonga we made our second visit to the hospital (the first was during training for Brett in Vava'u).

This was our first visit to the hospital here in Ha'apai, we'd heard some stories that made us pretty nervous. In fact the Tongan word for hospital, falemahaki, translates literally to house of sick. But the US Navy helped out at the hospital in July and inspected it, and just recently a medical person from Peace Corps headquarters in DC had inspected it as well, so I felt a little better.

We walked into the hospital and found the "check-in" table towards the back, out in the open hallway. They pulled up a few chairs for us, and I had to go through my symptoms as the nurse wrote them down in a notebook and everyone wandering around the hallways and hanging around could hear everything. Not like in America! Some people that knew us even tried to come up and have a conversation during this. The nurse then called the doctor, and they decided to give me an IV to hydrate me and keep us overnight. I think we were treated a little better since we're Peace Corps, we were given a private room (the others all had 4 beds), and bedsheets.

After being here for over a year, we just expect things to be the way they are here. But if you're coming from the States you wouldn't expect open window slats with no mosquito screens in a hospital, so there were mosquitos that could possibly give you dengue fever flying around. And it's not exactly sanitary to have stuff flying in the windows. There's no AC or fans, so then there's the dilemma of having the windows open for a breeze and having the mosquitos, or having the windows closed and sweating the heat. And in the bathroom, there was actually a sink, but of course no soap... in a hospital. And no toilet paper. We actually forgot to bring our own TP, so the nurses were nice enough to lend us some until Brett was able to go back and get some more things from our house. Overall it wasn't a horrible experience, the nurses were all very nice, the needles were new and they used alcohol swabs, and they even gave us breakfast in the morning. So don't be too worried if you ever have to visit a Tongan hospital, just be ready for some of these realities. I did feel a little better the next day. It was really funny when we got back to our house the next morning our neighbors came outside and were clapping when they saw we were back and I was okay.

The first sunrise of 2010

2010-01-01T10:57:00.002+13:00

We celebrated New Years with a bonfire on our beach with friends in town, and roasted marshmellows. All the churches here have services from 10 to midnight on New Years, hoping to keep people from drinking or getting into trouble. We counted down midnight, and saw some local fireworks go off in town. Then some of us got up really early to be the first in the world to see the first sunrise of 2010, we biked to the east side of the island. As I write this, celebrations haven't even started yet for New Years Eve in the States, we're so far ahead on time here. Brett and I have now completed a full calendar year here in Tonga.

Palangi style holidays in Ha'apai

2009-12-28T17:23:00.006+13:00

Well we're going on round two of holidays here in Tonga, we've had two Halloweens, Thanksgivings and now Christmases here. Only now we're the old volunteers - having been here longer in Tonga, but also in age compared to the new group. During one of our conversations over Christmas Brett and I mentioned Zubas (the popular zebra-striped baggy pants from the 80s), and the new volunteers all had blank stares and no idea what we were talking about. I guess most of them were born in the late 80s, we are getting old! I remember last Christmas was hard, the first big holiday away from home and having just moved into our site. Grant, the volunteer who had been here for a year, planned a Christmas get-away to his island which was really nice. So this year we planned a get-away to Uoleva island, to the nicest resort with all the new volunteers. It was great - snorkeling, laying on the beach, hanging out in hammocks, and we cooked some good meals - pasta and for Christmas a turkey dinner with stuffing and mashed potatoes. Brett and another volunteer, Todd, went spear fishing the first day and after they'd speared a couple of fish Brett saw his first shark! He said he just saw the white tip carving through the water, then saw the rest of the shark and said it was pretty big, maybe 5 or 6 feet. It was a white-tip reef shark, usually not dangerous, but then again Brett had a bag of fish with him! He watched the shark until it disapeared around the reef out of sight, then made a beeline for the shore with Todd. Lucky, our dog, came with us too to the resort and stuck by our side the whole time, she did better than I thought she would on her first boat ride. And all the other dogs survived while we were gone, none of them became dinner.

Overall I think this Christmas was easier than the last, because now we're settled into our home and community here. It didn't really even feel like a holiday until we skyped with our families back home. One of my uncles, cousin, and Brett all play guitar and usually play together over the holidays, so this year they all played guitar together over skype. Technology is amazing, it would be a very different experience here without the Internet. And there have been big changes now in the new group from when we first arrived - many of them now have Internet in their homes, some even wireless. And the connection has gotten better, we weren't able to use skype until about half-way through this year.

For New Years we're planning some kind of bonfire beach party, and will go to the east side of the island to be the first to watch the sunrise of the new year like we did last year. We still have time off from work, so we've just been hanging out. More new photos are posted in our picassa album. Thanks for the comments on our last few blog posts, we like hearing from people!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-22T15:43:00.003+13:00

Merry Christmas from Tonga! We'll be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas on Uoleva, the uninhabited island south of us, at Serenity Beaches resort. So most of our time there will be spent sun tanning on the beach, snorkeling or spear fishing, and just hanging out in the hammocks and little fales at the resort. We're going with the 5 new volunteers here and our japanese volunteer neighbor. We'll miss not having a white Christmas for the second year now, but are not missing the cold weather. It doesn't really feel as much like Christmas here - no commercialization of it at least with no big department stores here to decorate and to have Christmas sales, etc. But we have heard Christmas music on the radio, mixed with rap songs. And the Tongan barbeque restaurant has Christmas lights outside. And for some reason, all the kids are running around with fake toy guns now for Christmas, the chinese stores are selling them. For our trip to Uoleva I also did make a few Christmas cookies, with ingredients from a package from home.

A few random updates from this week - last night we had a real Japanese dinner at our neighbor Koichi's house who is a volunteer from Japan. He's going to teach us how to make a few dishes, and real teriyaki sauce. Over the weekend we had a bonfire on our beach with the new volunteers who just moved to Ha'apai last week, and friends in town. Lately we've just been hanging out, enjoying time off now for the holidays. Brett brought one of the new volunteers spear fishing today. More fruit is coming into season now with the hot weather - pineapples, passion fruit, and hopefully soon we'll have mangos, guava and avocado. We always have bananas, I don't think I'll ever be able to eat bananas again after being overloaded with them here. That's about all the updates for now, hope everyone has a Merry Christmas back home!

Tourism Festival in Tonga

2009-12-14T21:59:00.006+13:00

Today was the tourism festival here in Ha'apai, and since I now work for the tourism bureau I took lots of photos for them and for the new website. I also got roped into being a judge for the English speech competition on the importance of tourism here in Ha'apai. It was supposed to be a tourism week, but was cut down to only one day-long event of a float parade, arts and crafts display, speech competition, and lots of dances and singing competitions. It is a little odd that they have the tourism festival in December, when there are absolutely no tourists around in the off-season, but they do have more overseas Tongans back in Tonga for the holidays. Some of the highlights - one of the floats had actual running power tools on it (pretty sure that wouldn't be allowed in the US for safety reasons!), another had a live fire pit going that they were feeding with leaves from the bush, it was the float for the local restaurant and they were pretending to cook! I was really impressed with how decked out all the trucks and cars were for the parade, and how many there were for our small town - about 25! In attendence we had the Ambassador of China as guest of honor, Miss Tonga and Miss Tonga Tourism. Another highlight - judging the English speeches by high school kids, I realized one of the speeches I had actually helped edit and write - the Governor's office had asked for my help for a speech I'd assumed one of them was giving, but actually it was for this high school kids' speech competition! It was pretty obvious that other adults had written many of these speeches when the kids couldn't pronounce many of the words. And there were still many mispellings, my favorite was "scooper diving" instead of scuba diving. It seemed like a few of the kids had written their own speeches, so I tried to judge those with higher scores. I'm not sure who ended up winning, we left before the prize-giving since we'd already been there over 5 hours and just couldn't sit through anymore singing and dancing.

We also heard today that there's a cyclone category 2 in Fiji, heading our way maybe on Wednesday or so. We'll see what happens, the waves have been pretty big so we'll probably get some kind of storm here. I think we're pretty used to the natural disasters now so we're not too worried about this one.

*Update on Cyclone Mick, it's heading farther south now so will probably miss Tonga and we'll just get strong winds and rain here.

Weekend Update

2009-12-09T16:22:00.004+13:00

Here are a few updates from this last week - Thursday was the last day of school for Brett's students. So they had a program with dancing, lots of long speeches, and class presentations. For each class, they called the students' names and had them stand in front of the whole school and all the parents that were watching. But they called the names in a certain order - starting with the worst student to the smartest student. So everyone could see the order and knew how each kid did in school. I can't imagine that happening in the US, those poor kids that didn't do so well! The class 6 students got their scores back from their big exam which determines what high school they will attend. Those scores are announced later this month on the radio for everyone to hear. Over half of Brett's class made it into the local government high school which is really good, the rest are able to attend church-run high schools. Below is a video of some of the dancing the kids did. The kid in the corner of the video was playing drums on a peice of tin roof. The guy laughing at the end is Brett's class 6 teacher. The second video shows some kids singing at the year-end celebration.

On Friday through the weekend we had a married couple, Kathy and Rob, from the new group stay with us for what Peace Corps calls attachment. The trainees all go and stay with current volunteers to see what real Peace Corps life is like. I think they were all pretty happy to be done with homestay and to have more freedom. On Friday we all went out to Mariner's for karoake, it was fun to have a new big group of people there and to get some new songs in instead of the same old songs that are usually done. Then on Saturday we all went to Uoleva island for a day trip. We went snorkeling and Brett speared a nice sized parrot fish. Brian also caught quite a few fish in deeper waters - the entire time he said a shark was following him. So I think the new volunteers saw a good part of life here in Ha'apai.

Now Brett's done with his job at the school - the school year here runs Feb - early Dec., but I'm still working. He's just been hanging around the house enjoying time off, and doing some paddle boarding with the foam surf board Phil left. At MAFF on Monday I helped with planting some flowers, they had a workshop on Tuesday with people from the main island so they were trying to get the place looking really nice before the meeting. I heard that they're expecting months without rain, a really dry rainy season this year. They've even been trying to conserve some of the city water by turning it off at night. But of course just as we were hanging our clothes out to dry after doing laundry today it did rain a little. We don't have much planned for the rest of this week. Next week on Monday is the Tourism Festival (it's not really for foreign tourists since it's the off-season, but for overseas Tongans that are returning for the holidays).

Celebrations

2009-11-29T17:34:00.003+13:00

This last week has been very busy for us. On Thursday we celebrated Thanksgiving with all the new trainees, our group of volunteers here in Ha'apai, and the Peace Corps staff that's been here for training. In all I think there were around 50 of us. With so many people, we did a potluck meal, and had 4 turkeys and a roasted pig. Brett and I made apple crisp (there just happened to be apples in Pangai a week ago so we bought lots), and banana bread. Others did stuffing, potatoes and sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, salad, green bean casserole, biscuits, and more. Here's a photo of the new group of volunteers (plus Phil) that we took at our Thanksgiving meal. They leave their homestays this coming Friday, then stay with current volunteers for attachment over the weekend to see what volunteer life is like. We'll have a married couple staying with us. Then the new group of volunteers will swear in and move in to their sites, before Christmas.

We've also had a lot of gatherings lately for Phil and Aki, who are both finishing up their 2-year service here in Ha'apai. After our big Thanksgiving feast we had a feast the next day at Brett's school for both of them, along with the kids perfoming some dances. Then a party at Mariner's cafe, with some great food, drinks, and of course karoake since it was a Friday night.

And tonight we're having a dinner at our place for Phil before he leaves tomorrow morning. Since not all of our friends in town were with us for Thanksgiving this is also kind of a post-Thanksgiving feast - with stuffing, potatoes, etc. again. And we decided instead of turkey to have a Tongan chicken, they taste pretty good- a leaner kind of meat. At first Brett was going to chase and kill a chicken on his own with a sling shot, but then decided to just get it from one of his teachers at school. So today we went to the catholic church service, it was a special service for the kids and had really pretty singing, and even some readings in English. Then after the service his teacher brought us a box with a chicken in it, he wasn't sure if it was dead yet so had a string tied to it's legs in case it tried to fly away. We biked back with the box, and realized in fact it was not dead yet. We weren't sure how we felt about killing it or how to kill it, so had our friend Brian kill it (he just ripped the head right off). Then our neighbors helped us pluck all the feathers, and gut the chicken.

It's sad to see our friends leave, who we've spent this past year with. It won't be the same without them here, but we're also looking forward to the new group of volunteers that will be living here with us. Some things I'll miss from Aki and Phil - learning japanese words from Aki and how it's the rabbit in the moon and not the man in the moon in Japan, and hearing about Phil being chased by dogs and throwing his umbrella in fury, and sharing the fish he's speared for meals. It's funny how many different types of people we've met on our small island here.

Familiar Sounds

2009-11-23T18:02:00.002+13:00

The noises of Tonga here in Ha'apai have become familiar to us. We sleep in later, not being awoken anymore by the ever-crowing roosters, grunting pigs, and many loud dog fights. Around 6:00am or so the neighbor kids spill out of their house, yelling, crying, singing songs, banging on any piece of metal they find. We used to yell "quiet!" at them through the louvre windows, but now just roll over and fall back asleep. We also hear our sima vai gushing out water in the early morning hours just outside the bedroom window, everyone on our housing compound uses our sima vai tank for drinking water because it's the cleanest. On Sunday mornings we hear church bells quietly in the distance, and the rythmic deep resonating sound of the Church of Tonga wooden drums, all calling people to the morning church services. Soon afterwards, we can hear the church choirs and congregations singing, all accapella. Some of the tunes are familiar from English church songs, but all the words are sung in Tongan. At church, the ministers shout out their sermons to the congregations. Every other morning instead of church music we hear the neighbor's radio blaring out traditional Tongan songs, old American songs, Christmas music sometimes mixed with odd songs like rap or the Macarena, or news mostly in Tongan (with about 10 minutes a day of English news). And so our day begins.

Walking through town during the day we often hear kids yelling "Nio, Nio!" (Brett's Tongan name), many of the local kids know him from school. Once in awhile someone will yell out my name, usually we don't know who all the people are that are calling out to us, they know us because we're the foreigners in town. Sometimes we'll still get Tongans yelling out "palangi!" (white person), and Brett will respond back "Tongan, Tongan"! Kids will also yell "Bye!" as we walk by - not understanding that it's not correct in English to just say bye as people pass by. We'll usually respond with something in Tongan if they do this. As we walk down the middle of the roads, we can hear cars approaching from far off and move to one side of the road. We also usually notice the sound of the plane coming in once or twice a day. If the DVD store is open near our house, they always blare really loud music to make sure people know that they are open. In fact, at any local events the music is always at the loudest possible level.

During the afternoons and evenings the sounds in our house are Brett playing his guitar, he's learned many new songs since being here. The oldest neighbor boy is trying to learn guitar now too. We'll often have lots of kids and dogs running through our house in the afternoons, so lots of noise again. Sometimes we'll shut the door to keep them all out, and play music or movies on the computer. Even then there are still little noises inside the house - the little mokos (geckos) that live inside on the ceiling and walls make little chirping noises, almost like a bird. One of my favorite sounds here are the waves breaking on the beach onto all the loose shells and coral peices, kind of a swishing noise as the waves pull the shells back and forth. From our beach we also hear the Pulapaki twice a week, the only ferry boat now that brings all the supplies to us here in Ha'apai. We can hear the engines of the boat coming into the wharf from our house. Later in the evenings we hear a steady, low voice calling out "ma...ma...ma", calling the pigs to come and eat. Every Tongan calls his pigs this way, every pig knows it's owner's voice and comes to that sound to eat the coconuts that are being cut open.

At night things quiet down. We hear the waves crashing louder now on the beach. And anytime anyone tries to approach the property we hear all the dogs going crazy, barking outside. The barking goes in a line, passed from dog to dog up and down the street. Some nights we hear the men at the kava club singing, just in front of our house a few hundred yards. Once in awhile they have a couple of guitars as well. Other nights we can hear one of the church choirs practicing, singing in unison perfectly, almost fooling me into thinking it's the radio. I can never pick out what they're singing, but it's always pretty. Tomorrow night one of the church schools is having a candle light singing procession of Christmas carols. And now as I finish this post, I can hear a church choir practicing somewhere off in the distance, and echoes of dogs barking up and down the street.

A Typical School Day

2009-11-18T15:42:00.006+13:00

It's 8:30am and the bell rings, the children line up at the flag pole in lines by class. The girls are wearing red dresses and white shirts. They have their hair in braids with red ribbons holding them together. The boys wear khakis shorts and white shirts. They sing their national anthem as the flag rises. Once they are finished the principal addresses them about the day and what jobs are to be done before the school day begins. Once dismissed they march off to the classroom where it will be swept and set up by the students before the day starts. The children who are late to school must wait by the gate before they are allowed onto the school grounds. Some days the principle will hit them and tell them not to be late again, some days they will get off easier. Once the classroom is swept and set up the students line up outside and wait for permission from their teacher to enter the classroom. Usually they are let in right away but if the teacher is lazy or in deep conversation with the other teachers the children can sometimes wait awhile before entering the classroom. The classroom consists of old country school desks and benches. Each student has a cubby where they keep their notebooks and pens, no textbooks are given out because no textbooks exist in the schools. Students perform a lot of copying from the blackboard to get information and also do a lot of writing activities to practice. If they misbehave or get questions to answers wrong they get hit. Usually they are struck on the hand by a wooden stick no wider than 2-3 fingers. Most students are unfazed by this, but some cry at times. Tongan students are constantly hitting each other, and when a teacher does it it's no different. I do not hit the students in my classes. I use many classroom management techniques to help control the pace and environment of the classroom. I have tried to teach these techniques to my counterparts, but they are still in favor of hitting.

When the students enter the classroom school is started. They begin with English for an hour, this is where I step in. I usually start off introducing the daily lesson and then make my way into a fun activity to get their attention. I am usually in the classroom for 60-90 minutes. At around 10:30 the bell rings for recess and the students race outside. Locals arrive early to sell the students cake and ice pops. The students play and eat treats for 30 minutes before class begins again. The children also are allowed to come to the library during recess time to check out books or to just find a book and read quitly in the reading area. I supervise the library as class 6 students reshelf books and offer assistance to students with new books. Once recess is over students return to their classrooms and start on their Tongan, Math, and Writing. Some days they listen to a radio program that is broadcasted across the country that covers lessons in all subjects. There are activities that are done to go with the radio broadcast and at times teachers will make up lessons to go along with the radio lesson. I tend to bounce around the school during this time helping teachers with lessons and activities they are doing. At 12:30 the bell rings and the students make their way home for lunch. Some students will stay and play at school during lunch break, but most will go home.

At 1:30 they all return and class begins. Science and Health are covered from 1:30 - 3:20, and sometimes I am allowed to bring students outside for gym. We play rugby, soccer or netball. Most of the kids like soccer so that is the sport of choice most of the time. At about 3:00 students from classes 4, 5, and 6 are called out of class to pick up rubbish around the school yard and then burn it in the burn pile behind the bathrooms. Other students are assigned to cleaning the bathrooms and washing the windows around the school. Every student gets a turn at this and there is no one who gets away with not doing these chores. There is no funding for janitors and the teachers refuse to do any cleaning so it falls on the students to pick up the slack. Once they are done they return to the classrooms where school is dismissed at 3:20 and the students stream out of the classrooms and to all places around town.

Videos - Tongan dance

2009-11-09T09:23:00.003+13:00

This is a ta'alunga dance, done by young unmarried girls. It's mostly hand movements, and the whole time their knees are bent. All the motions translate the words of the songs. During the dances people come up and put money on the dancers, the girls are covered in coconut oil. It's a type of fundraiser, this one was for Brett's school. Many times people will also be dancing behind the dancers, showing support for them.

This is an example of some of the dances the boys/men do here in Tonga. These dances are much faster paced than the ta'alunga dance the girls do. They often have drums in the music, and wear these grass leaf skirts. There are also some sitting dances the guys do. The dance in this video was from a performance when the US Navy was here on their humanitarian mission.

Dances (koniseti) are big fundraisers here at events or feasts. But then they play more modern music between the traditional dances, so it's funny to watch a dressed up ta'alunga dancer switch to "la bamba" after her dance is done.

Sorry the clips are so short, but it takes a long time to upload large video files here.

Ha'apai Halloween

2009-11-01T19:25:00.005+13:00

Happy Halloween! We celebrated this year with a costume party bonfire on the beach by the graveyard, right near our house. It was actually a pretty busy day - early in the morning all the Peace Corps volunteers here participated in the breast cancer awareness walk. Then we joined the new group of volunteers on a day trip to Ha'ano island where Grant lives. We got to spend a little more time talking with some of them, and getting to know the new volunteers that will be coming here to Pangai, it seems like a good group. And later in the evening we had our Halloween party, with the current volunteers and our friends in town here. Good times.

More new photos are posted in our Picassa photo album to the right.

The Cradle of Polynesia

2009-10-29T15:46:00.008+13:00

I haven't written about this yet so thought I should write some of the history I've learned since being here. We are living in the cradle of Polynesia here in Ha'apai, there's evidence suggesting that our little island of Lifuka was the beginning of it all. They think life on this island dates back to 3000 years and has been inhabited since then. There is lapita pottery dated back to then, but sadly it's sitting on old shelves in a corner getting dusty in the run-down museum here, hopefully that will change soon. Lifuka and Ha'apai have a lot of other historical significances within Tonga as well.

The first outsiders to come to Tonga were Dutch explorers in the 1600's, then it was Captain Cook who named Tonga the Friendly Islands based on an experience he had right here in Ha'apai (although in reality the people he met were planning on eating him!). On our island of Lifuka, right near the airport, is where the Port au Prince massacre happened. It was a European ship that stopped here for supplies, but the native Tongans attacked them having not seen white people or guns before. William Mariner was on that ship and survived, and was adopted by a local chief, later he wrote about these experiences. The Mutiny on the Bounty also occured right here, between Lifuka and the volcanic island of Tofua. There have also been numerous shipwrecks here in the shallow reef systems, some of them Spanish/European ships full of gold and treasure. In fact there was one excavated this century, all the divers and people involved had to sign a form to secrecy. And, most importantly in Tongan history, the royal line of the current King of Tonga comes from Ha'apai. The island groups were divided, and a local chief of Ha'apai (Tauafa'hau, who later became King George Tupou I) united and conquered all the island groups of Tonga.

(Above - one of the historical sites, an old quarry)

There are a lot of historical sites here, but mostly they're forgotten and off the beaten path. There are ancient royal tombs, an old fortress that was the location of the first victory for King Tupou I, sites of massacres, pigeon mounds (part of an old royal sport), and more. There are also people still living here who are descendents of Europeans from these ships, or from missionaries and locals who first converted the King and Tonga to Christianity (one of whom I have worked with here). It's also interesting to hear some of the many ancient legends from the locals here, I think I've written some of them already on the blog here.

Being in such an isolated corner of the earth many missionaries are still sent here. Most Tongans are Christian, so the missionaries that come here now are Morman, Scientologists and other types of such religions. What makes me mad is that when the Scientologists come here they are very sneaky and not up-front about themselves. They tell the locals that they want to do workshops or seminars on learning and higher education, which of course the Tongans would want. But then the seminars are all about the Scientologists' religion. And they've gone into many schools and other places doing this, taking advantage of the fact that many Tongans don't know yet what Scientology is and even that it's a religion. Many of the religions that come here try to bribe Tongans into joining - such as offering their kids scholarships and chances to move overseas, or free medical care overseas if someone in their family is sick. I could write a lot more about religion but I won't here.

Well I'll be learning more about the history and sites to see here as I continue to work on the new website for tourism in Ha'apai. Brett has been teaching sports this week at school to get ready for sports day again - this time netball, rugby, and co-ed soccer. We have plans for Halloween on Saturday - a bonfire on the beach by the graveyard and costume party.

Beach bums

2009-10-25T22:18:00.002+13:00

Just another reason why it's great here in Ha'apai, the beaches and crystal clear waters. The new group of volunteers had site announcements over the weekend, and our Peace Corps population is going to be much bigger here in Pangai pretty soon - 4 new volunteers and one of the older volunteers is extending and will be here in Pangai as well. So it will be very different from this year.

Job change - Ha'apai Tourism Bureau

2009-10-19T12:20:00.004+13:00

From the beginning of being here there have been problems with one of my jobs - the Ha'apai Training Center/computer lab. I won't get into too much detail here, but there were problems with corruption/embezzlement/laziness, etc. and I've been the third volunteer placed there, the other two left early. I tried my hardest and put a lot of work into the computer center, and I don't feel it was a waste but that I did accomplish some things. I finished some basic computer/typing classes with adults in the community, basic computer classes with school kids, started an Internet Cafe, fixed some of the computers, and trained the counterpart somewhat. It was incredible watching the kids using a computer for the first time ever, and watching the adults get really excited when they could open and save files or use the mouse on the computer. And I will actually continue the computer class with class 6 school kids until the beginning of Dec. when the school session is over. I had a meeting today with a few Peace Corps staff and the manager of the computer center, and it went better than I thought it would. He said he was very happy with the work I've accomplished there. We told him that Peace Corps has developed the computer center and it's operational now, they just need a Tongan to run it. I'm happy to be done there, it feels like a weight is lifted and now I can focus on a new project.

Now I will start working at the Ha'apai Tourism Bureau which I'm very excited about! I'll be building a website for tourism in Ha'apai. Right now there is just a Tonga tourism website, which lists only a little information on Ha'apai and a lot of it is outdated. So this will be the first website focusing on just Ha'apai tourism. The guy I'll be working with at the tourism bureau is very excited and happy about this project, it's something they've been wanting for a long time but didn't have the skills or know how to do it. They thought websites were very expensive (which they can be if they're professionally built), but I told him you can have a website for free if you wanted! I know how to do professional sites in Dreamweaver, but for this project I think I'll keep it very simple so I can train my counterpart on how to build websites online with blogger. We'll probably just pay for our own unique URL, the rest will be free which he was amazed at. It will be great to get more information about Ha'apai online, and once I train my counterpart we'll be able to help other local businesses start websites. In some ways it's very difficult working with such little resources in developing countries - in classrooms not having textbooks, etc; but in other ways it just simplifies everything. Like with this website you don't have as many decisions to make, because you just don't have as much available. And you can just create things the simplest way possible, you don't have to go through lots of levels of approvals or things to get a project done. So I'll be starting this website project later this week, and will hopefully get some things posted soon. There's a tourism week here in Ha'apai in the middle of December, so they want to get info posted online about this event as soon as possible.

So now my work will be split between the Ha'apai Tourism Bureau and MAFFF (ministry of agriculture, forestery, foods and fisheries). Brett will be finishing up the school year at the beginning of Dec. then will have time off until the end of January. The class 6 primary school kids just took their big exams last week which determines what high school they will attend. So now that the exams are done the school year is winding down, they'll focus more on sports and cultural dances and other things. We also had a lot of feasts last week - for the school exams and at the catholic church for their missionale (once a year everyone in the church gives a lot of money publicly and they have celebrations). We'll just be working this week, and on Saturday the new group of volunteers has site announcements so we'll know who will be living with us here in Ha'apai.

Water Safety Training - Ha'apai Style

2009-10-17T09:38:00.004+13:00

When the new volunteers arrived in Ha'apai on Monday we were informed by Peace Corps that they had not performed their water safety training. Usually this task gets done at the Navy base in Nuku'alofa by one of the Navy staff, but since the tsunami hit Niua, all the Navy have been there assisting in the rebuiliding and clean-up and were unavailable to do the training. So, Peace Corps called on the current volunteers (thats us) to help with the training. We started with an introduction to the island, safe places to go and unsafe places to go. We then introduced them to dangerous marine life, things that could potentially harm them or possibly kill them. We might have over intensified the death factor but it was just to get their attention. Many things in the ocean can hurt or maybe cause death but the likely factor of this happening is minimal to none. We just wanted to make sure the volunteers were educated on these things so they would know what to look for and stay away from. After the discussion we preped them for the water activities that we would be doing. Once we were finished we moved out to the wharf to start the training.We brought the volunteers to the wharf outside the Peace Corps office to perform the safety training. We had them all jump into the water off the wharf and assist each other in putting on their lifejackets. We also had them put on their lifejackets themselves. We performed this exercise because if you ever had to abandon a boat mid sea it is possible that you would have to put on you lifejacket in the water or assist someone with a lifejacket. After lifejacket safety we moved onto floating in groups of 3 and in a large group. This is something that is useful if stranded at sea. Creating a group in the water not only saves energy but it allows planes to spot you easier. After floating for a while we moved onto body dragging. Each volunteer had to swim a distance of 30 meters while dragging their partner behind them. We then moved onto the front crawl swim and back stroke, and also had the volunteers tread water for 2 minutes. All of these exercises were performed with lifejackets on and then with lifejackets off. Lastly we had Phil, one of our senior volunteers, paddle out 50 yards from the wharf. The volunteers had to swim to him and then back to the wharf. All in all we had a great time in the water. Phil was in the water the majority of the time assisting volunteers with the exercises and also paddling around on his surfboard offering assistance to anyone who was tired. Kate and I were on the top of the wharf offering instructions to the volunteers and watching for any signs of exhaustion or distress. The volunteers seemed to have a great time and it was fun to interact and talk with them. They are a great group of people and we look forward to helping out with the rest of their training.

-Brett

Group 75 Peace Corps volunteers arrive

2009-10-12T17:28:00.007+13:00

The new group of Peace Corps volunteers arrived today in Ha'apai to begin their homestays and language, cultural, medical, safety, and technical training for the next 10 weeks. Their group number is 75, we're group 74 - each new group from the beginning has a new number.

We'll be helping out some with the training, we just found out that they want our help tomorrow afternoon for water safety training at the wharf here in Pangai, so Brett and I and Phil will be there and possibly our friend Brian from the dive shop to talk about marine life safety.

Here are some photos of the trainees arriving here at the airport and our Ha'apai volunteers welcoming them.

Meetings in Tonga

2009-10-10T18:14:00.000+13:00

Change of plans, we're staying here and not going on the outer island trip. There was just a lot happening here this week and it will be busy again next week with work and the new volunteers and Peace Corps staff arriving in Ha'apai, so we'll find a better time to get out to Ha'afeva and the outer islands. There are a lot of times when there's not much going on, so we might as well go then. Plus the boat was still being worked on that we were supposed to take, the trip got delayed another day so they left early this morning. We'll have more chances to get out to Ha'afeva and the outer islands again, maybe next month.

There was another tsunami warning on Thursday after a major earthquake in Vanuatu to the northwest of us. This time it didn't generate any tsunami waves, but school and workplaces were still closed down for the afternoon. The new group of Peace Corps volunteers just arrived in Tonga on Thursday morning, so that must have been an interesting first day for them with the tsunami warning, welcome to Tonga. At least this one wasn't as exciting.

I attended a meeting yesterday that paints a typical picture of some Tongan meetings. It was pretty pointless for me to be at since it was all in Tongan and about a topic I am not very involved in with work. But I couldn't get up and leave, especially since a lot of very important people were there - the district officer, town officers from each village, the news reporter, etc. Throughout the meeting cell phones rang, and people didn't hesitate to answer them, or get up and leave for awhile. At one point the meeting leader answered a phone call and the meeting stopped for a few minutes. I saw others nodding off to sleep. A lady next to me was reading sex education training materials (it was for her job). And they kept talking about the same subjects over and over, dragging on the topic. Of course it started and ended with a prayer. And at the very end the district officer who had been leading the meeting askes me in English "Katie, do you have anything you need to say?" He had to put the spotlight on me and ask me to say something being the only palangi in the room. Then they filed out after signing their names and receiving some money for attending the meeting which is common for some of these types of meetings - money or free food. And of course this meeting had been postponed from earlier that week, and postponed from the previous couple of months. I've gotten very used to things not starting on time here, we usually show up late now for scheduled events and are not surprised when events are postponed. The commitee meeting had been about rating the cleanest villages on the island and how to spend and divide money from a grant they'd received. As usual I ended up being confused, I thought it was going to be a meeting with the womens' groups from different villages, as I'd been told by my counterpart. Another language/cultural/palangi misunderstanding. Wouldn't it be surprising in America if one of your meetings was delayed 5 times over the course of 4 months, you can't understand much of what's being discussed, and it turns out the meeting is about a completely different topic than what you'd prepared for? This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to get things done in Tonga in any timely fashion.

Today for the first time since winter here we went snorkeling again, it was great to get back in the water. We've waded and floated around on our air mattresses in the water but hadn't been swimming/snorkeling in a long time. Brett ended up spearing two really pretty parrot fish which we ate for lunch. And we saw a lot of other pretty colorful fish and coral, right on the reef outside our house, in our backyard.

One year

2009-10-08T11:46:00.000+13:00

Exactly one year ago today we arrived in the Kingdom of Tonga, fresh Peace Corps trainees. The air felt so thick and heavy in the heat, the smells were all foreign - animals, dust, burning garbage, heavy perfume; the language was unintelligible, we had no idea what we were getting into. We were surprised at seeing pigs and chickens in the streets, and Nuku'alofa seemed like a shanty-town. The outfits seemed hilarious - men in skirts and woven mats and strings tied around womens' waists. We were scared of eating the local food, thinking we'd get sick, and we were scared to hold the children or get close to any animals for fear of lice/parasites.

(one year ago at the Tongatapu international airport)

Now Tonga is our second home. We've acclimated to the heat (although it is still very hot in the summer!). We contribute to the smell of burning garbage and speak/understand some of the language, Brett better than I. We often chase pigs away from our house, just part of our normal routines. And now Nuku'alofa is the big city- the place where you can get haircuts, eat at italian, chinese, and korean restaurants, and shop at a grocery store with real food. The traffic there seems fast-paced and busy to us. And now we were these silly Tongan clothes - ta'ovala and kiekie. We eat almost anything brought to us by our neighbors, and most of the time end up just fine with no sickness. We've learned how to cook a lot of things from scratch and can husk open coconuts. Now we move along with the slow island pace here.

It's interesting to look back at how we first were compared to how we are now in our community in Ha'apai. When we first moved to our island in Ha'apai we kept space to ourselves and enjoyed our own independence and not interdependence in the community. We had our own space in our house, wanted peace and quiet in our yard, had our own food, etc. We would keep the neighbor kids at a distance outside our door, we didn't understand why everyone shared our sima vie (water tank), we debated about sharing tools, food, etc. with the neighbors. It was just stressful to fight the Tongan culture at work and at home, not having privacy and sharing everything. But now it's become a part of us. Now the neighbor kids run in and out of our house freely, swinging in our hammock (as long as they have pants on, that's our one rule) and playing with whatever's on our bookshelf. Ana and Sailosi, our neighbors stop in whenever to use the Internet, talk or sometimes just to have a nap on our floor. The dogs also nap inside now, we're not so worried about fleas or things anymore. If the neighbors ask to borrow anything we give without hesitation. Because we know they do the same for us. There is still a lot of Tongan culture that we don't understand or agree with, but we've found a good blend of incorporating some Tongan ways into our own culture here. And of course it helps that we have great neighbors and friends here.

A few updates, it was recently Tonga's Teacher appreciation day. The kids all gave presents to the teachers, and Brett got a little black purse, a bottle of perfume, and 3 bars of soap! It's the class 6 exam next Tues. and Wed., this determines what high school the kids will attend so it's a huge deal. I just started computer classes with the class 6 students from the Wesleyn church school. It went a lot better than I would have guessed, the students were all great and fast learners. We did some computer basics and some English games. And the Tongan teacher was really helpful too. I'm going to expand these classes to more primary schools once the exam is finished. Animal news - the pigs once again got into our water, this time our city water pipes. They completely bit through it so we have no water in the house until it gets fixed, hopefully soon. Ha'apai is also out of propane gas now for cooking, thankfully we still have some in our tank. Since the Princess Ashika tragedy, they're stricter on boat regulations and won't allow propane gas to be shipped along with passengers on the boat. We're not sure how we'll get gas here now, but heard rumors that they'll start bringing another ferry for cargo only.

Brett and I are heading out on an island trip tomorrow to Ha'afeva for a week. The ministry of education is taking a boat around to all the islands to transfer teachers to different schools on all the inhabitated islands in Ha'apai, they don't want the teachers giving their kids the exam so they all have to move around. So we decided to go on this trip and visit some of the Peace Corps volunteers that live out there. Unfortunately we'll miss the arrival of the new group of Peace Corps volunteers, they're getting here to Ha'apai on Monday to start their homestays and training but will be here until the beginning of December so we'll have plenty of time to see them. New trainees - training is the hardest part of Peace Corps just remember that during your homestays. We'll be back in a week with stories from the outer islands!

Tonga/Samoa Tsunami update

2009-10-02T11:36:00.004+13:00

Here's a quick update on the tsunami damage here in Tonga in Niuatoputapu, which is very far north of us here, closer to Samoa than it is to the island group of Vava'u. There are about 1,000 people living on that island, and 2 of the 3 villages were severely damaged, demolishing about 90% of homes, and damaging the hospital, the airport runway, schools, banks, etc. They were hit by 3 tsunami waves, on the news it says up to 6 meters high, and the death toll is up to 9 in Nuiatoputapu and 150 total including Tonga, Samoa, and American Samoa. Niuatoputapu just recieved the first wave of aid yesterday, the Tongan National Defense sent up a boat with supplies. This island is usually very isolated - a boat only goes about once a month, and planes began landing just recently once a week. Because of the isolation no Peace Corps volunteers are stationed there. After this disaster all phone communications were cut off, and planes weren't able to land on the damaged runway. Our neighbor Ana's mom is living on this island in the most damaged village. She hasn't been able to get a hold of her, but found out yesterday that her name wasn't on the hospital list so she should be ok. A lot of news is available online on the Samoa tsunami damage so I won't list that here.

Here in Ha'apai things are pretty much back to normal - we just had damaged boats in the harbour, it was really a baby tsunami here luckily. The boat we were supposed to take today to Ha'afeva on a week-long island trip has a hole in it from the tsunami. The ministry of education shifts all the teachers around during the class 6 school exams, so we were going to this island with Brett's teacher. So they've delayed the exam for a week, we might go next week.

Here is a photo of some of the damage in Niuatoputapu.

Tsunami

2009-09-30T12:05:00.007+13:00

Well we've experienced every type of natural disaster now here in Tonga - earthquakes, volcanic explosions, cyclone, and now a tsunami. Most of them haven't been as scary as they sound, but the tsunami today was a little scary.

We got a call from Peace Corps around 8:00am this morning telling us there was a massive 8.3 earthquake in Samoa, just north of Tonga. And because of this they said we could get a tsunami, so they said we should move away from our house and inland for a couple of hours. We get warnings once in awhile from Peace Corps and usually nothing happens, so we slowly got ready and Brett sat down on the back steps to eat a papaya. Looking out at the ocean he noticed the water looked funny and called me to come look at it. It looked normal at first with small waves coming in over the reef edge, but then all of a sudden it got really still and the water swirled around eerily. We both went out to look more and then very quickly the water started draining out to sea, we could see rocks and seaweed clumps, then almost the whole bottom. It was pretty scary, it was obvious that the water was being sucked out by a big wave! So I abandoned my coffee, we grabbed a few things and ran out, telling the neighbors on our way and our japanese neighbor came with us. When we got past the fisheries buildings we saw that the ocean was already coming up fast now, above the shoreline. Brett grabbed the satellite phone from the office, and on the main road in town we got a ride from a Tongan we knew (the local news reporter) who said he'd bring us to Brett's school. But then he headed to the wharf back to the ocean, exactly what we were running away from! It was crazy, the harbour had almost drained out, lots of rock formations were showing that we'd never seen before and the water just kept draining down. Boats were being tossed around by the churning water, and the big oil boat was no longer floating but sitting at an angle on the ocean floor. Then next to the wharf a huge wave came into the harbour, maybe 15 feet high. That's when Brett yelled "go, go, get out of here!!" at the driver, and we sped off along with everyone else at the harbour who had been gawking at the scene. It was surreal to see the ocean drain like that and then the big waves coming in.

(photo above - fleeing from the harbour as the water comes up)

At Brett's school we jumped out with our neighbor Kyoichi and our dog Lucky who had followed us. It was chaos there, people were running up from the ocean, and yelling at everyone to run that there was a tsunami. It was like something you see on the news in far away places, something that would never happen to you. All the school kids came running out towards the bush, we ran with them inland and met up with our neighbors Sailosi and Ana in their car. They said to follow them to a high point on the island, so we ran behind the car. We've never run like this before from a natural disaster, it was scary not knowing what would happen. We got to a little hill and sat and waited for a couple of hours, calling the peace corps office, other volunteers in our island group, and some of the kids' parents that were with us from Brett's school. We were the ones to tell our main peace corps office that we had actually been hit by a small tsunami, they didn't know and the other islands hadn't been hit at all like we had. Phil, another peace corps volunteer, met us at this hill too (Brett described it as the grassy area where eggplants grow and on such a small island Phil knew exactly where we were).

All the other peace corps volunteers are accounted for and safe. In Ha'apai Sarah is on the highest point in her village, Alicia is right in the middle of the island, Grant is fine, Monica on a little island in the middle of nowhere didn't get any wave action at all and Eric and Melanie are on the main island for training. Our dive shop friends actually ran all the way to the other side of the island to the east. And the owners of the bar took their yacht out to sea. We heard accounts of maybe 3 or 4 tsunami waves here, none of them very big though. We got back to our house a few hours ago, and there's no damage but we did accidentaly lock the other dog Simba inside our house! The ocean came up maybe 6 or 8 feet higher than normal. But the waves that hit were very strong, they flattened many low beach bushes and trees, and carried up some large rocks about 20 feet. And many of the boats in the harbour were damaged and moved around by the waves, a few were pushed very far down the shoreline. We've heard that the damage in Samoa is much worse from the earthquake and a tsunami. So some of us are meeting up at our local bar tonight to commiserate and recount todays adventure. Brett and I are supposed to be going on an island trip to Ha'afeva on Friday - his teacher will be administering the exams to class 6 there and asked Brett to go with him. But we'll see if this still happens after today's damage.

I also just want to add, this is NOT common here in Tonga to have tsunamis, it doesn't happen often so don't worry! The last tsunami to hit Ha'apai was sometime in the 1980's. Also all of our experiences between volunteers here have been very different today during the tsunami, us and Phil probably experienced the most action. Alicia didn't see anything happen in her village which is less than a mile from us, and Vava'u volunteers experienced earthquakes but no tsunami action, and I don't think much happened on the main island of Tongatapu. We did just hear that there are 7 to 10 deaths on one of the Niua islands in Tonga - very close to Samoa.

Here's a few links to news stories on the earthquake/tsunami:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_re_au_an/as_pacific_earthquake

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,557282,00.html

Brett did a phone interview with a local station back home, here's a link to the video, it's the second story:

http://www.valleynewslive-ondemand.com/video/html/vnl_news_1000.shtml

Life comes and goes

2009-09-25T23:12:00.005+13:00

Yesterday we had some very sad news, Teisa who I work with at the Youth Congress, her husband just died the night before. He had a heart attack while he was working in the garden/bush, he was very young only 33. They had two little kids, around 2 and 4 years old. I was actually supposed to meet with Teisa to help set up some computers at the Youth Congress yesterday, but heard the news from our neighbors in the morning. And I had just met with Teisa on Wed. and she invited Brett and I to a barbeque picnic with her and Inoke, her husband, and some other people from Tonga Family Health on Monday. I'd met Inoke a few times and he was always smiling and very nice. It's just so sad that Teisa is now a widow at such a young age (also 33), with two really young kids, they would have been married for 5 years this year.
We also had heard that the embalming machine here in Ha'apai is broken right now, so they had to have the putu (funeral) right away very fast, and had to bury the body within 24 hours. It's too bad, because usually a lot of work goes into a putu here, they spend time making tons of food, having lots of people over to the house for the putu, and sit around singing and mourning. But this all had to be rushed. A lot of people didn't even hear about the putu until it was too late and was already over. We missed out on the putu since we heard too late, but made it to the burial in the afternoon. All day we wore all black and our neighbors gave Brett a putu ta'ovala to wear (mat around his waist). Then we joined in the funeral procession on the main street going to the cemetary right by our house. Inoke, Teisa's husband, had worked as an agriculture/science teacher at the Morman high school, so all the students were there with plastic flowers for the grave. Teisa was wearing a huge woven mat, that went up above her head in the back. And her two kids were all dressed up in mats. We watched as they lowered the body into the grave, then mounded up the sand/dirt pile above it and covered it with plastic flowers. I think Teisa was glad to see us there, I gave her a hug before we left and gave her the real flowers we had brought. She just looked so sad and alone, she sat right next to the grave and everyone else sat farther back. Next week I think we'll cook some food and bring it over to her house like we do in America after someone dies. It's always hard on the families here of people who die, they have to provide lots of food for people during the funeral and for awhile after for anyone visiting, it takes a lot of money. It was a weird feeling to go to a funeral here of someone we knew, back home both Brett and I haven't been to many funerals. But I guess on such a small island death is a part of everyday life.

But with deaths there is also new life and we have two new babies here that I know of. Our neighbors had a baby girl in July, the first girl out of now 6 kids! They named her Mele after a grandma, (Tongan for Mary) but the middle name is Katamaria after my name Kate Marie! So I have a little namesake baby next door, a lot of the time Tongans will even be called by their middle name. She is another clone of the dad and smiles a lot, this is a photo of her below.

My old counterpart at the computer training center also had a baby girl in July, much to my surprise! She hid her pregnancy very well the entire time with baggy clothes, since she wasn't married it was a huge shame to her and the family. Especially since the family is very well known and has a high position in the community. Some of the family living in the same house didn't even know until after she had the baby. So now I know why she was sick so much when I worked with her. The sad thing is that since they're trying hard to keep it a secret, they convinced her to move to New Zealand without the baby! So now she's gone, and her parents will raise the baby for now. This happens more often than I would have thought here in Tonga. Babies and kids also get passed around between family members often. An aunt of our neighbor boys, the oldest daughter so the head of the family, likes the youngest boy so much she tried to keep him and our neighbors had to take a boat to that island to get him back. Often kids will get passed around when a family gets too big to support, or if another family needs a boy or girl to help out with the mens or womens chores.

Chef Kate

2009-09-22T12:42:00.005+13:00

I taught my first cooking class ever to the ladies I work with at MAFF. It's a little scary to know that I'm in a country where my cooking skills are superior to most of the locals... I'm not a good cook! When I showed up to work on Monday I thought they would've forgotten completely that I was going to do a cooking class, but they were all prepared - they'd bought all the ingredients I asked for and even had the boys go out to the bush plot to get lots of veggies. Although they'd bought ketchup instead of tomato sauce - I was teaching how to make homemade pizza. I did the demonstration for one pizza, and we cut up green peppers and tomatoes for toppings. Then they brought out a big can of corned beef and asked if we could put that on the pizza as well, so I spooned on little chunks of the meat onto my veggie pizza. And of course they made fun of how little meat I put on the pizza.

I thought we'd just do the one demonstration and then I'd give them copies of the recipe, but they started mixing up more pizza dough. On the second pizza they scooped on almost the whole can of corned beef, Tongans really like their meat! Then before I knew it we were on our 6th pizza, each of the ladies taking turns making their own pizzas and each of them takes 1/2 hour to bake! I guess because we had so much supplies to cook with, and they were hungry they just kept making more and more pizzas to share with the rest of the staff and to take home. I don't think I've seen this kind of baking marathon besides my mom baking Christmas cookies! This is how Tongans cook though - they make A LOT of food, it would be shameful to them to not have enough food for everyone. At least it showed they were interested in my class and liked the recipe.

While we they were cooking I typed up the recipe for pizza and had my women-in-development counterpart, Ilaise, translate the recipe to Tongan. My boss at MAFF also brought up a point I hadn't thought about - many of the local women can't afford a lot of the ingredients like milk, tomato sauce, and cheese because they're expensive. So he said for any recipes I should think of substitutes that could be used. So in my pizza recipe the substitute for milk is water or coconut milk, substitute real mashed tomatoes for tomato sauce, and as an alternative you could make pizza with no cheese, just the toppings. So I'll have to keep this in mind for future classes and try to stick to simpler recipes. I'm hoping to start more cooking classes now with womens' groups in the villages, with healthy recipes. The diet here is so bad, such a large percentage of people end up with diabetes. All they eat are root crops and meat, rarely any vegetables. And their cooking is pretty monotonous, very much the same it's been for hundreds of years. They like trying new things but just don't know how to cook them and don't have much for seasoning here. In fact most of them don't know what spices and herbs are, if I try to explain basil or oregeno they don't really understand. In Tongan you can say "faka-ifo" which means to make the food taste good. Last week one of the neighbor boys was hanging out in our house, I had some spices out on the counter so I showed them to him and had him smell them. He then proceeded to smell every single one of our spices/herbs, amazed by them. Of course he liked cinnamon the best since it smelled like candy.

So hopefully I'll start more cooking classes/nutrition now with MAFF, and I'll work with my counterpart to translate more recipes and ingredient substitutions to Tongan. I never would have thought I'd be teaching cooking classes!

Uoleva camping

2009-09-18T16:17:00.003+13:00

This last week was another school break so since Brett, Alicia and Sarah all had more time off we decided to escape our little island and go camping on a deserted island - Uoleva, just south of us (where we also spent new years and easter). It's probably my favorite place here in Ha'apai, it has some of the best beaches and reefs for snorkeling, and we can wear our swimsuits and be foreigners/tourists there. It's nice to just get away from here every once in awhile, you almost need to.

For this trip we decided to travel the Tongan way - by hitching a ride with a local boat going to Uiha, the inhabitated island just south of Uoleva. Our neighbor is from Uiha, so we set up a ride with his sister. And of course, Wed. morning the day we were leaving it was raining, but then cleared up. It got to be nice and sunny, we were all packed sitting at our house waiting to leave, they'd told us we'd leave by mid-morning and they kept coming to and from the neighbor's house going to church functions. At one point they said "hurrying", but then disapeared for a couple of hours late in the afternoon by this time. Then they rushed back, and Anna our neighbor yelled loudly "Katie NOW!!!", and we all ran out and were driven to the old wharf where the boats were waiting. By this time it was about 5:30, just enough time to make it before dark. That's the downside to traveling the Tongan way - it's on their timetable which is always very slow.

At the old wharf there were about fourty Tongans scurrying around between three boats, we passed in all our camping gear and bags and took seats along the outside of the small boat. All the boats were sagging so low in the water with all the weight that the ocean was almost coming up over the rim on each side. And the ocean was pretty rough, it looked like a painting with all the pointed waves swaying up and down slowly in the glossy last hours of daylight. The Tongan boat skippers are really experts at what they do, manuevering among huge rolling waves without a drip of water coming into the boat. Once we got to the island we had to pass up all our supplies and throw them onto the beach, then jump out into the ocean and swim ashore.

The first night we had enough time to set up camp and gather firewood before dark, and we roasted hot dogs, veggie skewers for the vegetarians, fish, and potatoes and corn cooked in foil. We brought a lot of cooking supplies to cook over the fire. And we had marshmellows and s'mores that had been sent from home, they were good!! The resort we stayed at, Tiana's, was completely booked - all four fales and a rented tent, the fales rent for $35 and camping is $20/tent. This is the same resort we stayed at over New Years, and it was amazing to see how much it's changed in less than a year - there were two big storms that shifted the beach, it's much steeper now, and they had to rebuild all the fales and move them farther up from the beach. They look really nice now, and are set up very well.

The next day was gloomy and rainy, we spent time reading and just hanging out. There were friends of friends that were visiting here in ha'apai that we hung out with, and an australian volunteer from the main island, and tourists from many other countries - france, spain, and more. It's always a big mix of tourists on Uoleva in tourist season (which should end soon, by Oct.) We were able to get a fire going for breakfast - pre-mixed pancakes and coffee/tea. And another fire in the evening for marshmellows again. We weren't able to get out snorkeling at all, but we'll have plenty more times down there to do that.

The day we left, Friday, it was really windy and rainy, we packed up all our stuff under a hut on the beach and huddled waiting for a passing local boat to flag down. But with the bad weather many boats decided to wait until Saturday. So we jumped on a boat that had been arranged from town to pick up two tourists at our resort, it was just a little more expensive. After we were a ways off shore the skipper of the boat started messing around with a tied up bag on the floor. As soon as he got it untied he dumped the contents into the ocean and kept moving on. We looked and saw immediately that a cat had been inside the bag, and was now struggling in the ocean trying to swim towards shore!! We asked why he did that, and he said he was trying to kill the cat, it had gotten into some food or something. It's crazy that he'd do something like that, it was sad to watch, I hope the cat made it ashore.

Yesterday our friends at Fins 'n Flukes had organized a harbour clean-up so we went to help pick up trash along the wharf and roads near there. It's amazing how much garbage was cleaned up, some of it had been there for a very long time, the locals never really clean up these areas - only their own houses and the churches. And they litter a lot - mostly plastic bags or packaging, but lots of random stuff too. Then last night we had a birthday dinner for Kyoichi, our japanese volunteer neighbor. There was a birthday dinner last Saturday too for Brian. So we've been pretty busy. This week we'll be working more again, I'm actually doing a little cooking class tomorrow with the ladies I work with at MAFF so that will be interesting (those of you who know me back home know how I don't cook!) And our country director is visiting our island this week as part of his round of goodbyes.

Play time

2009-09-10T09:23:00.003+13:00

Tongan kids are incredibly creative when it comes to games and playing. They don't have playstations, barbie dolls, toy cars, etc. They have sticks, rocks, sand, leaves, string, pieces of garbage, anything they find around their houses outside which can be quite random at times. I've seen our youngest 2-year old neighbor Pa'aane playing with an old iron, dragging it around the yard by the cord. They love anything they can drag around, often times tieing strings to random objects and just running around the yard with it. Or old tea kettles, they fill them up with sand. Or an old suitcase, Pa'aane curled up inside that one day and took a nap.

One annoying habit they have is digging through our garbage if we don't burn it right away. They must be amazed at what we throw away - old containers that could be used for playing in the sand, curious wrappers with a little food still left in it that they'll try to eat. I guess it's true one man's garbage is another man's treasure. At our first homestay during training we threw away a pepcid ac mini-container, and later that day found the youngest homestay sister using it as a little coin purse. And if there's styrofom or anything like that watch out, they'll break it into a million little pieces for you to later pick up. And of course the much-loved by Tongan children video tape. If they get a hold of an old VHS tape they'll take out the long lengths of tape and string it throughout the yard in the trees, along laundry lines, along the fences, everywhere. It's like their version of TP-ing someone, but they do it to their own yards. Whenever I see one of our neighbor kids with a length of video tape I run out there like a mad-woman, take it away from the child and hurl it into the garbage pile behind a fence where they can't get to it. I've already had to dis-entangle too many video tapes in our backyard, non of the Tongans seem to mind as if it's a kind of decoration.

Tongan kids come up with some pretty funny games. Like yesterday, we looked out the window and saw three of the neighbor boys rolling a bicycle wheel back and forth. Whoever the wheel went to had to hit it with a large hunk of metal as hard as he could. And that was the object of the game, beating the wheel with chunks of old metal. And often when they're playing games they'll be shouting out "weee-naaa, weee'naaa" - winner. The youngest, Pa'aane, likes to play a game of finding old chip or cookie bags/containers, filling them with sand from the beach, and then piling as much sand as he can on our back stairs.

They're also very inventive with creating toys and things from their surroundings. The neighbor boys make little leaf whistles, leaf spinning wheels, spinning tops out of pop bottle tops, kites out of paper, and the most unique I think are the noise makers made out of a bike wheel spoke, string, a nail and a match. The nail and match are inside the tip of the bike wheel spoke tied on with string, and get pounded on pavement making a really loud noise like a gun shot. It does get annoying after they've been making the noises on our back stairs for half an hour.

And of course, like kids everywhere, Tongan kids love climbing trees. But not like in the US. They don't have little tree forts or ladders going up. They climb barefoot up the huge trees to the very tip top, or out on the branches until they're at the very end, then they dangle down and drop 10 feet below to the sand. Things that would make US mothers have heart attacks. And all Tongan boys know how to climb coconut trees, they wrap around the trunks and shimmy up and down like little monkeys. At the top they grab on with their feet and grab the coconuts with their hands throwing them down.

A little update from this week - Brett is helping out with night school now with class 6 getting them ready for the big exam next month that determines what high school they'll go to. I'm still amazed at how little the ladies at MAFF work, most Mondays when I go in there to work they're all just sitting around talking and eating. I really don't know what work my counterpart actually does. We're supposed to have meetings with all the women's groups once a month, and that's been cancelled the last two months so we'll see if it happens this month. But the good news - MAFF started harvesting their bush plot and we're getting some veggies from them. And at the internet cafe/computer center I'm still struggling to get things in order - basic things like that it's essential to keep records and to make bank deposits, sometimes I'm not sure where the money is going and supplies in the computer lab keep disappearing. And it's hard since it's a private family-owned business I can't tell them what to do, but just advise on what's best to do. But at least we have the internet cafe going, and some computer classes.

Swimming with the Whales

2009-09-06T12:16:00.005+13:00

Yesterday our friends at Fins 'n Flukes took us all out whale watching for the day - us, other peace corps volunteers Alicia, Sarah and Phil, and the new japanese volunteer kyoichi who's also our new next-door neighbor. The humpback whales have been here since about May or June, I've seen just a couple from our beach off on the horizon. But they're a lot easier to see out on the water. They're here in the warm south pacific waters until around early October, then they migrate back to the antartic waters with their new babies.

After only about ten minutes of leaving the harbour we spotted some humpback whales, between our island of Lifuka and Uoleva island just south of here. There were 3 or 4 whales swimming together, we could see their blowholes spouting water and their humpbacks and dorsel fins just above the water. There was a mom and baby calf in this group of whales swimming together. The backs of the whales above water were huge! Once we got up close to the whales we peeled up our wetsuits, threw on our flippers and masks and slowly slipped into the water - if you make too much splashing noises it would scare the whales away. It was us four girls in the water, and once we were in I realized the whales were a lot farther away than they had looked, and they were traveling so we couldn't catch up to them. The waves were big and rolling in the ocean so it was tiring to swim, and I was trying not to think of what else lurked below in the deep waters. But it was cool to see the spouts and humpbacks in the ocean not too far from us. We got back in the boat and moved along with the whales. This time a Tongan boat passed by the whales, a little too close for comfort I think. They acted differently, showing their backs a lot more to make sure the boat saw them maybe. We tried again slipping into the water, but they were still moving away from us.

After observing them for awhile and seeing that they were staying at the surface in one place, we got the boat really close and slipped into the water, this time holding onto a rope on the boat and not moving too quickly towards them. Then Sabine (fins 'n flukes) stuck her mask in the water and motioned all of us to do the same, and I saw the huge tail of one of the whales! Brett jumped in, and the five of us snorkeled up closer and all of a sudden out of the deep murky blue appeared an entire whale, head to tail, and then another! It was amazing to see such huge creatures just suspended there in the water, right next to us! We got up close, I'd guess around 20 feet or so (the closest you're supposed to get is 15 feet). That close I got a little freaked out since you don't know which way the whale will move. But they're really conscious of everything in the water and any slight changes, and where their own body is in relation to us. And all of a sudden they were gone, moving farther away from us. It was only a minute or less that we saw the whales underwater, but it was incredible to be so close to such huge whales and see them in their natural surroundings. Tonga is one of the only places in the world where you can still swim with the whales, it's against the law everywhere else. So this really was the chance of a lifetime.

After swimming with the whales we had a coffee/tea break on the boat, and Brian and Sabine have an underwater microphone on a long cord that they put in, and we were able to hear the whales underwater! It was cool to listen to, they were making all sorts of noises and sounded really close to the boat, but with this microphone you can hear them up to 20 kilometers or so away. We then boated around some more, and the Japanese volunteer caught a fish, a huge grouper. He filleted the fish and we had fresh sashimi right out of the sea, and some pasta for lunch where we anchored in a really pretty aqua lagoon area. It was an incredible day overall! More photos are posted in the link to the left.

Weather dependent

2009-09-02T11:35:00.002+13:00

Today looked nice and sunny outside with a little breeze, so I thought it would finally be a perfect day for laundry (we have to hang-dry all our clothes). But it never fails that as soon as I'm hanging the last few pieces of laundry it starts to look overcast all of a sudden, then a few drizzles start to fall and it's raining. Then comes the question of waiting it out to see if it's just a small drizzle, or drag everything inside and cover the living room and dining area with wet clothes that will take days to dry inside and hopefully won't start growing mold. Today I decided to wait it out, so far it just continues to look overcast with a strong breeze, hopefully the rain won't start again.

So as you can see our lives are very weather-dependent here, the above was just a small example. Things as basic as what we eat depends on the weather - if it's too windy and rainy for a few days the fishermen won't go out and there won't be fish anywhere in town. I can't imagine in the US not being able to get a certain food because of rain. Or if there are storms and the ocean is too rough the big ferry boat from the main island won't come for a week and we'll run short on supplies and food such as eggs (they only come from the main island), butter, chicken, and more. Rain also effects work and school here. If it's a rainy day many kids and even teachers just won't show up for school, or if it starts raining after school has started they'll have a long-run day and go straight through lunch then end early so the kids don't have to walk back and forth in the rain. At professional jobs people might not show up if it's raining hard outside. One nice thing about rainy weather is that it's a lot quieter in the mornings on rainy days - the neighbor kids aren't all outside yelling at the top of their lungs and even the roasters, dogs and pigs are quieter. On the other hand if it doesn't rain enough in the dry season our sima vie (rain water tank) that we get all our drinking water from outside could run dry and we'd have no drinking water. And during the summer here when it's unbearably hot and humid it effects what you do. You really think twice about walking across town or even a few blocks in the blistering sun. Back home you really don't think much about weather effecting your daily lives such as laundry/chores, food, transportation, or work. And the time of day also effects things here unlike back home. Local boats can only go out during the daylight hours, since most of them don't have lights and there are no reef markers lit up at night, it would be impossible to navigate. The time of year also has a bigger effect here on food supplies. Back home you can go to a big grocery store and get fruit, veggies and other seasonal foods anytime of year. Here if it's not in season, it's not available. During winter right now we have lots of vegetables available - lettuce, cabbage, carrots, tomatoes, and green peppers, and bananas, papaya and root crops are available all the time. In the summer we'll get into the fruit season - pinneapple, mango, passion fruit, guava, and avocados. The summer is also the rainy season, hence more mosquitos, so we have to lather up with mosquito spray to avoid dengue fever. So the time of year, time of day, and weather has a bigger effect on our lives here.

This last week we've just been doing our normal work routines, I've started teaching a few computer classes again and we're battling computer viruses at the computer center I work at. Brett has started helping out with night classes once a week for the class 6 students who have their big exam in October. And every Friday now is karoake night at our local restaurant/bar so that's been fun. The Tongans always choose the cheesy love songs, and when it's just our group of friends there at the end we're all singing along. And now we're down to only four puppies out of the original 8, I think they've been stolen. The neighbor kids are doing good, we came home yesterday though to the little 2-year old boy peeing on our front steps! Peeing in the yard is "normal" here, but this was the first time he'd done it at our house. Back home right now the MN State Fair is going on, everyone back there enjoy it for us and all the good food we're missing!

"Yes" is the answer to everything

2009-08-26T16:56:00.008+13:00

In Tonga the common answer to everything is "io", which sounds sometimes like "yo" or sometimes like "ee-yo", depending on the emphasis and the situation. "Io" means "yes". So walking down the street when people greet each other, the answer to the greeter is usually a short "io" (sounding like "yo"). When people are talking or telling stories the listeners usually interrupt or end with "io, io" (sounding like ee-yo, ee-yo). Or in church when the congregation agrees with what the pastor is saying, or during long prayers, you'll hear men saying "io", sounding like a long, loud, low-toned "yooooo". I always wanted to try this one out, since it's always tongan men who do this, I wonder what they'd think of a white girl doing it. And when you ask Tongans anything in a yes or no form, they'll almost always answer yes. Yes it's okay to eat that, yes it's safe to swim there, yes there are no sharks (but there are), yes you can wear whatever you want in town, yes I'll come to work tomorrow (and then never show up), yes, yes, yes. So we have to think about how we word questions here, to make sure we get an answer and not just a yes. Or if not a verbal yes, we'll get a non-verbal yes to those types of questions. Here raising your eyebrows means "yes". So you can have a whole conversation with someone who just answers by raising their eyebrows, which can be frustrating after awhile when you're the only one talking. So please forgive Brett and I if we come back and start raising our eyebrows at you during conversations, we're not crazy, just acting a little Tongan. Hopefully this trait won't come up in job interviews. You could look at a deeper side of saying yes to everything - as in it will open up more experiences, etc. or that Tongans are just lazy and take the easiest way out everytime. They'd rather just raise an eyebrow than have to say a short "io". But another side to that is that they also just want to please everyone, especially on such small islands you can't really have big disagreements.

Some other news in Peace Corps Tonga, our country director is leaving this fall, he's taking the country director job in Gambia. We wish him the best, and will miss him, now there will be all new American staff here. We also had a friend in our group decide to leave early, we wish him the best back home and know he's enjoying the food and hot showers there! Now our group has 19 volunteers left, and so does the group before us.

We've been enjoying some of the best sunsets this week, the weather has been clear so we've been able to see Kao and Tofua volcanoes very clearly, and the sun is setting right behind Kao. And I've spotted some humpback whales, right in our backyard!! I saw one breach right in front of Kao, and some more playing in the water, I could see it all from our living room! Here are a few photos of the sunsets, and the eight little puppies here. There are also more new photos on the link to the left.

Packing List for Tonga Group 75 volunteers

2009-08-22T10:28:00.007+13:00

It's getting closer to the time the new group of volunteers will arrive here Oct. 8th, so they should all be getting their invites within the next week or so. So we thought we'd post our recommended packing list we put together:

Bags:
- Bring one backpack for everyday use, or for girls a shoulder bag
- Consider bringing a good travel backpack, something you would use it backpack across Europe in, it makes travel a lot easier.
- For secondary bags we suggest rolling duffel bags, they tend to hold up well
- Use up to the allocated weight for plane travel if possible, don’t try to pack too light

Girls:
- mix of t-shirts and button down short-sleeved shirts (around 7 - 10). Make sure they all have sleeves that cover your armpits, and lightweight material. Have at least one black shirt.
- Tank tops - some white basic tanks, and some thicker strapped tanks for wearing at home, or tourist areas
- 5 - 6 Skirts that are below the knees, you’ll be able to buy the wrap-around skirts here
- Capris and pants - 1-2 capris that are below the knees. And one or two pairs of jeans or khakis for winter.
- Swimsuit - 2, you can wear them in tourist areas, or when swimming in local areas underneath shorts and shirt.
- Swimming - bring 1 shirt to swim in, and board shorts at or below the knees
- 1 rain jacket
- Sweater/sweatshirt, bring two for winter, and one or two long-sleeved shirts
- Underwear - enough for 1 ½ weeks or so, and comfortable bras that you can wear in hot weather
- Shoes - three pairs of sandals that are very comfortable and sturdy. Bring at least one pair of flip-flops, and one pair of strap-on sandals. Tennis shoes if you run.
- Jewelry - necklaces, earrings, etc, it’s something you can wear to feel more like yourself
- make-up - many girls don’t wear make-up here, I brought mine and am glad I did, another thing to make you feel more like yourself if you wear make-up back home.
- hairdryer - if you have one that converts to 240 voltage it’s worth bringing it and it’s nice to have when the weather gets cold
- tampons - they don’t sell them here! Bring enough for at least through training and then have more mailed
- razors, bring a few, you can buy cheap ones here as well

Guys:
- mix of t-shirts 5-6 (dark colors are good)
- 3-4 short sleeve button-up shirts, light weight if possible
- 1-2 long sleeve shirts for the colder weather
- 1 pair of jeans for cold nights or for vacation
- 1 pair of Khakis for cold nights or rainy days
- 3 pairs of shorts, light weight if possible
- 1-2 belts, try to find cloth belts, they work the best, leather does not hold up
- 1-2 pairs of board shorts or swimming trunks
- 1-2 quick dry shirts for swimming or casual wear (Target has cheap nice shirts)
- 1 rain jacket
- 1-2 sweatshirts or fleeces for cold weather or overseas travel
- 8-10 pairs of boxers or underwear
- 3-4 pairs of socks
- 1 pair of running shoes ( good for exercising and for vacation in NZ or Australia)
- 1 pair of good flip flops
- 1 pair of strap on sandals for walking on reefs or walking in the bush
- electric shaver/trimmer, no hot water to shave with unless you boil, electric shavers work good
(guys, remember not to bring any baggy cloths, you will most likely loose 1-2 inches in your waist.
-don’t worry about bringing jackets, if its really cold you can wear a sweatshirt and wear your rain coat over that, it works good.
　
Kitchen:
-good set of knifes and good filet knife
- one good frying pan, the ones they sell here are cheap
- measuring cups and measuring spoons
- can opener
- coffee perculater or French press if you’re a coffee drinker, and your favorite coffee.
- water bottles - sigg or nalgene type water bottles, you’ll be using them a lot!
- some food that you’ll miss - candy, granola bars, pasta mixes that you can make once you get to site, spices/seasonings or get them sent later in the mail.
- Hanging basket 3 tier for food

Bathroom: (bring enough with you for three month to last through training)
- supply of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash/soap. You can buy some stuff here that you get in the states like suave, but if you prefer certain brands bring that along.
- toothpaste - You can get expired crest here and some asian brands, we get most of ours sent in the mail.
- toothbrushes, bring a few extra, and bring toothbrush covers, you can also buy covers here.
- contacts - if you wear them, bring as much contact solution as you can, we brought six bottles and have had more sent in the mail, you can not buy it here.
- towels - you can buy them here, but bring one to start with

Other:
- Alarm clock
- wrist watch, timex makes nice rubber ones (Target)
- 2 pairs of sunglasses, things break easy
- knife or leatherman, good for fixing things
- duct-tape
- games - bring whatever games you can, that are good with a few people or with many, and easy to learn
- computer - yes, bring one! It’s great for watching DVD’s, typing up emails before getting to internet, storing photos, etc. Most people will end up somewhere with electricity. Chances are your computer will break here, bring a dry sack for your computer to be stored in when not using, this will increase its life here.
- hard drive - many volunteers bring hard drives to exchange movies and photos
- digital camera, underwater bag is also a good idea for your camera
- books - bring a few to start, but the peace corps libraries in each island group also have a lot of books
- hammock!!! - very glad we brought one, it’s the only furniture in our living room! Also good for camping.
- tent - good idea if you’re planning on camping at all.
- sleeping bag - lightweight, cheap sleeping bag, we got fleece ones at target
- 1 set of bed sheets - not as easy to find here
- good flashlights, hand-held and a headlamp is a very good idea, easy to use when biking
- I-pod, we brought ours along with a circle speaker
- Photos from back home - we brought an album with photos of family and friends, it’s fun to show the Tongans, and for decorating once you get to site.
- Presents - for homestay families. Some good ideas - women like perfume, give gifts that have to do with your hometown or state - postcards, calendars, food, etc. Bring stuff for little kids - toys, coloring books, etc. you’ll probably have kids at your homestay. Don’t waste too much space though on these gifts.
- adaptors - bring a couple of adaptors - Tonga is the same as Australia. You probably won’t need converters - most computers will convert the voltage, and you can get surge protectors here.
- Snorkeling - bring decent quality masks and snorkel, and flippers if you have room, if not you can usually find flippers here.
- Rechargeable batteries, if you have things that use AA or AAA consider bringing rechargeables
- Good pens, maybe one notebook for writing home or journaling
- Small sewing kit, clothes will get worn, buttons will fall off, etc.
- A couple months supply of multivitamins (the health office also has some available, not sure what kind)
- pop-up laundry bin or laundry bag, or stuff sack
- Things you’ll have supplied by peace corps- any kind of medical needs, sunscreen, bug spray, bike helmet, kerosene lantern, FM/AM radio, mosquito net for your bed, and a peace corps tonga cookbook

If you can’t fit all this into your bags, don’t be alarmed, you’ll be able to find some of these things here in Tonga, just bring what you think you need and it will all work out, don’t stress over packing! You can also have things shipped over anytime when you realize what you need. Volunteers are more than willing to help you find the things you need once you get here, just ask.

Also a good discount is offered on Chaco's website for sandals, 50% off for Peace Corps volunteers.

If you have any questions, feel free to email us.

Chasing Bacon

2009-08-20T18:06:00.002+13:00

You would think living next to the ocean here in Tonga would have its benefits and it does, most of the time. One thing that tends to bring it down is our pig problem. Yes, there in a pig problem. On average my usual day consists of getting up, getting ready for school and taking my 1 mile walk to school. Most days this process goes fine but somedays it is trumped by a pig problem. Depending on what they pigs are doing or what they have done it can sometimes make me late for school or even stop me from making it to school at all. Let me explain. At times my house is completly surrounded by pigs- big ones, small ones, some with no ears and some with interesting colors. Some nights I wake up to the sound of rushing water, at first I think to myself, "Is it raining?", no its not, its the pigs. They have gotten into the water tank outside, which Kate and I get all our drinking water from. The pigs have figured out how to turn on the nozzle on the tank....yes we have smart pigs in Tonga. As I rush outside to turn off the nozzle on the tank I tend to run into a couple of pigs that are enjoying the water by taking a cool bath in it. This is not the only thing the pigs tend to get into. I find them uprooting the grass in our yard and making large mud pits. Normally I would be fine with this except most of the time they tend to make these pits in front of my door. I don't know about you but after it rains I'm not big on getting my feet all muddy. They also have been known to get into our city water pipes. This water is generally used for showering and dishes, it is not drinkable. The pigs have been so interested in these pipes before that they have bitten them and caused the pipes to burst and I have had to call the city water works to come and stop the 10 foot stream of water gushing through the air. It is also impossible to grow any types of vegetables in our yard because once they sprout above ground the pigs have their way with them. Being frustrate with all the mischief of these pigs I occassionally throw rocks at them to keep them away from the water tank or chase them to keep them away from the city water pipes. In doing so some of the pigs started to recognise me and whenever they saw me coming down the gravel road or out of the house they would run the other way as fast as they could. There was even one pig who would see me from a distance and immediatly run away making a ear piercing scream as it went...I guess I must have terrified them too much with the rock throwing and chasing. Kate always laughs when I tell her that.

Now you may ask why all this is important. Well the other day my neighbor informed me that his pigs have been getting into to many things about our yards and he was sending them to his brothers place on an island south of ours. Well, hearing this news I not only rejoyced, I offered to help him catch the pigs and get them caged for the 1 hour boat ride to the island where they will be going. After strapping my shoes on and doing some light stretching I headed outside to round up these menacing pigs. While walking around the yard with my neighbors son we notice 4 little pigs enjoying the sun about 50 yards away. He decides that I should take the left flank and he the right. As we make our way slowly towards the pigs we feel as if we have covered some good ground and that we will be able to take on these 4 piglets. But, suddenly one of the 4 gets a glimps of what we are up to and then takes off. The other 3 piglets seeing what is happening also take off behind them. Having no choice my neighbors son and I take off after the pigs, we chase them down the gravel road and past the yard fence, once we think we have them cornered the pigs fool us and find a path under the fence and are able to escape. Exhausted and sweaty we decide to take another route to this pig catching plan. After thinking it over we decide to use a small fenced in area used for chickens. This fenced area also has a swing door that we can use to shut the pigs in. Once we get the fence cage into place we tie a rope around the gate door, sort of a switch to pull so as the pigs walk into the fenced area we can shut the door from a short distance away. Once we have placed food in the cage we quietly sit 20 feet away from the cage and wait for the pigs to arrive. Slowly one by one they arrive taking the bait and we one by one catch the pigs and get them crated up for the boat ride. As I stood there looking at the pigs in the cages I couldn't help but think how they had drove me crazy the past couple months but now I had had the last laugh.

~Brett

A little story about airports

2009-08-17T11:52:00.002+13:00

After our last trip and spending more time in different airports I realized we haven't written much about airports or flying here in Tonga.

Traveling here is a lot different than traveling in the US or other modern countries. Most local people take the ferries between islands, there's only one airline in the country so it's a monopoly and prices are much higher than they should be. It's cheaper to fly from the main island to Samoa, another country, than it is to fly from our island group of Ha'apai to the main island. But we'll see how local travel changes since the ferry went down a few weeks ago. We could already see some changes when we flew back to Ha'apai on Saturday. The flight was completely full and there was a TON of luggage and boxes being shipped up instead of shipping on the ferry.

From Ha'apai there are usually two flights a day, except on Sundays. There are three planes in Tonga, a big one that holds about 40 and has overhead compartments, a medium plane that holds 18 and you can't stand up in the aisle with one seat on each side, and a small plane that holds about 6 people. We usually end up on the medium plane, the big one only comes a couple of times a week. When you get to the airport here there's a little check-in counter and a waiting area with chairs. You check in by telling them your name and they check on their hand-written list, then hand write a ticket for you, no checking ID or anything like that. Every single time we've flown they've had my name wrong on their list, so after a few minutes of them looking over the list I end up looking then pointing to a name similar to mine. I've flown a couple times under Kate Alison, they changed my last name to a common palangi (white person) first name! Usually it's just letters that get mixed up.

Then they check your luggage, no security screening or anything. You can take anything on board with you. A lot of times people have boxes packed full of cooked food. Tongans usually travel in boxes taped shut and marked with their name instead of regular suitcases. And almost everytime we've flown out from Ha'apai people approach us asking us to carry a box or package to someone who's waiting for it at the main island airport. Nothing like the "don't leave your bags unattended or accept packages from strangers" back home in the airports. I think about three times we've carried random packages with us to give to people at the main island airport. One time they said it was a woven mat, another time it was some kind of tongan medicine, probably a plant, and another time we just had no idea what was in the box. But it's the easiest way to get something quickly to someone on the main island, and people are always willing to help out and carry something on the plane for someone else.

The planes are safe here, we've been assured and been told by another peace corps who was a former pilot and is now working with the ministry of aviation. But the ride is always interesting. The runway on our island runs from east to west, the entire length of the island so on each side it drops off to the ocean. Taking off, the pilot brings the plane to the very end of the runway on one side, then guns the engines while we sit in place. You can feel the plane bouncing beneath you, ready to go. Then they let go of the brakes and the plane darts forward, crazily moving side to side a little until it becomes airborn. It reminds me of those little wind-up toys where you role the wheels in place, then let go and it speeds forward. It think it's partly because the runway is short in Ha'apai and they need all the speed they can get to take off. It's funny watching the tourist's reactions though. Then once the plane is airborn, it starts making all sorts of noises. Sometimes the medium plane makes so much noise, and high-pitched, that I almost want to cover my ears. At the same time, the pilot or co-pilot comes on the intercom making announcements about our height or to have our seatbelts on or whatever, you can never hear them. The only plane that has flight attendents is the big plane.

Then landing on the main island, Tongatapu, is always turbulent and a rough landing. The way the winds come through where the airport is just always make it rougher. When we came back from Australia the winds were so strong that the plane was tilted at a huge angle, we thought we were circling high above, but then we hit the runway, almost while the plane was still tilted! I like landing in Ha'apai though. Before landing you can always see our village and a lot of the reefs. Then the plane comes in really low over the reef, it looks like you're going to land in the water then all of a sudden the runway and land appear at the last second. So that's what it's like to fly here.

The new group of volunteers is coming here soon, October 8th, so a lot of them should be getting invites soon. It's crazy that it was about a year ago now that we recieved our invitations! We'll be posting our recommended packing list soon on our blog, we're excited to have the new group here and we'll be seeing a lot of them here for training!

Australia

2009-08-14T11:45:00.009+13:00

We turned down an offer to go ‘roo hunting in the outback, danced our butts off in the streets of Brisbane, and watched the sunset behind the Opera House and more on our trip to the land down under.

Our vacation to Brisbane, Australia wasn’t actually a vacation - Peace Corps flew Brett for medical reasons, everything turned out fine so we ended up with more free time than we thought we’d have. The place Peace Corps put us up at while medical evaluations were done was pretty nice - hot shower, access to a full kitchen and satellite TV, and a nice room at the hospital lodge. The funny thing was that it kinda felt like a retirement home - all the people we saw were older, they had a “night out” dinner option, and a puzzle area in the hallway! But it worked good for us, and was close to a train station into the main part of the city. We bought a week long train pass which worked out great, we could use it on trains, buses or the water ferries on the river. The weather was really nice almost the whole time we were in Australia - sunny blue skies, where it felt hot in the sun but cold in the shade or if there was a breeze. You can really see why they call Queensland the Sunshine State. And it just rained part of one day in Sydney.

Most of the time, about a week and a half, we spent in Brisbane. I’ve been there before when I studied for a semester on the Sunshine Coast just north of Brisbane, I think it’s one of my favorite cities and Brett really liked it too. It didn’t seem like it had changed a whole lot since I’d been there years ago. I like it so much because it’s just set up really well - good transportation with trains going out along the coasts and all over town, buses, and new really nice river ferries that are all easy to use, lots of parks and gardens throughout the city with walking/running trails and swimming pools/lagoons, a main pedestrian street, lots of good restaurant areas, and the architecture and city just look nice and it’s clean. From what I’ve seen it seems like there are a lot of young families and college students/backpackers in Brisbane.

We did a lot of sightseeing in Brisbane. We went to the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary and walked around with kangaroos and fed them, you can get right next to them and pet them. Some of them had little joeys in their pouches, with just the little feet sticking out. Brett got to hold a koala for the first time for a photo session they do (photo above) - I’d already done it before. They’re one of my favorite animals, they look really cute in real life and are so lazy and sleepy all the time and curl up in balls in the trees. Their fur is more coarse than you’d think, and they do have really big claws. All the koalas there are kept in open cages - just areas blocked in with fake trees and eucalyptus leaves so you can get really close to them. We also went to Mt. Coot-tha, a hill that overlooks the entire city from a distance. And they had a temporary DaVinci display we got to see, showing examples of all his inventions, and we went through the free science museum all in the south bank area. South Bank in Brisbane was one of our favorite areas there - it's a big park along the riverfront with lots of little cafes, a swimming lagoon and sandy beach area, and close to lots of restaurants, we spent a lot of time there. On weekends there was a big art/street fair there. Across the bridge from South Bank there are botanical gardens we also explored on our last day there. And Queen Street is the main shopping street in Brisbane with lots of malls, stores and restaurants, and street musicians. There was also a film festival going on in that pedestrian mall while we were there. We found a cheap Internet place, a Target and grocery store- all the necessities on Queen Street. And since it had been quite awhile, we went to a movie at a mall near our lodge, the new Johnny Depp movie “Public Enemies”. It was nice to see a movie in the theaters again with popcorn, and not on our little laptop. Some of our favorite restaurants there were Beastie Burgers in South Bank, and Sitar (indian curry) in Fortitude Valley. I also had a lot of lattes and Brett had a lot of fruit smoothies, we don't get those in Ha'apai!

Another highlight in Brisbane was the “Dancing in the Streets” festival that happened to be going on the last weekend we were there. It was really fun, lots of people turned up for it at South Bank. They had six stages along South Bank with different types of dancing - disco, African, Salsa, Bolly-wood (Indian), hip-hop, club moves, and more. There were professional dancers at each stage, they’d do their moves and then show the crowd how to do a simple dance in that style. So it was funny to see all sorts of people in the crowd doing disco moves or African drum dancing. Brett and I ended up learning four different dances - salsa, bolly-wood, African, and a disco routine to “dancing queen”.

We also had some time to get out of Brisbane to Surfer’s Paradise on the Gold Coast for a day trip, and to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast for one night. In Surfer's Paradise we hung around the main shopping/restaurant street and spent some time on the beach watching groups of people learning to surf. It's a very touristy town, well known for it's long stretch of beach and nightlife. And of course we had to get to the Sunshine Coast, where I spent a semester of college. It had changed a lot since I'd been there. We took the train up, about an hour and a half, and stayed at a little motel on the river area in Mooloolaba. We spent time on the beach, since we saw a lot of people swimming we decided to swim a bit too, but found out the water was icy freezing cold compared to Tonga! So we just hung out on the beach and walked around the shopping area and the wharf, it's a cute little beach town. And they have "singing sands" there, when you dig your feet into the sand on the beach it makes a high pitched kind of noise. While we were there we took a bus up to my old college campus - the University of the Sunshine Coast. It had changed a lot - there was a huge new building and a big bus transit station instead of the little wood hut we had. It was cool to see again and for Brett to see it, he had said he'd come visit me when I was there and he finally made it there.

The night we spent in Mooloolaba we had kebabs for dinner then went to Omally's Pub where we used to go when I lived there. On the way in we started talking to a couple of Australian guys who were very excited to meet Americans, and after awhile they invited us to go 'roo hunting (yes, kangaroo) with them in the outback the next day. They were very serious too, it would've been quite the experience but we'd already planned to be back in Brisbane the next day for the dance festival.

The last three nights of our trip we spent in Sydney - Peace Corps would've flown us back a few days early since they couldn't do anything more with medical, but we decided to stay and take a few days of vacation in Sydney before returning. We found a good last-minute deal on a hotel right downtown near the Rocks area, and were able to walk everywhere from there. It was a lot more walking than Brisbane, and a lot of Sydney is on hills. It also felt like there were a lot more business professional people all dressed up, not as many families or college students. So we felt a little out of place in our casual clothes downtown. The first night we didn't get in until later, and went and walked down by the harbour bridge and opera house all lit up at night. The second day we did a lot of sightseeing - the main shopping street, Pitt Street, the free art museum in the park, and the botanical gardens with a view of the harbour bridge and opera house at sunset, and had a lasagna dinner at Darling Harbour with a nice view of downtown. Our last full day in Sydney was mostly shopping, getting groceries and things we can't get in Tonga. We also went to the barracks/history museum, and had burgers for dinner down by the harbour bridge. It was nice in both towns since I'd been there before I remembered some of the area and what sights to see. Overall we both liked the Brisbane area better than Sydney - the city itself is pretty and set up nice and is close to both the sunshine and gold coasts.

We flew back to Tonga last night, the flight into the main island here is always pretty turbulent, maybe something to do with the way the winds come through here or something. The wing on our side of the plane was turned way up, we thought we were still circling high above the island, then all of a sudden lights started appearing right next to the wing and we were on the ground, almost landing at a tilt! But we're back now, hopefully heading home to Ha'apai tomorrow.

Ferry goes down in Tonga

2009-08-06T19:37:00.003+13:00

While we were checking Internet today in Brisbane we came across some very sad news back in Tonga, the Princess Ashika ferry sank late last night near Nomuka on it's way to Pangai and Vava'u. There were just over 80 passengers on board and right now the estimate is that half of those people drowned, mostly women and children who were sleeping in the middle compartment. There were lifeboats full of men only that made it to shore, they had been hanging out on deck and were able to jump off before the boat sank, we heard it went under water in only a couple minutes. We were able to get through to our Peace Corps friends Eric and Melanie today who live near where the ferry went down and got some updates from them on this. Some people from their island are among the missing, as well as a Japanese volunteer and a few tourists that were on board. It's so sad, it was a newer ferry and the main transportation for local Tongans going between island groups, and also the source of food/goods transportation. We were shocked and saddened to hear the news today, there will be lots of grieving and funerals in Tonga in the next week. Our thoughts and prayers are with those families.

Here is a link to the local news story on the ferry sinking:
http://www.matangitonga.to/article/tonganews/outerislands/20090805_askika_missingwomen.shtml
And a New Zealand news story:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10589081

The Land of Oz - Brisbane

2009-08-01T18:23:00.002+13:00

We made it to Brisbane after a day of travel on Thursday through Sydney. At the airport we ran into some of our US Navy friends on their way out on a military flight!

It feels good to be back to "civilization" once again - hot showers, good food, lots of transportation and people, etc. The lodge we're staying at is really nice with a little kitchen area and breakfast included, and very close to the city center and next door to the hospital Brett's being seen at. We went in for just a few hours on Friday to the hospital, and back again Monday morning for an MRI on his leg and follow-up after that but nothing serious so far. We spent our first full day after the hospital visit at Queen Street - the main pedestrian shopping area and South Bank- it's a really pretty area and I remember it from my college days here. There's a pretty, big park along the riverfront there with lots of restaurants, swimming lagoon, and walking areas, and we saw the DaVinci display through the cultural center/art museum - a traveling display of his inventions, and the science museum. We ate at a really good burger place there for dinner - Beastie Burgers.

Today we are down in Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast all day, took a train and a bus to get here, about 1 1/2 hours each way. Perfect sunny weather, but a little cool out. Not as cold as I thought it would be though. We sat on the beach and shopped around, and will find a restaurant for dinner and then head back to Brisbane tonight. We both bought a few things today - usually feel a little out of style when we get to big cities, it's interesting to see how styles are changing. Here all the girls are wearing skin tight pants or tights! But we're enjoying our little vacation here so far!

Pacific Partnership - US navy led humanitarian mission

2009-07-26T11:34:00.010+13:00

Well it’s been a crazy couple of weeks for us here in Ha’apai with the Pacific Partnership mission here led by the US Navy with help from the airforce, army and public health units, world veterinarians, dentists in training, engineers, and forces from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Singapore. It was a big mixture of people here all working together and with the local navy and people here. It’s going to feel very empty here when they all leave, it’s been great having so many people around! Some of the highlights for us have been the opening ceremony with dancing and speeches, being able to help out with some workshops and seeing the great changes at Brett’s school building and the navy program there for the kids, touring the navy ship, a small formal dinner party with the Prime Minister of Tonga for a farewell dinner, and the big closing ceremony and feast with 500+ people. While the navy was here they did construction on four primary schools, had doctors, dentists and optometrists at the hospital, veterinarians, held workshops on HIV/Aids, first aid and CPR, food sanitation and nutriton, and much more.

While the navy was here I mostly helped out at MAFF where I work, the navy conducted food sanitation and nutrition classes there, and an animal/veterinarian workshop. Everyday we had women’s groups come in from different villages. Unfortunately, two of the five days there were funerals so attendance was low those days. But I could tell the classes were making a difference and helping, the women learned new ways of sanitizing and cleaning and more about nutrition (they were told to eat half a plate of vegetables at every meal and a lot less meat and root crops). But at least we had some women come to the classes, I think between 30 and 40, and they’ll pass on the information to more people in their village.The food sanitation/nutrition team also left behind materials for us so we can hopefully continue these classes when we do cooking classes. When the veterinarians were here we got Lucky and Simba (our neighbor’s dog) fixed so they can’t have puppies. The veterinarians were also surprised that no one gives any of the animals water to drink here, there were pigs penned up the entire time the vets were here and each day they’d give the pigs some of their bottled water. They also traveled around to a lot of farms on both islands here seeing the bigger animals – cows, pigs, horses, goats. The team at MAFF brought us lots of great food and drinks from their MRE’s (meals ready to eat in bags), and from the ship they brought chips, cookies, salsa, and cereal, it was really nice of them! If any of you are reading this, thanks so much again!

Brett’s school is now almost finished as well, it looks amazing!! It’s basically a new building for classes 4 – 6, the other building for the younger classes is the same but with new paint. On the building the navy fixed they put on a new roof, new walls, new windows, electricity, a new rain water tank, and new paint on all the buildings – white with red trim. There were over 30 people working there everyday, and on Friday the school had a feast for the engineers and navy that worked on the building and gave them some gifts. The soldiers then went around and gave the kids dog tags and played with them.

On Friday night this week there was a farewell dinner at the high school, with just a few select guests invited. The guest of honor was the Prime Minister of Tonga, and there were a hand full of parliament members, secretary of foreign affairs and secretary of education all up from the capital city of Nuku’alofa. Brett and I got a last minute official invitation, along with the other peace corps volunteers Phil and Alicia. It was a nicely printed letter, and the dress was “lounge dress”, we wore our traditional tongan-wear. There were only about 60 guests total! The hall was all decked out in balloons and lots of tapa mats, the navy band was playing, we all got flower leis as we entered, and there was an open bar! They seated us and Phil at the table with the secretary of foreign affairs and some other navy from Australia and the US. I sat next to the captain of one of the Australian ships. They had a program with speeches from the Prime Minister and the Commodore of the US navy, then we had a buffet dinner with really great food – real garlic bread, lobster, seasoned fish, salads, roasted pig, octopus and more. During dinner they had school kids dancing for entertainment. It was really cool to be invited to such an important event, with so few people in attendance and no media – just a personal farewell dinner party put on by the Prime Minister that felt more casual.

(us with the Prime Minister)

After dinner everyone got up and socialized, someone from our table that works with the Prime Minister asked us to come and meet him! Right away when he introduced Brett and I the Prime Minister said “I remember you, we’ve met before!”, he remembered us from our swearing in ceremony in December! Then he asked if we wanted our picture taken, so of course we got our picture taken with him. It was really incredible that the Prime Minister of Tonga knows who we are!! Then we spent some time talking with other Tongans from the government, and taking photos with a lot of the navy that we’ve gotten to know and Tongan government officials. It was pretty fun! We also had a conversation with Captain Cully, the Commodore of the Pacific Partnership mission, the person in charge of it all. He gave speeches at all the big events and was always the guest of honor seated up front. He said he was grateful for all of our help, and liked that we were so involved and friendly with them all. We told him of course we wanted to help out as much as we could and we were just so excited to have so many other Americans and foreigners here working with us. So many of them were interested in what Peace Corps is and asked lots of questions. This is the last country on their tour they’ll have Peace Corps volunteers. After the open bar ran out at the farewell dinner we all moved over to Mariner’s Café for awhile, then a few of us stopped at a new dance club by the wharf. My counterpart at the computer center also just set up a dance club in an old abandoned building right on the ocean by the wharf. We’ll see how long it lasts, it’s good to have something like this for the youth in town. So it ended up being a fantastic night!

On Saturday, there was a closing ceremony at Brett’s School for the Pacific Partnership mission here in Ha’apai. They had speeches again and prayers, gift-giving from both the US navy and the Tongans, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new school building, and then there was a huge feast. By huge, I mean the entire islands of Lifuka and Foa were probably there along with most of the navy ship. We guessed over 500 people. They had two huge tents set up with long tables overflowing with food – the normal piles of wrapped food plates on top of each other and whole roasted pigs every few feet, whole huge lobsters, octopus, chicken, fish, and more. We were seated, then noticed tons of Tongans standing all around the edges and filling up all the cars parked all around the event. This is the first time in Ha’apai I felt like if I wanted to find someone here at the feast I might not be able to in the crowd! They had lots of dancing again from the school kids during the feast, and the navy band and the Weslyn school band played music. This was by far the biggest feast I’ve seen in Tonga, bigger than the church conferences. We went to Mariner’s last night, the last time it will be this busy. It will feel really empty now after the ship leaves today.

In animal news, our neighbor’s dog, Kimone, just had her puppies last night! I think there are about 6 of them, it’s hard to tell – they’re all huddled up under our back stairs. And the piglet our neighbors gave us, Ifo (delicious), was stolen along with another piglet. We’re guessing Ifo ended up on the feast tables today, hundreds of piglets were killed and roasted for this feast.

Some other big news, we leave for Brisbane, Australia next week on Thursday! We go to Nuku’alofa for a few days, leaving on Tuesday then on to Australia. We’re going for medical, Brett needs to get his leg looked at, it shouldn’t be anything serious but they don’t have an MRI here in Tonga so they have to send him out of country. And I’m going along as well paying my own way. So we’ll have a little bit of a vacation there for around two weeks – we’ll see how long we’re there after the test results. I’m really excited to get back there – I studied abroad for a semester just north of Brisbane on the Sunshine Coast. Hopefully we’ll have time to get up there and down to the Gold Coast. It feels weird leaving again so soon after our New Zealand trip last month. It felt pretty sad coming back here after our New Zealand trip with my family, and now it feels a little sad leaving Ha’apai since so many things are just getting started - my Internet café, I’m missing the first women’s group meeting with MAFF and just started working with my counterpart there, I won’t be able to start computer classes until we get back, and Brett’s school was just re-done and his library. But I am really looking forward to the restaurants and hot showers again! And we’ll just pick up where we left off here, hopefully they’ll be able to keep the Internet café open while I’m gone.

There are more new photos in the link to the left. Our next post might be from Australia!

*Here are a few related links, the first is our local news coverage from Matangi news, the next is a blog from Pacific Partnership following their continuing travels on to the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands, and the last link is to the navy's site about the Pacific Partnership.

http://www.matangitonga.to/article/tonganews/outerislands/article_print_20090728_pacific_partnership_mission_haapai.shtml

http://pacificpartnership.wordpress.com/

http://www.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=47204

US city afloat - a tour of the navy ship

2009-07-18T18:02:00.004+13:00

Today all of us Peace Corps volunteers here had the opportunity to tour the US navy ship that's floating about 3 miles off our coast here in Ha'apai, it's here on the pacific partnership tour giving aid to different countries in the south pacific. It's considered US territory once you're on the ship, so for just a little while today we were back home! It's basically a floating city, I think about 3 square miles, with lots of different decks, 6 or 8 I think. And 2 helicopters on board, lots of eating areas, dorm type rooms, and a store where we stocked up on tons of really good american food - cheddar and feta cheese, ranch dressing, corn chips and salsa, beef jerky, little debbie cakes and more. It's funny we actually had some American cash here, just in case an American store happened to float up to our little island! We also got to tour the main control room and engine room which was really cool to see, it was a huge ship!! They even had drinking fountains on board, which we took advantage of, we haven't seen that in a long time here. They also had American beer, stored in their special weapons room since it wasn't being used on this tour. It was a great day, we're really happy the navy let us take a tour of the ship.

The ants come marching one by one... US Navy has arrived!!

2009-07-15T16:29:00.008+13:00

It's been a busy couple of days here in Ha'apai, the US Navy has arrived for their humanitarian Pacific aid mission. There are about 200 of them, US, Australian and New Zealand navy, and some civilians they recruited as doctors or different specialists. They are doing construction on some of the government schools in Ha'apai, doing medical, dental, and optometry clinics and giving away hundreds of eyeglasses and toothebrushes, doing clinics on first aid, CPR, nutrition, food sanitation, and they also have a team of veterinarians. So it's crazy with all these things going on here, and they're here for two whole weeks in Ha'apai! They also have smaller teams going out to three of the outer islands.They came on Monday, it was storming and rainy out and they just unloaded equipment. Then yesterday we had the big opening ceremony at the high school, with the commadore of the US Navy as the special guest along with one other navy official, and a few Tongans on stage in chairs covered in tapa cloths. It was reallly well decorated with lots of mats and tapa cloths covering the stage and floor, and chairs set up on the sides, the middle was covered in mats for the school kids to sit on. They had some opening speeches, the commadore spoke about their pacific aid mission, and two schools did ta'alunga dances with Sara and Alicia, peace corps volunteers. At the end they had the navy band playing and all the kids were dancing around with them.

For these next couple of weeks the navy is here I'm going to mostly be helping out at MAFFF (ministry of agriculture, forestry, food and fisheries) where I work. The navy is holding clinics there for the veterinarians and for food sanitation and nutrition with the local farmers and women's groups in different villages. I'll help with any cultural information and a little translation if needed. I had to explain some things to the navy this morning - they had all our Tongan staff together and asked for their input and what they wanted to learn right away. And of course, in group settings and with foreigners Tongans are shy to speak up on their opinions and defer to the eldest or person of the highest level. So they were all quiet and deffered to the officer in charge of MAFFF. We'll also get our dog Lucky fixed so she won't have puppies, she followed me there this morning to the informational meeting and the US navy people loved her and were playing with her and Simba (neighbor's dog).

After my meeting at MAFFF today I went to Brett's school, the navy was doing their first visit to his school today so they had a whole program planned to welcome them and thank them for doing construction on the school - a new roof and walls, basically a new building! They had flower leis for all the navy people who were there, and tents set up in the rugby field, and a dj/music system. There were some speeches - including Brett giving a thank you speech, tongan music and dancing, and the US Navy band. When the band played all the kids got up and started dancing, then were joined by a lot of the navy so it turned into a big dance party! Then the navy had a helicopter land on the rugby field, and the kids all got to take turns getting into the helicopter and looking around in it! They loved it.

The other huge news is that we've opened the Internet cafe at the Ha'apai Training Center I've been working at!! It's amazing that we got this accomplished, and the Internet's running fast. Today was the first day we put up a big painted sign and opened, we've had about ten customers already and a lot of the navy wants to use it. We also have wireless so people can bring in laptops, which is what I'm doing.

So it has been a busy couple of days, and will be busy until the end of next week!! But it's really exciting seeing all the work being done and being able to be a part of it all helping out where we can. It's really crazy seeing so many palangis - foreign people in our little town of Pangai. Our local restaurant/bar was packed last night with uniformed navy men and a few women.

A Day with the Women

2009-07-08T10:03:00.002+13:00

I usually don't spend all day at my job at MAFFF (ministry of agriculture, forestry, fisheries and food), but since there usually isn't much going on that they need my help with I decided to stay longer this time and help with whatever they were doing. And it's almost always just the women in the office, the men are usually out in the bush or fixing machinery or vehicles. So when Elaise, the women-in-development manager, went out front and started weeding and gardening I offered to help. But of course, since I'm a palangi (white person) and Tongans don't think palangis do any type of labor work or don't think they can, they told me to sit and have a rest. I knew I'd have to fight this, I knew that if I tried to do more of this type of work or whatever they were doing they'd respect me more and it might break some of the stereotypes they have about foreign women. It gets old hearing them telling us to always just have a rest or offering us chairs to sit on when everyone else is sitting on the floor. I don't want to be held up above others. So when the other two women in the office went out with Elaise to do weeding as well, I just followed them, watched for a few seconds, and mimicked what they were doing. And of course the women laughed at me, made jokes, and asked if I'd ever weeded before, all in good fun. And so our long, hot morning began weeding and gardening, and talking and laughing. Tongans laugh a lot and like to share stories or gossip, and they often make fun of each other joking around. So I felt like I was getting closer to these women. A lot of the conversation was in Tongan so I was pretty lost, but once in awhile I'd catch some words or phrases and figure out what the conversation was about, and contribute what I could. Other times one of the women would translate to me what they'd just talked about and we'd then talk about it in English. Then for lunch one of them went and got chicken, another person had brought over some huge cooked yams, we had coconuts cut open for drinks, and I went and got the banana bread I'd made earlier. While we were waiting for the food to be done they were saying how much they like Americans because they always try the Tongan food, and don't make fun of the Tongan people - they said people from some other countries won't try the food and make fun of the island people here. Then before I had a chance, they'd already piled tons of food on my plate, more than I could ever eat. I protested saying I'd never eat it all, but they told me to bring some back to Brett for lunch. One of the women, Lola, said she was trying to loose some weight, and that's why she wasn't eating the chicken skin or fat. Another woman then grabbed all the chicken fat and skin off Lola's plate and soaked up all the fatty juice while she ate it all - for many Tongans the fat is the best part. And all the eating as always was done with our hands, leaving them all greasy. I left that day with dirt-filled fingernails and greasy hands, but a feeling of accomplishment.

Independence Day

2009-07-05T11:57:00.004+13:00

We celebrated the 4th of July here with a bonfire, roasting hot dogs on our beach, with people from five different countries including a few of the US Navy. I'd gotten some of those pop-me's in Nuku'alofa, where you pull the string and it shoots out confetti . (I was just there for a few days for a PC volunteer meeting). So that was our fireworks. The neighbor kids loved them, and we had them draw some flags for decorations, combinations of Tongan and US flags. When we explained it was our American Independence Day they kept thinking we were talking about the movie - Independence Day. I also spent part of the day floating out on the ocean from our beach on the new air mattresses my parents brought over when they visited, it's very relaxing!

Winter Birthday

2009-06-28T13:06:00.004+13:00

It was my birthday on Friday, the first time I've had a "winter" birthday!! But it was still probably in the 70's and sunny, and we spent the afternoon on the beach by our house. Then met up with friends at Mariner's for dinner and drinks, the staff sang happy birthday for me, and we had cake later back at the house. It was a fun night, but different to be in another country away from family and friends back home. For my birthday present Brett wrote a song for me on his guitar. And the most unique present, in the photo below, was a huge ufi (yam) from our neighbors!!
We also had some visitors stay with us for a few nights this last week, two volunteers from Vava'u and one from Eua here on vacation during the school break. It's always fun to hear from volunteers in different parts of Tonga, the island groups are all so unique from each other. These volunteers were surprised at the lack of things available here in Ha'apai, but really enjoyed our beaches.

Yesterday we ran into one of the US Navy people here getting things ready for their July humanitarian visit (13th - 25th). There will be about 100 US Navy people here, they're doing a tour of different countries in the Pacific helping with different projects, medical, and dental. In Tonga they decided to focus on Ha'apai (maybe we're seen as the most needy or most isolated), and they're going to renovate and fix different government schools and water tanks, and they're bringing in doctors, dentists and optometrists to set up clinics and workshops. I heard they're bringing in thousands of pairs of glasses, and toothbrushes. They also have a veterinarian so we'll get Lucky our dog fixed. It will be crazy having so many palangis (foreigners) in our small islands here, the town will be crawling! It will be fun to see what they're doing and to be able to help out. I like that the US Navy is sending in people to these types of countries to help out, and that they're not giving out ANY money. Everything is brought in for doing medical and dental clinics, and all the equipment and everything for the projects at the schools. And all the projects they're doing with medical, food sanitation, dental, etc. they want to be sustainable. Which is a great idea, but will be hard to do. The guy we talked to said that here and in most of the countries they've been to, the local people always ask for money or say they need money to do these kinds of projects or workshops. They're so used to getting foreign aid, and used to this aid just being in the form of money and not service. So it's good to be doing these types of tours/projects to start changing the locals' perceptions on foreign aid.

Brett and I are just having another relaxing Sunday, not doing anything. It's a little overcast and cool out today. I have a few days of work this week, then go to Nuku'alofa on the main island for a volunteer advisory meeting for a few days. And it's almost the 4th of July, we'll have to figure out how to celebrate here.

Economy in Tonga

2009-06-25T11:27:00.002+13:00

With all the economic hardship elsewhere in the world, I decided to write a little about how it's effecting Tonga, or could effect Tonga. The main source of income in Tonga is from overseas remittences from relatives - people sending money home to family in Tonga. They feel pressure to do this, in Tonga everything is shared, nothing is looked at as your own. (which creates some problems- with no sense of ownership things are never taken care of). Especially in the smaller islands. If fishermen go out and catch a lot, they come back the village and divide it up between everyone. If kids have some kind of treat, they share it with any other kids around them. And if there's a huge feast everyone in town will help contribute, even if they don't belong to the church that is having the feast. So the hopes of many families is for their children to move overseas, so that they can make more money and support the family in Tonga. The main export of Tonga is in fact people. I believe about one-third of the Tongan population lives overseas mostly in the US, New Zealand and Australia. And now with the economic situation overseas, many people are getting laid off and a lot of these start at the bottom with things like gardening or laborers etc. which are the kind of jobs many overseas Tongans have. So they aren't able to send as much money back home. Or they are getting deported back to Tonga - things like crime or visa issues that are getting looked at more closely now since other governments don't want to pay for illegal immigrants in prisons. So there are many more deportees in Tonga (some of which have never really lived in Tonga, they moved overseas as children). And in Tonga there aren't many jobs, not enough to support everyone. There are many unemployed youth.

But with all these points against Tonga, it's unlike many other countries. People can live and survive here without a job. Because of the community aspect no one is ever homeless, someone will always take that person in. There aren't even any nursing homes, family members take care of their elderly parents until the end. There are no orphanages, in fact kids often get passed between families - to aunts and uncles or grandparents. And there is definately not a shortage of food, you could never starve in Tonga. They do have a lot of imported food now, but even without that there's an abundance of fish and food in the sea, they grow lots of root crops, and have many different kinds of fruit growing (bananas, papaya, passion fruit, guava, etc). At least that's how it's usually been, but with the younger generation things are changing. This younger generation isn't following the community aspect as much, they don't want the same responsibilities and may also change the reliance on remittences from overseas- some of them aren't sending money home. This is probably somewhat from overseas influence. They all want cars, dvd's, new music, cell phones, and things like that. Which means they need money, and want to own their own things and not have to share everything. But can Tonga support all of this growth, with so little jobs? Which brings up the point of globalization - a good thing or a bad thing? It's creating problems, changing cultures, but do we have the right to say no you can't have cars or TV's?

But so much of the overseas influence is still so new, and the Tongans have lived self-reliantly on the land and sea for so long. I think that if overseas remittences stopped coming in and there wasn't much money here in Tonga things would still be fine. They all take care of eachother and have enough food. And there are so many conveniencies that people see as needs now. You don't really need electricity or running water - although everyone wants it. And many of these conveniencies have created more problems - such as imports to Tonga creating garbage they can't handle. You can't have a landfill on an island a mile by a mile in size, you can't export the garbage, so it either gets burned or thrown into the bush or sea.

What puzzles me the most is what happens to all this money coming into Tonga from overseas relatives. It's a HUGE amount that comes in, and sometimes they just send things like TV's or supplies. Western Union and other moneygram companies here are probably making a killing. But Tongans are always saying they have no money. So where does it all go? To the church, possibly. So many organizations and communities here apply for foreign aid, but they have so much money already coming into the country, and the government itself has a lot of money. Being here has really changed my views on foreign aid, seeing the dependency it creates within a population. And they don't need it, they can do things here themselves but don't want to, they expect to get handouts. You even see it with tourists that come to Tonga, people approach them asking for money or school supplies because they think every overseas tourist is rich. (probably because we get a lot of yachties that have money). In Tonga they always go for the easiest way to do things, which in this case is getting money instead of doing the work themselves. Or trying to get a volunteer to do the work for them.

Anyways, I'm rambling on so this is probably enough, it's a complex situation. All I know is you don't need much money to survive in Tonga, peace corps gives every volunteer a salary that's locally comparable and just enough to live off. Our salary is about $300 US a month, or $3600 US a year per person. And it's more than enough to survive on.

Vegetables, Piglets, and other Ha'apai news

2009-06-19T11:33:00.002+13:00

Several things changed here in Ha'apai while we were on vacation. When we left there were no vegetables, and hadn't been almost the entire time we've been here. Now there are tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, cabbage, and white raddish for sale at the market, it's amazing! Some not so great news - when we left our sima vie (giant cement tank) where we get all our rain water for drinking was almost completely full, and now it's completely empty! The pigs got into it in the middle of the night while we were gone, we usually would hear it since it's right outside our bedroom window. But the neighbors didn't hear the water rushing out, and it was empty by morning. So now we share our neighbor's drinking water, and it's dry season so there won't be much more rain to fill our tank. The pigs actually chewed through the pvc pipe where the water comes out of our tank.

More pig news - we found out that our dog, Lucky, and the neighbor's dog, Simba killed one of the neighbor's baby piglets!! That's a horrible crime here in Tonga, if a dog kills a pig they'll usually kill the dog. But Lucky was doing fine when we got back, the neighbor kid even fed and played with her while we were gone. We offered to pay for the killed piglet, but of course our neighbors wouldn't accept any money and said the dogs were playing with the piglet and didn't know what they were doing. And like they said they were going to do since we moved here, they gave us one of the new piglets. Brett picked out a little black girl piglet with a white tail, and when the neighbor kids asked if he named her he said the name is "ifo" which means delicious. They thought that was pretty funny, but really that's what you do with piglets unless you want them to grow and have more piglets.

We also came home to no Internet - the modem is broken in the Fisheries office where we had our home Internet connected to. I wasn't too surprised that it was somehow broken since the Fisheries had managed to ruin a whole computer and needed a new hard drive put in. I'm pretty sure it has to do with the Internet - they just got it a few months ago and don't really know much about viruses and such. I went into the office and one of the workers asked me to look at a form online they were filling out. I scrolled through and it was junk email saying you could win a million dollars and asked for the person's credit card number!! I told them NOT to fill it out and never to give their credit card on a form like that if they didn't know the sender. And the Peace Corps office Internet was down for a few days as well - the bill hadn't been paid again. The power was also out again in my computer center so I'm trying to get that sorted out. But these kind of issues just keep happening here, nothing new.

We had a two day Peace Corps workshop/training on service learning with our counterparts. We'd asked someone to come before vacation, then the day before the workshop found out she was in Nuku'alofa on the main island. Oh well. It was fun though to see the outer island volunteers - Eric and Melanie, and Monica, they leave to go back to their islands today on the boat.

It's also a lot colder here than when we left! It's the winter season now, and it's mostly down in the 70's now which feels really cold when we're used to high humidity and temps in the high 80's.

New photos!

2009-06-18T18:48:00.002+13:00

New photos are posted in the picassa photo link to the left of new zealand, and some new photos in tonga.

Part Three - New Zealand, South Island

2009-06-16T20:04:00.006+13:00

A lot of people say the south island is the best, there was a lot of beautiful scenery and places to see, but I really did like both islands. The north island is really green and lush, and the south is more mountainous.

We started our trip to the south island early Wed. morning to get the ferry from Wellington to Picton on the south island. The ferry was like a cruise ship - it had a movie theater, lots of different seating areas, and restaurants/shops throughout the different levels. We had a breakfast from one of the buffet areas, then sat towards the back of the boat and saw dolphins swimming around in the bay area going into Picton. We got to Picton mid-day, and drove about 20 minutes down to Blenheim where all the wineries are. For lunch we stopped at the Highview Estates winery. It was warm enough so we ate outside on the patio overlooking lines and lines of grapevines/trees. The food was more upscale, I just had some bread and Brett had rabbit. Then the wine tasting began, we tried the wine there, then at Cloudy Bay, Allan Scott, and Saint Clair. The area is known mostly for their savignon blanc, and they had some other white and red wines to try. We bought a few bottles to bring back to Tonga, it was a lot cheaper and better than what we get in Tonga. Afterwards we drove on to Franz Joseph Glacier on the west coast, about an 8 hour drive. For dinner we stopped at Owen River tavern, it was a little restaurant in the middle of nowhere. We huddled around a table by a fireplace and space heaters, it was cold in the mountains! It was dark the whole drive along the west coast, and I slept a lot of it. At one point we stopped to look, and there were piles of rocks all along the road by the ocean, people had piled them up into little towers. We pulled into the Top 10 Holiday Park at Franz Joseph around midnight, this was a really nice park with heated nice bathrooms and Internet.

The next day we slept in a little, then drove into town to find a glacier tour company. We went with the main one in town, it was $97NZ/person for a half-day hike, about 5 hours. My mom decided to stay in town and go to a spa instead after seeing pictures of the hiking up ice carved stairs and climbing ropes, etc. The rest of us went on the hike from 12:30 to 5:30pm. They outfitted everyone with blue raincoats, hiking boots, wool socks, hats/gloves, and spiky clamp-ons for hiking on the glacier. There were about 40 people going on the hike, once we got close to the glacier they split us into four smaller groups. We hiked down a little wooded trail, then came out to a huge river valley full of rocks and could see the glacier in the distance. It was about a 45 minute hike to get up to where the glacier was, then we put on the spiky clamp-ons and hiked up some rocky area until we got to a ladder going up and onto the ice. It was amazing on the glacier, the views were gorgeous and the ice was a blue-ish color. The guide led us all around on the ice on trails carved up and down through the glacier with steps carved into the ice in places, and ropes to hang onto to haul yourself up or down. We’d packed sandwiches and had lunch on top of the glacier. They also led us into some ice caves that were naturally carved. Afterwards we had dinner at the Blue Ice restaurant on the main street, they had good lasagna. Then we drove all the way to Queenstown, about 5 or 6 hours. It was nice doing the driving at night so we’d have the whole day to do other things. I could still see some of the scenery, lots of snow-capped mountains.

The first night in Queenstown we stayed at the Holiday Park, this one wasn’t as nice, the bathrooms weren’t heated and were tiny. On Friday morning we slept in, then the guys all went golfing at Queenstown Golf Club, a championship golf course with mountain views all around on a peninsula on the lake. My mom, Lisa and I had a spa/shopping day. We had full body massages and facials at Body Sanctum in town, and had lunch at Vudu Café. The food there was really good! After the guys were done golfing we looked for a new place to stay that night, and ended up staying at the Crown Plaza hotel in town which was really nice. We had dinner at @Thai, they had good curry dishes there. The next morning we had breakfast at Vudu Café since it was so good the first time we went there, and drove on to Christchurch, our final stop before flying back to Auckland.
On the way out of town we stopped to see the first bungy-jumping place, the AJ Hackett bridge. We watched a lady bungy jump off the bridge there. There was a lot of scenery on the drive - more mountains, and fields of sheep. We stopped at the Church of the Good Shepherd, past Mt. Cook. It’s a cute old stone church on a peninsula on a lake with great mountain views all around. We made it to Christchurch in the evening, checked into a Top 10 Holiday Park in the suburbs, and had dinner at Lone Star. Instead of staying in the camper we rented a cabin, it was only $128NZ and had beds for all of us, but was really cold before we turned on the space heaters. On Sunday we drove into Christchuch and went to the botanical gardens, they were really big and had a conservatory that was pretty, it would be even nicer in the summer time. Then we went to the Arts Center where they have an art fair/market every Saturday and Sunday. This was really fun, there were lots of little booths with food and arts/crafts, and live music that was really good. We thought we’d seen it all but then realized it winded all throughout the campus of buildings at the Arts Center, really pretty European looking courtyards and buildings. After that we walked around and did some shopping, Brett and I bought stuff we wanted to bring back to Tonga, mostly food. We had dinner right next to the Arts Center at Dux Lux where they brew their own beers. That night we switched camping places and stayed in a cabin at the Holiday Park in Spencer, just outside of Christchurch on the beach. So the next morning we got up and drove to look at the beach, stopped at a bakery, then went to return the campervan near the airport. Our flight left in the early afternoon back to Auckland, and we’d made reservations to stay at the Langham hotel again so spent more time in the hot tub there. For dinner we went downtown and ate at Tony’s Lord Nelson near the sky tower.

We all flew out our separate ways on Tuesday - my parents on to Australia to the barrier reef for a few days, Lisa and Adam back to Colorado, and me and Brett back to Tonga. My parents had an early morning flight, so we spent a little more time with Lisa and Adam shopping in town before leaving for the airport. It was hard to get on a plane back to Tonga after this trip! We stayed in Nuku’alofa for two nights before coming back to Ha’apai. Lucky, our puppy, was very happy to see us. The Internet wasn’t working at our house or the peace corps office when we got back. And our sima vie (where we get all our drinking water) was completely dry. It was full when we left, the pigs got into it while we were gone in the middle of the night, the neighbors didn’t hear the water rushing out and by morning it was empty. Luckily there are a few other half-full sima vies around our neighbors’ houses we can use. Other than these few things everything is good back here in Ha’apai, and we have peace corps training here for a couple of days so we get to see the outer island volunteers.

Recommendations for those traveling to New Zealand:
Top places we’d recommend - Franz Joseph Glacier, Queenstown, Blenheim wineries, and Raglan. If you’re driving, I’d recommend looking at your schedule and giving yourself more time. We spent a lot of time in the campervan driving, but we saw a lot in the 12 days we were there.

Auckland - if you can, the Langham is worth the splurge to stay at a 5-star hotel and it has a shuttle service to the main street in town. Devonport was a cute town to visit, the ferry ride is very cheap ($10NZ/person round trip), and you get great views of the skyline from the water. The Recycle Boutique just off Queen Street was a great place to buy good used clothes for cheap, this is where I found my winter coat.

Bay of Islands - kayaking is fun and cheap at $10NZ/hour, and Abbey Caves was a fun stop on the drive between Auckland and Paihia, it was a free cave to see glow warms, a little bit of a hike.

Raglan - Wainui Reserve is a pretty beach, and the Raglan Surf School has good prices for rentals/lessons

Lake Taupo - DeBrett’s was a good campground with hot springs right there at the resort, and they can book fishing trips or other activities for you.

Wellington - the Capitol was a great restaurant, a little more spendy but worth it. Halswell Lodge was a good, central place to stay and was pretty cheap, they have motel and apartment options.

Blehheim wineries - All the wineries we visited were good - Cloudy Bay, Allan Scott and Saint Clair, and Highview Estate had great views for lunch. At the info center in town you can get a map of all the wineries. If we’d had more time it looked like they had nice places to stay here.

Franz Joseph Glacier - the glacier hike was amazing, worth spending the money, plan a half-day for this. The Holiday Park here was one of the best we stayed at - nice, heated bathrooms and views of the glacier.

Queenstown - Vudu café was my favorite café/lunch place, great food and very busy. The golfing the guys did sounded really good, a championship course - Queenstown Gold Club. @ Thai restaurant had good food. I didn’t like the Holiday Park here, small and cold bathrooms.

Christchurch - if you’re there on a Saturday or Sunday definitely check out the fair at the Arts Center, lots of food and arts/crafts, and music. The botanical gardens were really pretty also.

Part Two - New Zealand, North Island

2009-06-16T19:41:00.004+13:00

New Zealand trip outline:
Days - 12
Places visited - Auckland, Bay of Islands, Raglan, Lake Taupo, Wellington, Blenheim/wineries, Franz Joseph glacier, Queenstown, and Christchurch
Active pursuits - kayaking, surfing, fishing, glacier hiking, golfing
Miles covered - approx. 1800

We left for New Zealand 5/28, Thursday morning. It was a great feeling to get out of Tonga for the first time since we came last October. We love it here, but really needed a break. When we stepped out of the Auckland airport the weirdest feeling was the air - it was so thin and crisp, unlike our hot muggy air all the time we’ve gotten used to. Walking through the airport I also noticed the soft cushy feeling of carpet I hadn’t felt for so long. And everyone was whizzing around, hurriedly trying to get to their destination. I guess we’ve gotten used to the slower pace in Tonga, no one ever speed walks here. Our first two nights of the trip in Auckland we stayed at a five-star hotel, the Langham, it was amazing. We all went into town and shopped a little, it already felt really cold and knowing the south would be colder I found a cheap winter coat at a thrift store and a warm fleece at the Warehouse. Lisa’s boyfriend flew in later that first night, and we went out to eat at Davinci’s right across the street from the hotel. The next morning we had the buffet breakfast at the hotel, it was delicious! I filled up my plate as full as I could and stuffed my purse with leftovers. Then we did some more shopping, and caught the ferry to Devonport, a cute little town on a peninsula across from Auckland. We walked around there and had lunch on a sidewalk patio. Then spent time in the hotel’s hot tub before going back to the waterfront in town for dinner at Foxes Irish Pub, the food there was really good, I had a salami and cheese melted sandwich.
On Saturday, the third day of our 12 day trip, we picked up our huge campervan and drove up to the Bay of Islands, about 4 hours north of Auckland. The campervan was really nice inside, with a table sitting area in front and another in the back with a kitchen, and had three beds (Lisa or Adam took turns sleeping on the floor on a mattress but it fit all six of us pretty well). The ride was really bumpy, the vehicle was so huge that it swung all around. But it worked good for getting all of us around, and for sleeping in. On the way up to Bay of Islands we stopped in a little town for lunch and had really good pizza, and we stopped at Abbey Caves just before dusk. It was a little hike down to the caves, but was worth it. Inside the cave there were lots of glow worms, they look like little specks on the top of the cave that glow a neon green/blue. The drive up was really pretty, lots of fern trees and lush tropical looking forests and hills. We pulled in after dark to the Beach View Holiday Park and stayed in the campervan that night. The Holiday Parks were pretty nice, and cheap at $15 to $20 NZ a person throughout New Zealand. They all had hot showers, laundry area, common kitchen area and plug-ins for campervans. The next morning we got up and us, Lisa and Adam hiked a little trail from the campsite towards town with pretty views of the Bay and some islands and beach area. Then we met up with my parents in the campervan and drove into town, Paihia, it was a cute touristy town. We found a place along the bay to rent kayaks for only $10NZ/hour per person and all went out kayaking, Brett and I did a double kayak. We made it out to a little island then turned back as it started to rain a little, but it was fun. We had lunch in the campervan on the side of the road, then headed south to Raglan, on the west coast of the north island. It’s a well-known town for surfing. On the way we stopped at a pretty waterfall. Since it’s fall now in New Zealand a lot of the trees were changing colors- red, yellow, oranges, and loosing their leaves. It was pretty and nice to see a change of season since we don’t really get that here. In this trip and coming back to Tonga we’ve had three seasons in just a couple weeks - fall, winter to summer!

We got to Raglan around 9 or 10:00pm and were starving since we couldn’t find any little towns with restaurants open that late - it was Sunday night. We checked into a hotel that someone had recommended to us in Auckland, called the Palm View motel, we got the last unit. It was a one-bedroom with kitchen and living area, and a couple beds in the living area so we stayed in there with Lisa and Adam and my parents in the campervan. We ran into town and found a restaurant on the main street, they had really good burgers. All over New Zealand we realized they don’t heat places like we do in the States. A lot of restaurants and stores weren’t even heated, or had little space heaters, and they don’t heat hallways or bathrooms sometimes. In the restaurant in Raglan they had those pole heaters you usually see outside, inside the restaurant to heat it. Our campervan also only heated the front cabin, and not the back area where we all sat. So a lot of the trip we felt a little cold. On Monday morning we headed towards the beaches just north of Raglan, and Lisa, Adam and my dad all rented surf boards from Raglan Surf School for really cheap. I couldn’t believe they made it out into the ocean, it was freezing!! My mom, Brett and I were bundled up in winter coats and hats on the beach watching them in their wetsuits surfing. The beach was really pretty, darker sand and really wide beach area, and big hills behind it- we were at Wainui Reserve. Afterwards we went back and had lunch in Raglan at a cheap cafeteria style place, then headed to Lake Taupo in the middle of the north island. We stayed that night in our campervan at DeBrett’s resort/camping where they had hot springs pools, spent time in the hot springs then went out to eat in town.

That next day in Lake Taupo the guys went out fishing on a boat in the lake for trout, and Lisa, my mom and I shopped around town and had crepes and coffee. The views around the huge lake were pretty, snow-capped mountains. The guys came back with three rainbow trout which we later cooked up on the roadside on our way out of town. They turned out really good - steam cooked them with brown sugar and lemon pepper. We drove all the way down to Wellington that afternoon, I think it was around 6 hours or so, we got to the coast after dark. We stayed at Halswell Lodge in Wellington, they had 2-bedroom units with a kitchen. We had dinner at the Capitol just down the street from the hotel, it was one of the best meals, really gourmet looking plates. I had a ravioli and Brett had risotto, it was nice to not have to cook meals and eat out!

Part One - Family visit to Ha’apai, Tonga

2009-06-16T19:27:00.002+13:00

We’re back in Ha’apai now so I have time to write about the last three weeks when my parents and sister visited here in Tonga, and our New Zealand trip! Finally - the Internet has been down here for the last few days! I'm going to write this in three parts - first the family trip to Tonga, then the north island of New Zealand, and then the south island of our New Zealand trip.

The family visit to Tonga was a lot of fun, and it’s really great they got to see our house and work places and see what our day to day life is like with all the dogs, chickens, pigs, neighbor kids, etc. The first day they came in the afternoon, and I had to finish up my last computer class so they came and watched some of that. I handed out certificates to the two ladies that finished the course, they were really excited and will be joining the next class I teach. Then the second day the family was here, on a Friday, we got up early and got a ride to Uoleva island and stayed at Serenity Beaches for one night in two fales (little houses). It’s a gorgeous resort with cute fales that have bamboo shades so you can open up the whole little building, and a cute shower attached to a tree in the back with a bathroom. There’s no electricity on the island, but there were lots of candles all around the resort. We hung out on the beach down a little ways from the place, where there was a sandy swimming area and some coral reefs to snorkel in, the water was crystal clear but a little cold. The reefs on Uoleva are my favorite for snorkeling, there’s so much huge, healthy coral and tons of fish. Then we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening in a little hut filled with pillows and hammocks nearby, just hanging out. Brett chopped open some coconuts for drinks. For dinner they prepared an umu (underground cooking), with some chicken and fish wrapped in leaves, root crops, and watermelon.

The next day Lisa was sick with heat exhaustion so we took it easy, got back to our house in the afternoon and we went out to Mariner’s with my parents for dinner. They got to meet a lot of the people we hang out with here - other peace corps volunteers, Japanese volunteers, and the owners of Fins ‘n Flukes. On Sunday Brett and I dressed up my family in Tongan-style clothes - my sister and mom got to wear kiekies (woven designs in a belt that hang down), and my dad wore a tupenu (wrap skirt) with a ta’ovala (woven mat wrapped around the waist). It was fun for them to be able to see this Tongan tradition and the church service. We walked around town and showed them the liku (wild) side of the island.

On Monday we biked up to Foa, the island north of us, to the beaches at the north end. It’s a pretty ride, and they got to see lots of villages and bush on the way up. We had lunch at Matafonua, it rained a little on the way back but wasn’t too bad. On Tuesday we spent the morning and early afternoon snorkeling with Brian and Sabine - Fins ’n Flukes. We got to see three really pretty reefs, the water was pretty choppy so I was a little sick. Then we had to do some laundry before leaving, so the family got to see how we wash our clothes and hang them to dry. Brett and I made a big dinner for our last night in Ha’apai with them - pasta with a garlic sauce, salad with a honey-mustard dressing, and my home-made bread that I just learned how to make thanks to Eric’s recipe. Yes, I’m baking my own bread now, unbelievable!

On Wed. morning, 5/27, we left for Nuku’alofa on the main island. We had to spend one night there since our flight to New Zealand was early on Thursday morning. We showed my family around town, spent time at the market so they could buy souvenirs, had my favorite drink, vanilla lattes at Friends café, and hung out on the ocean front before eating dinner at Emerald’s Chinese restaurant. We ran into a lot of peace corps volunteers around town. After seeing our place in Ha’apai and the main island and capital city, my parents and sister said they’re really happy about where we live and that we didn’t live in the capital city, there’s a huge difference between them. My mom had an image of a cute Mediterranean or Caribbean type city, which Nuku’alofa definitely is not, it’s more trashy. In Ha’apai we have pretty beaches all to ourselves, a quiet, lazy town and more culture. I’ve also heard that outer island volunteers are often the happiest volunteers (we’re considered an outer island here).

Freezing in New Zealand

2009-06-06T12:37:00.003+13:00

We're currently in Queenstown on the south island, the six of us (brett and I, my parents, sister and her boyfriend) have been buzzing around in a big campervan! So far we've been through Auckland, Bay of Islands, Lake Taupo, Raglan all on the north island, and on the south Blenheim/winery area, Franz Joseph glacier and now Queenstown for a couple of nights. Today we're heading up to Christchurch for a few nights, then back to Auckland where we fly out all our seperate ways - us back to Tonga, my parents on to Australia and my sister and her boyfriend home to Colorado. It's been a lot colder than I thought it would be here, we've bought some warmer clothes to keep warm. The scenery is beautiful everywhere here. People thought we were crazy to cover so much of the north and south islands in just 12 days, it's been a lot of driving for sure but we've been able to see a lot. More to come with photos when we get back to Tonga!

The Family has Arrived!!

2009-05-24T20:27:00.007+13:00

My parents and sister got here to Ha'apai, Tonga on Thursday, basically on their own private jet (they were on the smallest plane to Ha'apai, it was just them and the pilot and my dad got to sit co-pilot). We greeted them with flower leis, and have been relaxing, catching up and hanging out at our place, and at the island south of us at a really nice resort. Today we got them all dressed up in the Tongan styles for church, and tomorrow we're going out on a boat snorkeling. More to come later, we'll be leaving this week for a couple weeks vacation with them in New Zealand so we probably won't post again until after that trip.

Voyaging the South Pacific Seas

2009-05-15T10:21:00.012+13:00

We never really know what our week will be like here, for example in the middle of this week we had a little oceanic adventure visiting some outer islands! It was our first longer trip on the ocean here, we went with a few Peace Corps staff that were going for a site visit to the outer islands here to see Monica, Eric and Melanie. It turned out to be three staff members, us and Alicia, and four kids/neice of some of the staff including two babies on the boat. The boat was the Catholic church's boat, it was a pretty good size. (yes most churches have their own boats here, the Morman church has the fastest boat). The trip started out fine, then between the Lifuka and Ha'afeva island groups, when there was mostly just open ocean, the waves got huge and we rolled over them in big up and down motions like a teeter-totter. I would've been fine if I hadn't gotten up during the trip so I was sick, and another lady was sick almost the whole time. And to make it worse, after I started feeling sick I couldn't get up or move around and happened to be sitting in the hot sun so I got pretty sunburned as well.

(photos - on the boat ride in to Tungua)

We thought we'd be going to both Tungua and Ha'afeva, but Eric and Melanie were on Monica's island, Tungua, for church drama practice so we were able to visit them all in one stop. The trip from our island to Tungua took four hours, I think I heard it's only about 20 or 30 miles, but the local boats are so slow. The scenery was a lot different around Tungua and Ha'afeva, from shore we could see about 10 other islands, some big, some tiny little clumps of coconut trees. And they were higher up, rockier than our flat little island. It was really pretty with the aqua water and reefs, and little islands dotting the sea. Kao and Tofua volcanoes are a lot closer to this island group, so they looked huge on the horizon compared to how we see them on Lifuka. When we got closer to Tungua you could see how shallow the water all around was, and this island doesn't have a wharf. So the captain called out to one of the small fishing boats close to shore to come pick us up, we all jumped between boats, then pulled up to land. Monica's house was really nice, it was an old army medical station, so it's pretty big and was kept up nice. She doesn't have any running water or electricity. Her house is probably the second closest to the ocean after ours, she has a grass lawn between the house and ocean with a bunch of horses roaming around on it. And there weren't really any roads, it's a tiny island, they just use footpaths between houses and buildings through the grassy fields. It was really nice to see Monica, Eric and Melanie, and was too bad that we had such a long boat ride and could only stay for a couple of hours. We had to leave by 3:00 to get back before it was pitch dark - the boats here don't have lights and nothing is lit up coming through the reefs or into the wharf. So travel really depends on the weather, tide and time of day.

(photos - inside Monica's house, and looking from the beach at Monica's house)

I fell asleep on the way back, woke up an hour into the trip and realized we were moving pretty slow. They said there was something wrong with the engine, so we had to turn back to Ha'afeva. Luckily we were really close to Ha'afeva when this happened, if it had been between island groups we could've ended up drifting! So they pulled the boat in close to the wharf, then we sat there for over an hour and a half bobbing in the waves, waiting for the tide to come in so the water would be deep enough for our boat to pull up to the little wharf. I'm sure it was quite a spectacle seeing three palangis (us and Alicia), and the others getting stranded there. Eric and Melanie's school principle recognized us from a training he'd come to, and brought us all to the catholic house on the island to wait for Eric and Melanie to get back. The younger girl that was one of the staff's neice suggested we do a prayer, and she sang a really pretty song. Then one of the Peace Corps staff did a prayer, and got pretty emotional. It was probably scary for them breaking down at sea with the little kids on board. It's not often, but once in awhile people end up drifting at sea - engine problems or more often they forget to bring enough petrol for the trip. I can't imagine going out to the open sea and not remembering to bring enough gas, but I guess it happens.
(photo - Ha'afeva island, Eric and Melanie's white house on the left)

It turned out good though, we got to see Ha'afeva and Eric and Melanie's house and spend more time with them- us and Alicia spent the night at their house. Their house is really cute, they say it's like a dollhouse and it is, with the pink trim and it's set up really nice. And they have a cute little puppy they named America, almost all of us here have puppies now! We sat and talked, and had pancakes for dinner. The next morning the staff had told us to meet at the wharf at 5:00am. We were pretty doubtful the boat would be fixed and everyone would be ready to leave that early, but we set an alarm and a couple people went and checked a little after 5:00am. And of course, it was pitch dark, the boat was still anchored far out, and no one was there. So they went to check with the staff, and they were all still sleeping! Tongans don't have the same concept of time as we do, they just tell you a time to meet but it probably won't be true, things happen when they happen here and I think it's foreign to them that we always want to know times - when things will begin or end etc. So the staff said they'd check with the boat captain, we heard we wouldn't leave until 8:00 am so went back to sleep. Then one of the kids came to the house at 7:00 am saying we need to leave now. We knew it would probably still be awhile, so went to see Eric and Melanie's school and classroom, and walked around town a little. Their village is set up really nice- everyone has fenced in, well-kept yards and there are two main streets. We got down to the wharf, and the others still weren't there but this time the boat was, we ended up leaving around 8:00. The three hour ride back was incredibly rocky, but this time I didn't get up or move around at all so I was fine.

It was an eventful, but really fun trip to get to see our friends out there and the islands and villages they live in! I was happy to get back to our place here, and to be on land again. Luckily we got back in time so I was able to prepare and teach my community computer class again, this time to two students - the church conference is taking priority over everything else for most people. At this time next week my parents and sister will be here for a week, then we're all off to New Zealand for two weeks!

Yachting

2009-05-11T09:15:00.004+13:00

A perfect sunday - yachting in the south pacific to a deserted island with perfect sandy beaches, and two volcanoes on the horizon. That's how we spent our mother's day sunday here in Tonga, Happy Mother's Day back home today! The couple that owns Mariner's restaurant here has this yacht, before coming to Tonga they sailed the world from Africa to the Caribbean to the south pacific. Pretty amazing, it's great sailboat but I can't imagine spending over 40 days crossing an ocean without ever seeing land! Brett and I and Grant got an invitation for this yachting trip late on Sat. night, you never know here what will come up the next day! For lunch on Uoleva we had really delicious red snapper fish, and hung out on the beach with some coconut drinks before heading back with Brian and Sabine who had dropped off some tourists on their boat at a resort there. Most of the puppies that were there in April are gone now, probably given away to people. Our friends took home one of the last puppies, really cute and easy-going.

On Saturday we had a few people over and grilled fish and potatoes over a bonfire on the beach, it's nice now with the weather a little cooler. The Church of Tongan conference has also begun, music started blasting on Friday from their big tent and church hall. It seriously went all day Friday and Saturday from early morning to evening, and I'm surprised we can hear it as loud as we can at our house since the church is half-way across town. We went and watched some dance competitions at their church tent on Saturday morning, they were all decked out in flower leis and fancy ta'ovalas. And there have been tons of people around town, yesterday they ran out of bread at the bakery really early but luckily our friends had already picked us up a loaf, which we later ended up splitting with our neighbors since they hadn't gotten any bread. It's amazing how much we end up sharing and receiving things from our neighbors.

We've been busy with work this last week. But this time for my computer class only three students showed up instead of the original five, and we'd even had five new students sign up the day before so there should have been ten. I really don't understand why Tongans sign up for something if they're not even planning on attending. They know the date and time, they signed up the day before the class. For the next class in June we'll have to figure out how to do some things differently. I was happy that three students were there and really happy to be learning about computers, one even showed up with a broken hand, for a typing class! And two showed up early to practice before class started. But my counterparts didn't show up, it was just me for the entire class so I'll have to make sure that doesn't happen again which might be hard this week with the church conference going on. Brett has been helping his school set up a new computer and printer, and set up report cards with photos of each student.

Locals have been fishing more now for things other than fish - turtles and sharks. Our friend Grant told us they've been catching a lot of sharks lately on his island so he's been eating shark. And our neighbors recently had a turtle umu - cooking it underground whole in it's shell. Almost everyday we can see people fishing out from our beach - usually snorkeling with a net or spears. And vegetables will be coming back into season soon, tomatoes are growing right now at the high school's garden and we just got some cabbage from them. There was an art fair there over the weekend, with really cheap handicrafts and some produce.

At the end of next week my parents and sister will be here for a week, then we all head to New Zealand for a couple of weeks!

New photos will be posted on the link to the left.

Wahoo = really big fish

2009-05-04T09:24:00.007+13:00

On Saturday the rugby tournaments in Ha'apai began, the season runs until sometime in July with games in Pangai every Saturday and teams from all the different villages and some of the closer outer islands - Lofanga, Ha'ano Foa, and Uiha. Our peace corps friend Grant is on his island's team so we went to watch that game. It was a pretty big deal, with lots of spectators, a tent for all the officials/game board, a dj with music during half-time, announcers, and a marching band.

That night our dive shop friends from Fins 'n Flukes called to say they had caught some fish and to see if we wanted to host a dinner party with it. I'd expected the normal couple of reef fish, but when they got to our place they had a huge bowl full of already cut up fish slabs, and the fish they'd caught were two wahoos about 3 feet long each!! They had brought out a german tourist who caught the fish so he came to enjoy the feast as well, we had about 9 people total for dinner. The fish fillets were huge, Brian, Brett and Phil prepared them fried on the stove top, some sashimi raw fish, and some ota ika - raw fish in coconut cream with lime juice, onions and tomatoes. We also had a fire out on the beach and roasted potatoes out there, some of our neighbor kids were out there too singing different Tongan songs, most to the tune of fera jacques. One song was head and shoulders to that tune in Tongan, another was "where is jesus, he's not here, he's risen" to that same tune. We'll have to have more bonfires on the beach now that the weather is cooling off a little.

On Sunday it was a Tongan holiday - Faka me (children's day). Many of the Tongans were up all night preparing food for the feasts and mats to wear or flower leis. We were invited up to Alicia's village along with Phil to go to their church service and feast, and planned on going to our neighbor's weslyn church in the afternoon and evening for their feast. All the kids and youth were dressed in all white, with really intricate, fancy ta'ovalas (mats) wrapped around them, and flower leis. The church service was full of mostly just the kids and youth, and some of the men - most of the women were still preparing food for the feast. During the service the kids went up front at different times and recited bible verses or song verses. Instead of talking in a normal voice most shouted very loudly in their little kid voices, it was pretty funny. Alicia's dog kept sneaking into the church during the service as well. Aftewards we all went to the church hall next door for the feast, the tables were covered in layers of food - whole roasted pigs, plates of hot dogs, chicken and fish, noodles, potato salad, watermelon, cake with custard pudding, cans of pop, and baskets full of bags of chips, candy, apples, pears, and more pop. And as usual at these events, there were no napkins, only a spoon for silverware, and no plate settings - you just started eating out of any of the plates heaped in front of you on the table. There were speeches as normal during the whole event, Phil stood up and gave a short speech in Tongan on behalf of all of us peace corps there, thanking them for having us. When we got back home our neighbors called us over and handed us a huge plate of leftover food, they said they had thought the feast would be in the evening but after the morning service all the kids wanted to have the feast for lunch so they did. We still went to the 3:00 service to see the kids recite some bible verses, sing, and act out some skits, but left early since it was still not even close to being done at 4:00. It was a busy day, full of food and church activities.

Today we woke up, opened our back door and saw Tofua, the volcanic island, smoking more than I've seen it smoke before. We could see a big white cloud of smoke coming up from the volcano. That means there could be an earthquake soon. Most of the earthquakes are so small we don't feel them, we didn't even feel the last big earthquake!

Brett is swinging in the hammock in our living room like a little kid right now, we just had fish and onion rings for dinner and stopped up at Mariner's earlier to meet some friends. We walked into Mariner's expecting to just see the usual crew but found a lot of other palangis as well - the yachties are just starting to arrive, the first yacht came in this afternoon! So it's the very beginning of the tourist season, and there are also already more people in town for the church of Tonga conference that's happening next week. It's always fun meeting and talking to new people, usually at Mariner's since it's the one restaurant in town. Most of them have been traveling for a long time through many countries and it's interesting to hear some of their stories, and they're usually curious about hearing what we do here as well.

Teaching adults computers

2009-04-30T19:50:00.004+13:00

Well, I didn't think I'd be teaching computer classes in the Peace Corps, but here I am having just finished teaching my first community computer class today. It has been quite a struggle to get this computer/training center up and running, but finally we're seeing some success! It has had a long history of failing, for different reasons including the local counterparts not wanting to work and not carrying on the work being done once Peace Corps volunteers have left, I'm the third volunteer to work at this site.

Last week we had our first registration day for a class of introduction to computers and typing. We have 10 working computers, so 10 spots available for students. The one local radio station has been broken for over a month now, so we just posted up flyers all over town at the stores, post office and bank, advertising the class and registration time. It sounded like there was a lot of buzz and interest in the class, so it was disapointing when only 2 people came to register last week. But then everyday we'd find more and more people who wanted to sign up for the class. So I think it works better to be out in the community and at events where people can approach you about the class, and not have a formal registration. Just yesterday we completely filled up the class, and even had a couple people on a waiting list! This evening was the first class, I was a little nervous since I've never really taught a class before, but I have led meetings at my college's advertising club and have led work meetings before coming here. It's different also when I teach in English here and I'm not exactly sure how much they're understanding me. So it helps that I currently have two Tongan counterparts working with me. It ended up being only five students instead of ten that showed up, but I still think it's a huge success for here in Ha'apai. And we might have more students next week, it's a 5-class session over the next four weeks. They ranged in age from about 20 to 50 years old. Today I covered some basic computer concepts, and we started the typing program. It was really fun seeing how excited some of the Tongans were to be using a computer for the first time, and they were actively participating when I asked questions, which is hard to get participation like that sometimes here in Tonga.

After this first class is done we're going to probably offer the same class again as well as adding on more classes. And probably next week we're getting the Internet connected to start an Internet cafe. Most people in Tonga have relatives overseas, but they don't have Internet in their homes here and there are only a few places to check Internet, so it will be a really useful service to offer for keeping in touch with family and for school research, etc. I've also been doing computer tutorials two days a week now at the computer center, and still helping out at the Youth Congress, so it's been getting pretty busy for me here! Tomorrow is my day off - every Friday. Brett has been working mornings only now at the school, and getting the library set up and helping to get the class 6 kids ready for their big exam in Sept, it determines what secondary school they will attend.

Also, I have a new officer-in-charge (boss) at MAFF. This position was supposed to be filled in Feb. and they prepared for his coming for about a month, getting things ready, and he didn't end up coming. Then last week I saw people cleaning out the house next door and asked what was going on (the whole conversation this time was in Tongan), and found out the new officer-in-charge had just arrived that day and was moving in and starting work! So you never really know when things are going to happen here in Tonga. They just happen. I met with the new boss on Monday and he seems very nice and optimistic about getting things changed for the better at MAFF. He wants me to begin working mostly with the Women in Development and Youth division.

But enough about work. Other happenings here - the weather's been cooling off a little, we can really tell at night and in the mornings it's easier to sleep in a little later. This Sunday is "children's Sunday", something they celebrate in Tonga. There will be a feast of course. And the following Sunday the big church conference for the Church of Tonga begins, a lot of people from overseas and the outer islands are coming into Pangai for this conference, it will last for a week. Many families here will have relatives staying with them, and all the guesthouses in town will be full. The stores will probably run out of supplies and the bakery, so we're going to stalk up next week. There are already no eggs available. But there will be a lot of feasts and festivals/dances during the conference so I'm sure we'll get plenty of food there.

First Aid and Internet

2009-04-26T18:07:00.002+13:00

So we have had internet for about a week now and we have been using it to the fullest. I have been streaming old tv episodes that have aired since we have left in the effort to catch up on tv shows I appreciated the most. To mention a couple, The Office, Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Entourage. Besides Internet, this last week was a busy week. I worked a lot with the class 6 kids at my school on noticing corrections in a paragraph. We worked on noticing things that were incorrect in the paragraph and changing the incorrect word, tense, or punctuation to the correct form. Kate was busy as well with her computer center. She was able to get 6 people signed up for the class she is having next week. It will be a 5 week class, once a week where the students will learn computer basics and typing skills. I think once she has her first class the buzz will start and she will get more people wanting to participate in the class. We also attended a first aid conference this week put on by Red Cross at the local youth congress of Pangai. They had the Ha'apai Island Group Judge attend the conference as a special guest and in addtion to giving the thank you speech at the end of the meeting he address the group in English for about 5 minutes in respect for Kate and I since we were the only non Tongans attending the conference. The conference was put on to inform the local island communities about the importance of first aid and also to train the meeting attendies on first aid practices. The meeting had representatives from outer island as well from our island. The information and training they received will help them not only inform their community about first aid but also to help train and make aware of how first aid can be important in their daily lives. After the meeting ended Kate and I made our way over to Mariner's Cafe and met some other Peace Corps volunteers, JICA volunteers and some local non tongan business owners for a drink. Overall this week was interesting and surprising, just another week in Tonga.

Brett

Ahh, technology

2009-04-21T17:07:00.004+13:00

Just a few minutes ago we got the Internet connected and working at our house!!!! It was an exciting moment, seeing the google page load here at our dining room table. The Fisheries office that I work for next door just got money to get wireless Internet connected in their office, but the signal was too weak to reach our house. So we ran a new cable over to the office (there was an old broken one) and connected it to their router and now we have access to the Internet here! It's very slow right now, we'll see how it runs in the next few days. But it's really nice to have it here and not have to go to the office (even though that's practically next door).

(view from our computer at home)

And I just pulled cookies out of the oven, it's been a good evening. But don't think we're spoiled here now with Internet, we still have freezing cold showers, hard jobs sometimes, and have to cook everything from scratch, etc. Last night we made pizza with the last of our green peppers, and tonight we're making a tomato sauce pasta.

Also today and yesterday my first computer classes with the employees from MAFF (ministry of agriculture, forestery, and fisheries) were successful. I had over half of the employees turn up and on time, a few didn't make it because of a funeral which is expected. I have two classes on Mondays and three on Tuesdays, each with 2 or 3 students. I was able to show them some basics on the computer, a lot of them had never touched a computer before in their lives. I also have a typing program I'm starting with some of the students. It was cool to see how excited some of them looked using a computer for the first time, something you never really see back home. And I did all the classes on the one working computer in the lab, the others aren't working because the power is off in most of the computer lab, hopefully that will be fixed for next week. Tomorrow I'm working on getting the community classes set up with the computer training center, so I'm getting busier now with my work schedule. Brett has been teaching at the school, mornings only when they have English classes. But it takes time in the afternoons and evenings for him to prepare lessons for the next day.

Keep in touch, we'll most likely be online more often now!

Over-turned sea turtles and fiery sunsets

2009-04-18T13:01:00.005+13:00

Last night was a pretty sunset, the sun's path has been moving pretty quickly lately. For a long time the sun set more to the south by the wharf, now it's setting just about behind Kao, the volcanic cone-shaped island straight out from our back door. And it's setting earlier, around 6:30 instead of 7:00pm. It only changes by about an hour the whole year.

Our American dinner party was successful after a near-disaster of the propane tank running out that powers our oven/stove! We had just prepared all the food, it was raw and ready to be cooked, and the burners just fizzled out. This was the first time it's run out for us. Luckily the guy was still at the propane tanks by the wharf and Brett was able to bring our tank over to be filled. So we finished all the food for the 11 of us eating, it was a good time.

Yesterday Brett's school had a konsetti (concert), a dance concert with all the kids performing for parents and the PTA to raise money for the school for new supplies, like a really expensive copy machine. They had spent all week rehearsing, Eric, Brett and I went to watch the show Friday morning. It was quite a big deal, with all the moms and some younger siblings and others watching, the moms dressing up their school kids in all sorts of traditional costumes - colorful flower clothes wrapped around the boys as skirts and girls as full dresses, grass skirts on the boys and some girls, grass anklet bracelets, lots of flowers both real and fake, and some tapa/woven clothes wrapped around girls doing the ta'alunga dance. They had a tent and sound system rented out as well. When the dancing started we moved up closer, the youngest kids stood there and moved their feet a little, as people went up and gave them money for the flower bouqets they were holding. As the kids performing got older they were better dancers, some were pretty amazing with the accuracy and detailed movements of their hands and feet. The boys move the most in tongan dances, stomping around and twirling, the girls mostly stay in one place and use a lot of pretty hand movements.

Eric and Melanie left today on the boat to go back to their little island, we saw them off at the wharf. Amoung all the luggage and crates of pigs getting loaded onto the boat there was an over-turned huge sea turtle that was still alive. At first it looked dead, but you could see it breathing, then once it awhile it freaked out and tried moving it's flippers all around. They are stuck upside down and can't flip back over. I felt really bad for him, I would've turned him over and pushed him into the harbour if there hadn't been so many people around and I'm sure they're worth a lot of money. The way they were shipping him was just that they'd written the name and city of the person recieving the turtle on the main island on the under side of the turtle's shell.

So now we're back to an empty house without any guests, it's always fun having friends visit us!

A visit from the real world

2009-04-16T14:37:00.004+13:00

We've been busy these last couple of weeks! First it was our training in Nuku'alofa for about 2 weeks, we ate a ton of good food at the restaurants there - chinese, italian, sandwiches, burgers, etc. It was good to see the rest of our group and catch up with people and compare experiences.

Then our friend Katie came to visit from Minnesota for a week, it was a lot of fun to see someone from back home and to show her around our island and village. We met her at the airport here in Ha'apai and had a flower lei for her, and fresh tropical fruit back at our house. The next day we showed her around town and to the other side of the island. Then on Sat. to Easter Sunday we went with a big group down to Uoleva island and camped out there at Captain Cook's resort (after camping there and at Dianna's we decided Dianna's is better for just camping). There were a lot of us Peace Corps - us, Eric and Melanie took the plane up here after training and have been here for about a week, Grant was in town from his island north of us, Phil and Sarah, and Jason was visiting from Eua. We also had one of the japanese volunteers, and our friends at the dive shop came and brought us all there and back on their boat. It was funny unloading all our backpacks and gear, it was high tide so they had to anchor the boat and throw another rope to shore and then in between big waves some of us had to swim up to the boat and grab some of the luggage, or the people on the boat would toss it to us to catch. Once on land we had the usual coconut rum drinks out of real coconuts with the coconut milk, and hung out on the beach and swam in the clear aqua water. Melanie and I went snorkeling, couldn't find the right place to enter so had Grant come guide us. The coral was amazing at the reefs in Uoleva, huge fan coral, brain coral, and lots of fish. Brett and some of the guys went spear fishing at another reef, and Brett shot two fish!! His first fish he's killed spear fishing here. Phil cooked them up over a fire for us for appetizers before dinner. Then that night we were all invited down to Patty's resort at the tip of the island to help out by being in some promotional photos Jason was taking for her website. And they wanted to shoot some photos of the common/dining area so we all got to eat dinner there too - huge lobsters! So we might end up in a few photos on their website - serenity beaches. Her place was amazing, by far the best I've seen in Ha'apai, really cute fales (guest houses) with tik wood from indonesia and open walls with bamboo mats that pull down, cool showers connected in trees behind the fale and bathroom area, nice paths through the bush with lanterns but really natural looking. And hammocks everywhere, and little huts with pillows for hanging out and reading. After that we walked back on the beach under almost a full moon, and had a campfire with the other guests at Captain Cooks, they were from different countries in Europe. I think we counted about 7 countries that were represented that night. The next day it rained pretty hard off and on, luckily it didn't rain through the night since some of our group was sleeping on mats outside! During the night some of our group realized their food had been stolen out of their backpacks or up in trees, so it wasn't animals. Then the next day the owner of the resort wanted us to buy a late lunch - umu food cooked underground and a roasted baby pig. Some of the group did it, then it started pouring in the afternoon and the food took awhile to be ready. The boat ride back was cold and wet, we didn't get back until evening time.

The next day was also rainy, we hung out around the house with Katie and caught up on things back home or here which was fun. Then ate dinner at our one restaurant, Mariner's. I'd heard rumors of a dance/festival going on that night so we wandered to look for it, but nothing was going on except church choir practices. On Tuesday Brett, Katie and I biked up to Foa to the beach at Matafonua resort. It was incredibly windy, with a few sprinkles, but once we got there it cleared up and was gorgeous, we had lunch at the restaurant there and swam at the beach. The bike ride back was also hard with the wind, we had to walk our bikes across the land bridge between islands where the wind was barrelling through. That night Brian and Sabine invited everyone over for a mexican dinner night, it was amazing, really good salsa, chips and tortillas, and salsa/mexican music. Wednesday we saw Katie off at the airport, it was hard saying goodbye knowing we probably won't see more friends from back home for awhile now. In about a month my parents and sister will be here visiting though.

Last night Aki, one of the Japanese volunteers, invited everyone over for Japanese food at her house - tofu, fish, rice, and other dishes that were really good. So after two nights of themed really good meals we decided we needed an American dinner night, we're having that tonight at our house with Brett and I and Eric and Melanie cooking, and Sarah's coming down to help cook too. The menu is home-made mac 'n cheese, hot pocket-like fried sandwhiches with bacon, cheese, onion and green pepper, onion rings, and for desert a chocolate lush cake. Grant even decided to stay for this dinner, he'd planned on going back today. I tried working today for the first time in about three weeks, but my counterpart messaged this morning that she was sick, and I found out the power is still not on at the computer center. We'll see next week if I can get anything done. We did find out that the Fisheries office, right next to our house, got wireless internet! The signal's not strong enough to reach our house, so Brett's trying to set up some cable from the office to hopefully get us Internet at our house!

New photos are posted on the link to the left.

Land Ahoy

2009-03-27T12:10:00.003+13:00

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.

A Palangi Saturday

2009-03-22T12:36:00.004+13:00

This Saturday was one of the best in Ha'apai so far. We got away from the island, out on the sea in a boat, and wore swimsuits - we were able to just be palangis for a day and get away from Tonga while still being in Tonga at the same time.

We headed out in the morning with our friends who own the Fins 'n Flukes dive shop in town - all of us Peace Corps from the main island here and the three Japanese volunteers. One of the Japanese volunteers was doing part of his dive course, so we got to tag along for the boat ride and did some snorkeling and exploring. On the way out of the main island we noticed that Tofua, the active volcano about 30 miles west of us, was smoking a lot. So we'll probably have another earthquake soon. It took about an hour to get to Lu'ahoko island, it's a tiny uninhabited island just north-northwest of
us, near Ha'ano island. You can see it from our house, just a tiny clump of land. It was really pretty coming into the island, there's a big sandy beach on the south side, and Kao and Tofua volcanoes looked huge - a lot closer than from Lifuka. And the middle looked like it was clumped up higher with lots of trees and palm trees, and tons of birds were flying around and to the island. Birds are more rare in Tonga, you don't see a lot of them, so this island is known for the bird population and also reputed to have a lot of sea snakes.

Once we anchored a ways off-shore you could look down into the dark aqua water and see right to the bottom with all the coral and fish, it was probably about 20 or so feet deep, perfectly clear water! We jumped in and snorkeled around for awhile, there were lots of fish and coral. And Alicia, the one person who was terrified of sea snakes and was worried about Lu'ahoko's reputation, saw a sea snake in the water! None of the rest of us saw any. This was also the site that Sabine (from the dive shop) saw a large shark in about 1 meter of water snorkeling last week. Luckily we didn't see any. Brian (also from the dive shop) was hoping Brett would see one to get over his fear of sharks - mostly sharks are just as scared when they see humans in the water and they swim away. There are only two dive/snorkel companies in all of Ha'apai, so these reefs are really untouched, natural, and gorgeous. And not crowded like any tourist place, the locals only go to reefs to hunt/fish, and don't really come out all this way to uninhabitated islands to do so. Last week Brett and I were snorkeling on our reef outside our house, and some locals were there hunting huge octopus!

After snorkeling we swam up to the shore on Lu'ahoko and walked around the whole outside of the island, in about half an hour. The views of Kao and Tofua were amazing, and all the aqua water around the island. There was the one big sandy beach, then the rest of the way around the island there were rocky platforms. This is now the fifth island we've been to in the Ha'apai group, and the tenth island we've been to in all of Tonga.

On the way back we stopped at another reef to snorkel, Faka Osi, named so because it's the last reef out of the channel the boats go through. This reef was a lot deeper, and there was more of a current. We could still see a lot of coral, and tons of fish. Some areas dropped off from the reef to about 60 or 70 feet below us. But because it was so clear and we could see all the way to the bottom it didn't seem so deep.

We were out on the boat from early morning to late afternoon, it was so nice to get away for a day! And now this week we'll be leaving on Thursday for about two weeks down in the capital city, Nuku'alofa, for more Peace Corps training. I'm also the volunteer representative for our island group so we're going down a few days early for that meeting. We're both really excited to get away for a couple weeks, eat out at restaurants (they have chinese, italian, indian and more restaurants down there), do some shopping, and see everyone from our group again. Then right after that our friend Katie is coming to visit for a week from the US, so we're excited to have a visitor to show around!

More photos from this weekend are posted in the link to the right.

Underwater Volcanic Explosion and 7.7 Earthquake

2009-03-20T13:38:00.007+13:00

Yesterday there was an underwater volcanic explosion about 6 miles southwest of the main island of Tongatapu, a new volcano/island is forming there. I guess there are 36 underwater volcanoes in that area. We could see plumes of smoke on the horizon that evening, and a small trail of smoke coming up from the volcanic island of Tofua just west of us. So a lot of activity is going on here! And when there is volcanic activity there are earthquakes.

There have been quite a few earthquakes in the last few days, I think I heard there were 14 earthquakes. This morning was a big one, measured at 7.7 by the Pacific and 7.9 by the US measurements. And we haven't felt a single one of these earthquakes, slept right through the one this morning. Because of the measurement of this last earthquake there was a tsunami warning until around noon today, it was just cancelled. But we did hear on CNN that it was reported a "small tsunami" was in the water, but with no big destructive waves.

So we're safe and fine here in Ha'apai! We're even planning on going out in a boat snorkeling tomorrow with our friends that own the scuba diving shop here, should be fun.

Here's a link to an article about the volcanic explosion if you're interested, I guess it made a lot of news around the world today/yesterday.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29769097?GT1=43001

St.Patty's Day

2009-03-18T15:36:00.007+13:00

Happy St. Patty's Day! Hope you had as much fun as we did - below are photos from our crazy-hats party at mariner's.

Internet Issues

2009-03-16T16:46:00.002+13:00

So for about the last week we haven't had Internet in our Peace Corps office here. I thought there was just something wrong with the password or modem, but it turned out that the bill hadn't been paid since last August!! And, typical of Tonga, no warnings were sent out, nothing was done for a long time. I got on the phone to talk to our financial person at Peace Corps, and instead somehow got through to the country director! He's always nice to talk to and was very interested to hear how things were going for me at the computer training center (I'll be posting about my jobs soon). And it turns out that the company here had been sending the bills to the Ha'apai office - there is no administrative office or staff here. So within 15 minutes it was taken care of and paid, and the Internet employees here even turned it back on right away. I was totally amazed at how fast it all worked out compared to how things normally go. So it just goes to show that you never really know. But we still have issues with our phone line, hopefully it will also get sorted out soon.

Tomorrow is St. Patty's day and we're having a crazy hats party at Mariners restaurant.

Couples in Tonga

2009-03-10T15:10:00.004+13:00

Married couples are treated a lot different than single volunteers are in Tonga. Here it's unheard of to live alone, or be alone anytime - Tongans do everything together and if they're not married they live with their parents. Even when they get married they move in with the guy's parents. So they think the single volunteers are faka ofa (sad), especially that they live alone. Because of this they'll very often bring over food or invite the single volunteers to dinner or other events, generally they check in on them a lot more. For married couples they see that we already have our family unit and leave us alone for the most part. Instead of inviting us to a dinner they'll just drop off a plate of food. This has it's benefits and downfalls - we get more much-needed privacy but it's harder to fit into the tongan community around us, we have to try harder to be involved. We also heard that married couples get asked a lot if they have children and if not, why don't they? We have had this question asked a few times. In Tonga the womens' job is to get married, have lots of children, and do the household chores/make food. This is even written out in school classrooms - dividing the mens' and womens' chores and responsiblities. Boys do the yard work and harvest/plant in the bush plots, women do the indoor sweeping/cleaning and cooking. Even down to sports - boys play volleyball or rugby and girls play netball (sort of like a slow version of basketball, boring). If a boy plays netball he's a fakaleite (like a girl) and is made fun of. This role-dividing drives me crazy, I'll be happy if I can change some girls' minds on these matters.

Our friend Alicia lives in a smaller village and has been experiencing a lot of this - tongans getting very involved in her life. Her neighbors recently told her one day when she got home that they had two surprises for her - they'd made her a bookshelf, and they neutered her dog!! They didn't even know if she wanted him neutered, they just did it! They also share a lot of things - she eats dinner with them every night and they share food, and her neighbors don't have their own bathroom at their house and the one at the school is in horrible condition, so they even share her bathroom, taking turns buying toilet paper! People in her village also share a lot with each other, for example there were three broken washing machines so they put them together to make one working machine and now it rotates between families in the village. Another friend, Sarah, lives in a small village here and they have her on a rotating feeding schedule for having dinner at all her students' homes! And her neighbors do her laundry for her.

So experiences even on the same island can be very different just based on if it's a married couple or single volunteer, and experiences in different island groups are even more different. Here in Ha'apai it's like an outer island, with not much available and all depending on the boat schedules, in the capitol city they can get just about anything - mac 'n cheese, candy bars, lots of restaurants, etc. but it also doesn't have the same feel as a village or smaller island.

A Day in the Life

2009-03-05T13:49:00.004+13:00

Here's an example of how my weekdays lately have been going:

Wake up a couple of times from the neighbor kids crying/screaming and the hot sun beating into our room on the east side of the house. Get out of bed around 8:00, Brett's already up and almost ready to go to school. Make coffee for breakfast and either fruit or weetbix (a New Zealand cereal, it's fiber bars that turn to mush with milk, but the only good source of fiber here). Then sit at our mini coffee table with the back door open, eat and stare at the ocean, and kick out the neighbor's cat about 10 times - he never learns. Say hi to the puppies Lucky and Simba. Get water from our sima vie outside and boil it so it's cool by lunch time. Get ready for work, I either go into the Fisheries or MAFF office around 9:00 for a couple of hours or until lunch time. At Fisheries I update data entry type stuff to help them catch up for now, at MAFF I prepare tutorials to teach the two ladies there on Word or Excel. Both offices are only a minute walk away, I can see both from our house. Then come home for lunch, Brett's usually already home from school, we have whatever leftovers from the night before, sandwiches or instant noodles. Hang around for an hour or hour and a half (lunch hour here is 12:30 - 1:30), try to cool off - our house is a lot cooler than other places since it's right on the ocean and has huge trees shading it. Then figure out what to do in the afternoon - either go into the other office I hadn't been to yet, help out at the Youth Congress, or just take time off and check internet or hang out at the house, I never played computer games at home but lately am addicted to spider solitare. Then we figure out any food we need to buy for the dinner and the next day, and what to make for dinner. Start cooking a little before sunset, 7:00ish, and watch the sunset if it's not too cloudy. Eat dinner, light mosquito coils, and usually watch a DVD, sometimes Brett tutors the neighbor kids in English before dinner or I'll walk around on the beach. Then listen to the neighbor kids cry/scream some more at night, and the dogs barking off and on, and sometimes pigs squeeling really loud, and fall asleep. There's almost always some kind of odd happenings as well - dogs dying, neighbor kids throwing stuff in our trees or clothes lines, people knocking on the door early in the morning (once even a jehova's witness!), funerals, boats coming in and tons of activity in town, etc. And once in awhile we go out to Mariner's restaurant/bar during the week, and we recently found a DVD store by our house that has tons of pirated movies so we've been seeing really recent movies now!

By the end of each day I've probably drank tons of mosquito larva in our water, said "malo e lelei" twenty or so times as well as answered "alu ki fe?" many times (where are you going?), boiled water about 3 times, lit 2 or 3 mosquito coils and applied tons of mosquito spray, kicked out the puppies and cat many times from our house, and checked the market and stores for anything new and exciting. Some of these things are just really repetitive everyday here.

Social life in Ha'apai

2009-03-02T18:00:00.003+13:00

This last weekend we decided to invite everyone over to our house for dinner, we made a couple of pizzas with green peppers, pineapple from the market, onions, and also made pasta with a seasoned butter sauce and bruschetta. There were 9 of us altogether, it’s fun to get together with people here since there’s not much else to do. Grant from the outer island was in for the weekend so he stayed at our place, and Alicia and Sarah made it into town for the dinner. The hardest part about having a lot of people over is the glass beer bottles, you can't burn them! So we just rinse them out and store them under the sink for now, they're really hard to get rid of here. On the main island there's a recycling program for glass, but not here in Ha'apai.

The next day me and Alicia went snorkeling on the beach right outside our house. I’d heard there was a lot of dead coral from all the boat traffic, we weren’t seeing much and it even started to rain on us. But then it cleared up and once we got out to the edge of the reef where it dropped off to about 15 or 20 feet it was a lot better than we’d expected! There were tons of little colorful fish, the bright blue ones that shimmer in the sun and swim in big groups, angel fish, and some bigger fish as well. And there was a lot of new brightly colored coral growing on top of the old dead coral, with lots of little passageways and tunnels. We went at low tide, so actually had to walk way out, it was too shallow to swim. It’s really cool that all this is right out our back door at our beach here! Brian from the scuba shop that we know and Phil went out spear fishing that day as well, so they brought over a bunch of fish we cooked up that night. Brett got the spear made for his spear gun so this week or weekend he might try going fishing on the reef. The spear gun is made like a sling shot with a piece of wood and rubber, and then there’s a long metal pole that has a point carved on the end that gets shot out. It takes a lot of practice to start getting fish.

We’ve almost been at site now in Ha’apai for 3 months now, mid-march!! Some changes I’ve noticed in us adjusting to life here now - we’re not scared to walk around barefoot in our sandy yard that’s covered in broken glass anymore, I don’t flinch anymore from the huge bees that fly in and out of places all the time, we’re used to cold showers, we have a routine for getting water from our sima vie outside, and we can cook quite a lot with the few ingredients available here.

People and animals leaving

2009-02-25T15:15:00.004+13:00

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.

Japanese party

2009-02-23T15:49:00.004+13:00

On Saturday we all gathered at the one restaurant/bar in town for a going-away party for Noreko who's leaving the middle of next month, she's a Japanese volunteer here. There will still be three other Japanese volunteers here after she leaves. The owner of the bar, Magda even had a bunch of snacks she made for us including sushi, fish, chips, olives, and cheese! It's nice having a place to hang out with other expats in Ha'apai here, there are about 10 of us or so from the US, Japan, Germany, Poland and Ireland that I know of.

Brett and I are both feeling better now after a long week of being sick with very high temps. And I'm starting to work now with MAFF/the Fisheries helping out with little things and they mentioned if I want I might get to go on a trip to some outer islands later this spring for some meetings/workshops. I still am just waiting to figure out the computer center now, getting a counterpart to work with after talking with Peace Corps about it. Brett is starting to teach at his school this week. The photo below is from Valentines day at the beach on Foa.

Sick in Tonga

2009-02-17T17:36:00.002+13:00

Kate and I have been feeling a bit under the weather this week. On Sunday we started to get that sick feeling and by Monday we both had temps and were not feeling the best. We talked with the Peace Corp nurse and she thinks we have Dengue Fever or a Flu bug that is going around, but she is weighing more on Dengue, we will have to see when they do a test next time we are on the main island. So over the past couple days Kate and I have just been resting and drinking a lot of water. The only thing you can do for Dengue or the Flu is to just get rest and drink a lot of fluids, so that is our plan. Today I was feeling a little better, not 100%, but I made my way over to the Peace Corp office to check email and write this blog. Once we are feeling better we will have to blog more about our experience with being sick in Tonga, its not fun.
Have a great week.
~Brett

L-O-V-E day

2009-02-15T11:27:00.004+13:00

Valentine's day was yesterday. Brett got up early and snuck out on my bike to find me flowers, there are a lot of really pretty local flowers around here. He was picking some pink flowers out of a bush hanging over from someone's yard when he hear a little boy from a tree in the yard yelling "Oua!! Palangi stop it! Stop it palangi!"!!!! He got yelled at by a little boy for picking the flowers! So he quickly biked away and found some more in another spot. It was really nice to get the flowers though.

The rest of the day we spent at matafonua beach on the northern tip of Foa island, an hour bike ride in the hot weather here. Alicia and Sarah joined us later, we hung out until a little before sunset then biked back and Brett and I made tuna patties and rice for dinner. Alicia got bit by her first molokau (large centipede) the other day in her house, it sounds really painful! And another volunteer here might have dengue fever, you get it from mosquito bites and there are a lot of mosquitos around lately. They're small, faster than the mosqutios back home, and really quiet- they don't buzz like back home.

I started helping out a little at the Ha'apai Youth Congress here. They get small business loans to help out unemployed youth to start their own businesses (youth doesn't mean just teenagers, you're basically considered youth until you get married). So I'll help advise some of the local businesses like a DVD store, weaving, and growing vegetables, and help with other basic editing/reporting skills. Next week there's a workshop through the Youth Congress for teaching a new group here how to be peer educators with HIV awareness so I'll attend that. The manager of the Youth Congress is also going to be our language tutor for me and Brett starting next week. We haven't been using Tongan very much so this will help. I'm still waiting to begin at my other primary jobs. The head of MAFF is still sick in Nuku'alofa and the counterpart for the computer center is also sick (possibly) and no one else works there. There's a lot of interest from the community in the computer classes at the center, so hopefully things will work out, but I can't do it on my own without a counterpart. The whole idea of Peace Corps is to create sustainability so I need to train someone here with the skills to carry on the computer center classes.

Brett's school is a pilot school for testing out new English curriculum for classes 3 and 4 so they had workshops last week, and he'll start co-teaching pretty soon. The government here feels that kids are losing their Tongan language because they start English so early, and many kids can't write or read in Tongan. There's a very limited amount of books and materials in the Tongan language. Instead of starting English in class 1 they're going to wait until class 3 now. And later on kids will have a choice to have their classes all in English or Tongan.

I hope everyone's doing well back home, Happy Valentine's Day!

Tongan Legends/ fishing methods

2009-02-11T13:38:00.002+13:00

We’ve heard quite a few Tongan legends since being here, Tongans are a very proud people and proud of their history. A lot of legends they truly believe happened.

One that I like is about a rat and an octopus. The rat got stranded in water and was drowning. He called out to an octopus to help him, so the octopus let the rat ride on his head to dry land. Once the rat was on land he yelled out to the octopus “look what I left on your head”. The octopus realized the rat had done his business on his head. Since then octopus’s have hated rats. So the way locals fish for octopus is to make a bait that closely resembles the appearance of a rat. It’s made of some shells and a string like a tail, and I think they even tie on some feathers to look make it look furry. They tie it to a string and dangle it in deep water, and the octopus rushes up to the bait. They still fish like this for octopus.

Other fishing methods used here are large nets in both deep and shallow waters, line fishing (with just a line, not a pole like back home), and spear fishing in reef areas. There’s a certain type of tuna fish, the ‘atu, that can only be fished by line and not netted because of a legend. We also talked to a guy who works at the high school who was a little boy when they were still hunting whale here with spears. Guessing by his age, this was probably only about 40 years ago or so. He said they’d have a couple boats go out in case one got wrecked, and they’d spear the whale, then more boats would come out and help get it to the reef or shore. After that the whole town, or island, would come and take their share of the whale. The Japanese still hunt whale here I believe. The locals also hunt turtle still, (I’m pretty sure they’re endangered,) they eat them here. While we were on Uoleva over New Years the resort owner showed us and dug up a turtle egg nest on the beach. He had it marked off and was watching over it to make sure they were safe.

There are a lot of reef fish you can’t eat, the locals know which are safe. The parrot fish are really good! The Tongans also eat just about anything else in the sea - sea slugs fresh out of the ocean, lots of different snails/clams, etc., sea urchins, jellyfish, and more.

The Tongans are also superstitious about some things or why things happen. If someone gets hurt it’s because they didn’t go to church or they didn’t do their chores or something like that. If you don’t take a shower before going to sleep you might get bit by a molekau (huge nasty centipede that bites).

Another legend is about the volcanic islands of Tofua and Kao here in Ha’apai. The Samoan god (Samoa is another south pacific country just north of Tonga), was mad that Tonga had a higher mountain than Samoa. So he came to steal the mountain, he ripped of the top of Tofua and as he was running away the Tongan god caught him. So he dropped it into the sea which is now Kao. (Kao is a perfect volcanic cone, and Tofua is a sunken volcano with a lake/crater in the middle, still active sometimes).

Life as usual

2009-02-07T13:57:00.002+13:00

Things have been going good here, same routines now. Me not working still and Brett going to his school every morning and done at lunch time. My counterpart for the computer center is back from the capital, but one day she decided to do her laundry instead of coming into work, and yesterday she was sick and still finishing laundry. That's Tonga for you. Maybe next week I'll start working there, and the new officer in charge at my job at MAFF is supposed to be here soon. I also met with the Ha'apai Youth Congress and might help out there once in awhile too with english/editing for their reports and proposals for getting grants, and some help with reporting on workshops here and around some of the islands. They're pretty well organized so they just need a little extra help in these areas.

Last week on Wed. someone from peace corps came up to help sort out some problems Alicia was having with her site and school, and that same day within hours of being in town they moved her out of her site here in Pangai and to where her original site was supposed to be (a smaller village close by). So we went to her house here and had her all packed and moved out within an hour, moved all her stuff to our house until her house was ready in her new village a couple days later. So far it's going really good for her in the new village, and we're really happy she didn't have to move too far, so there's still us, Phil a volunteer that's been here for a year, and Alicia on our island, and Sarah just north of us. There are also 4 japanese volunteers in town that are really nice, they had us all over for dinner last weekend.

We recently discovered that the ant population in our house can now get INTO our refridgerater!! They can get through the seal. So we're coming up with a plan to put the fridge up on a small table if we can find one and put tin cans with water on each leg so they can't get to the fridge. There have only been a few inside but it could get bad if we don't do something. It has been incredibly hot here lately as well.

We had a good find at the market a few days ago - green peppers! And this morning we heard the fish whistle so Brett ran out and bought a couple kilos of fish, for being on an island it's sometimes pretty hard to buy fish here! Some people come in from outer islands and drive slowly through town blowing a whistle, selling fish out of their cooler in the back.

Keep in touch, we love hearing from people back home!

Around here

2009-02-05T09:26:00.004+13:00

Some images of Pangai

Another view of our house, the big round cement block is our sima vie where we get all our drinking water.

Main street in town, the orange big building is a chinese shop we get groceries and supplies at.

Tallest building, the third story is where my computer lab center is where I work, second story has our peace corps office and there are two chinese shops on the first level we get our food at.

Brett's school, GPS Pangai

The liku (wild) side of Lifuka island, about a 20 minute walk from our house, it's on the opposite side of the island facing east.

The only gas station, I think in all of Ha'apai where lines form after boats come in, they almost always run out of petrol.

Ants in my pants

2009-01-31T12:10:00.003+13:00

Well not in my pants, but everywhere else. Yesterday I realized we'd forgotten a cookie sheet full of food that we'd re-heated in the oven, and it was swarming with ants inside the oven!! And for some reasone they like our electric tea kettle and we have to rinse it out every time we use it, which is at least a couple times a day for our drinking water. If there's one little crumb of any kind of food there will be a line of ants to it in minutes.

I saw another horrible sight yesterday right before discovering the ant-infested oven. I was standing at the kitchen window and witnessed our puppy, Lucky's front feet get run over by our neighbor's large truck! The puppies sleep under the truck sometimes when it's raining out, and usually they move when the truck starts up, but the neighbor got in and pulled out really fast, running right over her feet. Luckily she's still just a puppy and I don't think their bones are fully developed, so they weren't broken, probably just pinched bad.

We recently heard some crazy stories about other islands in the Ha'apai group. The island of Tofua is volcanic and very hard to get to, but gorgeous from the photos I've seen. We can see it and the other volcanic island, Kao on the horizon on clear days here from our beach. In the middle of Tofua there's a crater lake, someone went scuba diving there and saw a huge shadow swim by him!! So possibly there are a pair of bull sharks in the lake somehow, or there are still some kind of ancient fish/creatures living there since it's so untouched and isolated on that island. Another story we heard is about an obvious murder case. But since the murderer's family was related to people high-up in the community, they ruled it a heart attack. Crazy.

Today's Saturday so there are a lot of boats coming into town from other islands. We're trying to keep Lucky, the puppy, in our yard so she doesn't get stolen like the other one did. I woke up before it was light out this morning to the noises of our neighbors and neighbor kids running around the yard area, and later singing and yelling in Tongan. Very nice. One thing we've learned we can use here is sarcasm, the local Tongans don't get it when you use sarcasm.

First Day of School

2009-01-29T16:26:00.002+13:00

So I just had my first day of school. For you teachers out there listen up, you'll enjoy this. On the first day of school in Tonga all the school children bring cleaning supplies. When they arrive the girls are in charge of sweeping the classrooms, washing the windows and cleaning the bathrooms. The boys are in charge of mowing the lawn, sweeping and burning the leaves and then playing rugby after they're done. As the students are doing this the teachers just sit and talk to each other and make sure the students are working hard. I'm not sure if this would fly in the states, but all you teachers out there, give it a shot. After the students finish their cleaning they then have an informal class where they learn about school dress, rules and time of classes for the year. Students learn that in the morning at the sound of the bell each class must line up in a row in front of the flag poll where they have their morning prayer and then march off to their classrooms, boys in one line and girls in the other....yes, march. There is no electricity in most of the classrooms so it makes it hard to plug in a fan on those hot days. Just yesterday they canceled school because it was raining too hard, sort of like our Minnesota snowdays except its rain. Now that I have been at the school for a couple of days I have been observing each class to see where their english abilities are so I know where to start when I begin to teach in a couple of weeks. I have also been working on the school library, getting it set up and organizing the books. The school that I am at recently had a Peace Corps volunteer and she did a great job on the library so I have just been doing a little bit of touch up on it, otherwise it is almost ready to open for student use.

We recently had a low cyclone (Hurricane) warning on the 28th. The Fiji weather services issued a cyclone warning and said that one was heading towards Tonga, but late last night it switched direction and headed south away from Tonga. That was good because I was not looking forward to being swept away by waves.
~Brett

Puppy-nappers

2009-01-26T10:12:00.005+13:00

On Saturday our puppy 'Ava went missing during the middle of the day. We were home, and hadn't seen her for just about an hour, and went walking up and down the beach and the roads by our house with no luck. We'd planned on going to the Liku (wild/undeveloped) side of the island with Sarah and Alicia for the afternoon, it was really nice out. And on that side of the island no one really goes there so we could wear our swimsuits! I thought 'Ava would be there when we got back, but she wasn't. We think she wandered off a little, and some Tongan stole her. It's common for that to happen. They'll take puppies out of people's yards too, our neighbor had told us that people come and steal the puppies at night. And Alicia took one of the puppies home, and early in the morning while she was sleeping some little Tongan kid stole the puppy out of her yard and cut off the collar she'd made. Someone saw him do it, so she was able to find the puppy. But no one knows where 'Ava is, the neighbor kids just kept saying "'Ava go far, far away", and that she's lost. We walked around after church and the feast yesterday, looking in people's yards but didn't find her. The couple that's running a dive shop here is also missing their dog. They said if you don't find the dog in a couple days it's either dead or in a pot, or if it's lucky maybe someone kept it as a pet. But they don't treat pets like we treat pets here. Tongans feed their pigs a lot, they're worth a lot of money and they want to fatten them to eat them. But the dogs aren't really fed, they get scraps sometimes or they'll look around for food on their own from what I've seen.

Brett's at school on his first day right now (it's Mon. about 10:30am, I don't think the blog post times are right most of the time). The mosquitos have been a lot worse lately, we've been burning coils by our doors and wearing more mosquito repellent.

Pangai - big city to some

2009-01-23T11:23:00.005+13:00

On Tuesday the couple from the outer island finally made it into Pangai for a visit! We were all excited to see them, their boat schedule was changed three times before they made it here in the afternoon. That night we went out to the one restaurant in town and had pizza and beer. There was quite the international group of people hanging out that night - america, ireland, germany, poland, australia. We met a few more people that are living in town here, they're fun to hang out with.

Eric and Melanie had to get back for the beginning of school, so had to catch the next boat back instead of staying in town longer. So it was supposed to come through during the day on Wed, then it changed to the middle of the night and Eric had to get up every hour and go out our back door to check for it on the beach. Then it changed to Thurs. morning, Thurs. night, and finally 5:00am on Friday today. So the schedules are constantly changing. On Tues. both big ferry boats came into Pangai and it was a circus in town. People were hanging out everywhere shopping for new supplies that came in. And the gas station had lines of cars waiting to fill up.

On Wed. night we were invited to Mele's house for dinner, her brother is the harbor master in Nuku'alofa and owns the training center I work at, so he wanted to have dinner with us and some other people in town here. Mele is the best cook here!! She cooks Tongan food, but with a more western style, using more spices and flavor. They had a buffet set up on their patio, we had a roasted pig, rice with veggies and little octopus, shrimp, and really good steak/beef. And last night we made bean burritos with Alicia, Eric and Melanie. It was really nice to see them and have them stay with us. On one of the nights it was like a big sleep-over with four people in our living room!

We had a few unfortunate events the last couple of days though. Alicia was ready to take her black puppy home for the first time, Brett went out the back door to find him, and he was laying there dead next to our house!! It was really sad, our neighbor kids were really cute though and helped dig a grave. Brett started packing down the dirt, then we realized the kids were mounding it up like a Tongan grave. They even lined it with rocks, and with white shells spelled out "puppy"! We noticed the mom dog was looking really sick too and not eating. The next morning we found her also dead next to our back door!! The neighbors think it might have been some kind of poisen or something they got into. The rest of the puppies are doing fine, bouncing around and nipping at our feet whenever we go outside.

Brett went to teacher planning today, and starts school with the kids on Monday. I'm just hanging out, doing a little work when needed. It's been pretty lazy here lately. We did get some packages and mail recently (thanks mom and dad!), so we're getting updated on the rest of the world through people and time magazines. I wonder sometimes what the newest songs on the radio are.

Little Helpers

2009-01-21T07:00:00.002+13:00

So I'm starting to change my mind on how I feel about all the little kids living around us. Three more just came home from a longer christmas vacation yesterday, so there are five little boys living across the yard from us now, ranging in age from 2 to about 12 years old. It's better now with the older ones around, they keep the youngest in line. And the best part is they're our little helpers! We'll start doing chores or things outside like making a fire to burn our garbage or putting up clothes on the line to dry and the boys will just start helping us! We gave them some starburst and banana bread for helping. I've noticed they're always around the yard area, and if our doors are open they'll come and sit in the doorway or on the steps and watch us or the older ones will talk to us since they know English. We never know what we'll see when we look out the windows or doors with these kids, the youngest is seen sometimes peeing off the edge of their doorstep, or worse. And they climb up our huge trees in the backyard, really high up on tiny little branches. It will be different, quieter at least, once school starts next week (I think). And we found out that our other neighbor, Mosese and his family might be moving to an outer island. So there will be less kids around. His kids and wife have been gone for the last month though anyways.

Brett's birthday was fun on Sunday. I made a cake from scratch, we still had no eggs but it turned out. Then in the afternoon our neighbors invited us to a church service and feast, we thought it might be a few hours, but turned out to be a 2 hour church service for the kids going back to school, and a couple hours at the feast with lots of speeches. There were lots of long tables set up, each area with different food and drinks from each family. Mele, who we had lunch with on our first Sunday and works in catering, made sure to pass down some really good spaghetti to us. And Silosi and Ana, our neighbors, had roasted a pig for the feast.

The peace corps couple on an outer island, Eric and Melanie, finally found a way to get into town this week, the Olavaha boat is running again finally! First they were going to get in for dinner last night, then early this morning, and now hopefully they'll make it this afternoon. The boat keeps getting delayed or is running late. The smaller boat, Tautahi, made it this morning. So the stores are all really busy today, there's a lot of new food and supplies in that were running low. We heard rumors of ice cream and Brett went looking but didn't find any. We did get a big tray of eggs though. Another transportation problem - the airplanes, maybe because the petrol was getting low, I don't know. But Grant and his brother were going to Nuku'alofa and his brother got stuck here last night and will hopefully get on the plane this afternoon, the morning flight was cancelled.

In other news, the puppies are doing good, we've picked out a little brown furry one to keep, new photos are posted on the link to the left.

Here comes the sun

2009-01-18T13:35:00.001+13:00

It was really nice and hot out today! We biked all the way up to Matafonua beach resort/beach on the northern tip of Foa island, it took about an hour to bike there but was well worth it. The bike ride was pretty, going across the airport runway where the road divides it, and the land bridge between Lifuka and Foa. The beach at Matafonua was gorgeous, turquoise-colored water and really sandy beach and swimming area. Sarah met us there, her village from Foa was there having a picnic so there were lots of Tongans around that ruined my chance of wearing my palangi swimsuit, but was still a lot of fun. We ate at the restaurant there, really good pizza and nice ocean view, and swam with the kids from Sarah's village. Before we got in the water, there was a big commotion, a young tongan girl was swept out by the current and had to be pulled in.

Earlier this morning Brett went with our neighbor to the bush and helped him pull out a few ufi and pele (yam and vegetable that's like lettuce). Tomorrow is Brett's birthday! There's not much to do in Tonga on Sundays, we'll probably go to church and then afterwards there's a feast again with the Weslyn church.

Gale Winds

2009-01-16T05:15:00.003+13:00

Gale winds, yes thats what I said. The local weather has been very crazy over the last week. We have had a lot of rain and recently we had a gale winds advisory from the Fiji weather service. The winds were up to 50 knots at times. I was afraid if I walked outside I might get picked up and tossed over to Samoa or somthing like that. We have been inside most of this week since the weather has not been cooperating. Last night the winds were really high I th0ught at times that our house might blow away but it stayed strong. On the upside we figured out how to make homemade pizza, that really made our day. Here in tonga we do not always have the best of choices with food so when we figured out how to get ingredients for pizza and how to make it we were very excited, I feel a bit more American today because of that.

P.S. We caught the mouse.

(Brett)

Flooding from waves around the Fisheries office building, standing next to it is our neighbor Silosi.

Standing on the wharf with waves coming over the edge, looking towards Fisheries and the clump of trees is where our house is.

Little unwanted visitor

2009-01-15T06:11:00.001+13:00

So, we have a mouse in our house!! We kept seeing it flash by, then yesterday it was out in the open and we tried to get it with a broom with no luck. So today we'll set traps. I think all the rain drove it inside maybe, it's raining again today after a mostly clear day yesterday.

Last night Alicia was over and we made really good pizza from scratch, and it was pretty easy too! I've just been going over online tutorials for word and typing skills to start getting classes ready for the training center. I won't be really starting at MAFF until the beginning of Feb. but I've been over there quite a bit helping with computer problems or questions already.

Kovi Tahi

2009-01-13T13:22:00.002+13:00

(aka bad ocean!)... so the waves got so big the last couple of days they made it pretty close to the base of our house! And a couple of buildings by us that are closer to the sea- the Fisheries buildings, had some damage. The waves and ocean came up all around them, and boats had to be pulled out that were getting tossed around in the big waves. Our neighbor said he's never seen the waves come up this far before. They were even splashing up over the wharf, and pools of seaweed and garbage were floating all around. Sand has gotten piled up way higher than it's been before. But we stayed fine and dry at our place (except the living room which leaks a little). The wind was so strong that the rain on our windows looked like when you're driving a car down a freeway in the rain, it was just flying across the windows!

Our neighbors told us they'd have lunch for us again on Sunday! So we went to their church service, they even gave us a ride since it was raining so much. Then we found out it wasn't just a plate of food like the other Sunday, it was a feast they were referring to! So we went to a big feast for lunch yesterday, with a lot of meat, root crops, and speeches like any feast here. And we're starting to know more and more people now I realized after seeing how many people I knew at the feast.

And since it's been so rainy and windy, and I haven't worked much yet, I've actually been doing a lot of cooking! Anyone who knows me knows this is a pretty big deal, I rarely cook back home. So far I've made brownies, banana bread, mac 'n cheese, different pastas, and different kinds of root crops baked or fried, all from scratch. Still no eggs in sight at stores, the boats haven't been coming in with the weather lately, but it seems like it's clearing up now today. Brett's been doing more cleaning, he cleaned out all the gutters today and the opening to our sima vie (where we get our drinking rain water).

Lazy, rainy days

2009-01-09T11:27:00.000+13:00

The last two days have been really rainy and windy. The puppies all moved to the side of our house where there's a little more shelter from the wind off the ocean. We lost one more of the littlest ones, so down to 10 puppies now.

And shopping lately has been hit or miss. We got bread, which isn't always available, and amazingly got pinneapples at the little market (a couple of long tables that sometimes have root crops or fruit on them). At the market they sell the root crops and fruit in piles. But we ran out of eggs, and heard there won't be more until next week. And it's funny the way you buy some things here. They get bulk shipments in, then divide them up into smaller portions to sell - like flour and sugar you buy in little plastic baggies that aren't marked at all. And once in awhile we can find ice cream. There's usually a bigger selection right after the boat comes in once a week or so. The Internet isn't always working here either, it's up most of the time but sometimes it will be down for half a day or so.

I kinda started working a little, at the ha'apai training center, not yet at MAFF (ministry of food, forestry and agriculture), the new officer in charge hasn't started there yet so I have to wait for him to be here. At the training center I just went in and checked on all the computers and did a few updates. The owner sent his nephews to help me, because his daughter - my counterpart for working there, has been sick. I'll probably be setting up and teaching some basic computer classes to adults/youth in the evenings, and maybe bringing in some classes from schools during the day for English programs on the computers. Brett won't start working until the end of the month, he's just been hanging out, watching movies.

This weekend we might bike up to Foa to check out the beaches by the resorts there. And next week the couple from one of the outer islands is coming in to Pangai and hanging out for a week.

Church, lu and ufi

2009-01-05T08:15:00.001+13:00

We went to the church of tonga today, it was pretty good, really loud singing. Then our neighbor came over with a plate of lu sipi and ufi for us, which was really nice of them! Lu sipi is mutton cooked in a big taro leaf underground in an umu oven. And ufi is a big hunk of yam. We mashed up the ufi and added butter and garlic salt and it wasn't bad. The tongans just eat the huge hunks of root crops with no seasoning or anything. All the stores are closed today since it's Sunday, except for the bakery so we'll go buy bread later today.

Yesterday we did more cleaning and sewed four new curtains for our living room area with fabric we had from Nuku'alofa. A couple of the little neighbor boys were playing in the yard area with the puppies, the youngest neighbor boy is almost always naked! They don't speak much if any English, and come right up to our stairs just watching us, or they bring the puppies to us. We also watched new episodes of The Office from back home, thanks mom and dad for sending that DVD! On Monday I think I'm meeting with my two workplaces to figure out my schedule, I'm confused on what I'm supposed to be doing so hopefully it will be clearer tomorrow.

The first to welcome the New Year

2009-01-02T19:09:00.004+13:00

In Tonga, we’re the very first country to welcome the New Year. The International Dateline curves around Tonga to include it in the first time zone, along with Fiji, New Zealand and some others. But Tonga is the closest to the dateline, so we're the first to celebrate, and the first to see the first sunrise of 2009. Possibly the very first people to see the sunrise of 2009, because Ha'apai is the farthest islands to the east and there aren't many people here who would get up to see the sunrise.

For New Years we went with a group to the island just south of us, Uoleva. It was us, Alicia, Sarah, Grant, and his brother that just got to Tonga visiting from the US. Uoleva’s close enough that you can walk between our island and it at low tide. So we looked it up online and at low tide, around 2:30 on New Year’s Eve we made the trek across on the reef, it’s about half an hour walk with rushing water and rip tides. It’s supposed to only be about waist deep, but at this time of the year they get higher tides called King Tides, so even at low-tide it’s a little higher than normal. There was a section that was about up to my chest, and I lost my grip on the reef and started to get pushed out just a little. Brett and Alicia got to me quick and we all made it across the reef and sections of water between sand bars. It was really pretty!

After the crossing between islands, we had about a 45 minute walk along a very pretty, natural sandy beach to where we camped at Diana’s place, a rustic little guest house area that also allows people to camp along the beach. It was really cheap, and gave us access to a gorgeous sandy swimming beach, a kersone lantern and chairs/table and campsite.

We swam after the long, hot walk, and had coconut rum. And by coconut rum I mean REAL coconut. We gathered a bunch of green coconuts and sliced the tops with a bush knife. Then to the natural coconut water/milk we added a little rum and drank right out of the coconuts. It’s a really heavy drink to hold onto, and next time we’ll bring straws. We were also swimming with them and trying to figure out an invention like a blown-up donut to get them to float next to us.
It was a great New Years hanging out with our Ha’apai group, talking around our kersone lantern with lots of stars above us and darkness. Around midnight there was lightning on the horizon, and we saw a couple fireworks displays far away on the horizon on different islands, which looked really cool seeing bursts of color in the otherwise blackness. Then we sat for awhile with the Tongan owner of the guesthouse resort on the beach, he had a bonfire going. He told us some Tongan legends (with Grant translating). One that I liked the best was about a devil shark who got a devil blowfish stuck inside him and was dying. He asked for help from a man from Mu’unga’ane island, and in return agreed that no sharks would ever attack people from that island. So to this day people from that island aren’t scared of sharks, they think they’re exempt from being attacked. People are very religious here, but also still superstitious.

On New Year's day we got up around 5:15 am to see the sunrise on the other side of the island at 6:20 am. We were quite possibly the very first people to see the new year 2009!! It was really pretty, worth getting up that early. Later in the day we swam more and hung out, then went on a bush walk with the Tongan guesthouse owner to see some ancient site where nobles used to play games catching and releasing pigeons from these big mounds.

We walked back to the crossing at low tide in the later afternoon, and this crossing was definately memorable. The first three people across the deeper area missed the shallow crossing by a few feet, and it was a lot deeper. They had to start swimming, and one of them got swept far out past the breakers by the rip tide and current. One tried to get to her but couldn't and got stuck herself, and another swam to the person stuck out farther at sea. The three of us left on the sandbar were getting worried about them all, and luckily two tongans were coming through the crossing on horses, so they helped us! They got the closer person back in, and the other two were too far out, struggling for awhile. Finally they also got back in and we were all safe! And our neighbor was going to pick us up, but we lost his number so had to start walking back to town down the bush road. But since we didn't call our neighbor and it was getting later he drove out looking for us so we got a ride back, it was really nice of him, I'm glad we have such nice neighbors that are looking out for us!

Also, the day we left we had another surprise - a new litter of puppies!!! So now there are a total of 12 puppies just outside our back door. They kept getting stuck under our foundation in the sand so we packed sand and rocks in so we don't have to keep rescuing them from under our house.

Below is a link to a satellite photo from google maps, our house is the one in the center, next to the four smaller houses with red roofs, ours has a silver roof, running parallel to the ocean, closest to the ocean. At the bottom of the image, the whiteness sticking out in the water is the main wharf.

http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&q=pangai+tonga&ie=UTF8&ll=-19.80176,-174.350678&spn=0.002342,0.004828&t=h&z=18

New photos on the link to the left of new years!

Christmas with no snow

2008-12-29T23:21:00.003+13:00

It's been a busy week!! A few days after moving into our house all our stuff came on the boat from tongatapu - appliances, kitchen stuff, etc. so it was really nice to unpack and settle in more. The bigger boats in Tonga are interesting, the one that carries most cargo and people between islands was from Austria/Germany and used to be a riverboat, it was never meant for ocean voyages! So it really rocks in the water, and they don't weigh and distribute the cargo right so it's leaning to one side while it was docked here. A volunteer from an outer island here, just north of us, came in for a few days to help us all sort through getting stuff off the boat and getting settled.

Then for Christmas we decided to go up to his island, Ha'ano, since he had keys and access to a fishing lodge/resort that's almost finished, still under construction a little. The guy who owns it went back to New Zealand for a few months and asked Grant, the volunteer, to look after it.

The first night, Christmas Eve, we stayed at Grant's place in his village. There were 5 of us altogether- us, Alicia, Sarah, and Grant. The three from our group on the farther outer islands couldn't make it in for Christmas. That night in Grant's village we went to a Christmas concert/pageant that was really cool to see. They started with a torch light parade, and gathered on the church's lawn with candle lanterns and balloons strung around for the concert. There were some familiar Christmas songs, all in Tongan, and they did the Christmas story with costumes. My favorite were the angels, the little girls had wings made like huge folded fans out of thick paper.

On Christmas we slept in, then went to a feast in the next part of the village a little walk from Grant's place. It was nice to have a big meal with a lot of people on Christmas, and they were all so happy we came. The floor was laid out with mats, and the food down a long row on the mats on the floor and we all sat around it on the floor like all big feasts here. They had 4 roasted pigs, sweet and sour chicken, fish (cooked whole), mutton, watermelon, banana, hard boiled eggs, sausages, packages of cookies and chips, cans of pop with straws, and lots more. They always have more food than can be eaten. And while we ate different people stood up and gave speeches thanking people, some mentioned Grant or the peace corps. The feast and christmas concert made it feel a little like Christmas, but mostly it just felt like vacation. There was no snow, family, or presents (but we did get some in the mail thanks parents, and the church in Ha'ano gave us bags of candy along with the little kids they gave it to! And in Pangai our neighbor gave us a huge watermelon.)

The next three nights we spent at the fishing lodge/resort, just outside of town on Ha'ano. It was gorgeous!!! And we had it all to ourselves, complete with a beach with great snorkeling! There was no electricity, and just sima vie water (rain water from tank), but it had toilets, kerosene lanterns, and a solar shower so it worked well. It was just so relaxing to spend time doing nothing but laying around on the beach or big porch overlooking the beach, snorkeling, and the only thing to think about was what to cook for dinner. And we ate very well there! We had pasta with a tomato, onion and garlic sauce, another night we had chicken and rice, and we had chicken, fish, pinneapple, onion and tomato kebabs roasted over a fire with the fish fresh caught by Grant spearfishing. In the mornings we had fresh fruit salad and coffee. The last night we had rice with a coconut/papaya curry. The two girls with us are vegetarian so we think of different kinds of meals to make, or make a couple things so we have more meat and they'll eat veggies and fish.

It got incredibly hot during Christmas, the hottest so far in Ha'apai, so we spent a lot of time in the water. The snorkeling was great, it's virtually untouched so the coral extends to right where you walk in from shore, unbroken! And there were some big walls with drop-offs, with lots of different coral and fish, little bright blue fish, parrot and rainbow fish, morray eel, angel fish, etc.

We just got back "home" to Pangai this morning, it was nice to finally have somewhere to come back to, and not just constantly traveling/moving and living out of a bag. We have a fridge of food, and unpacked clothes now to come home to! And two litters of puppies that were happy to see us! And lots of laundry to do, which is a chore when you have to fill buckets in the shower to dump into the washing machine, and the public water keeps going out, so we had to wait until it went off and on enough to fill the washing machine with enough water. We had dinner tonight with Alicia and Villiami (from peace corps) at her house. Villiami had to come up and help sort out her housing situation, hopefully it will all work out and she'll stay in the house she's at now.

It's almost New Year's now too, we're trying to figure out plans for that, we'll either be here in Pangai, or go to the island south of us to a guesthouse/resort.

Home sweet home in Ha'apai

2008-12-20T10:37:00.004+13:00

We made it to our new home for the next two years, in Pangai, Ha'apai!!!

First we had a workshop/training with our counterparts all afternoon right after we landed, at the training center conference room - where I'll be working half of my time. Brett's principle was there, and someone from MAFF and the training center for me.

After that, we were able to walk to our new house and they drove all our luggage. It's very cute!! Blue with red trimming, wood house, with 2 bedrooms, the kitchen is to the left right when you walk in with dining area, and living room at the back left corner. The bathroom and shower are inside with a sink right outside those doors (but no faucets hooked up!). And right outside the back doorsteps is the ocean!!! You can see it from the living and dining room too. You walk out just a little and you're on a nice sandy beach, and right outside our house are a couple of huge twisted old trees so there's plenty of shade. The only thing is that it's pretty dirty in the house, they didn't really clean, so that's what we'll be doing today. And a few things need to be fixed. We also saw a huge spider last night and some roaches, but not many mosquitos at all or centipedes or anything. We met a few of the neighbors that seemed nice, and they each have four little kids that are a little loud - the houses are really close to eachother.

The outer island group got stuck here last night, I think because of weather, it rained a lot. So they were at the guesthouse right above the restaurant in town, we met for dinner there and had really good pizza!! And the other girl that was going to be in Pangai with us had a mix-up with her house, they're figuring it out today and if it doesn't work out she might be moving to a different island group, so I hope it works out! We also met a really fun couple from ireland/germany that used to run a scuba diving business and is gettting ready to start up a new scuba business on this island.

So today we'll be cleaning, tomorrow we'll find one of the churches to go to, and next week is christmas!! We might be going to a guesthouse/resort on another island here with some of the volunteers, or on new years we'll do that.

Our house, looking at the backside of it from the beach! The backyard is sand, and the front has grass and a few bushes/landscaping. Pigs, dogs and chickens roam all around, and puppies!

The first sunset at our beach, steps from our backsteps!!

We're official Peace Corps volunteers!!

2008-12-18T15:57:00.002+13:00

We had our swearing in ceremony last night at a resort on the western side of Tongatapu, we're now official peace corps volunteers and not trainees anymore!!! It feels so good to be done with training, and not having to go to any more sessions/classes, and being able to do what we want now with our time!

We had a quick rehersal, then got to the resort in the early evening. It was a really pretty location, right on the ocean with a balcony/bar overlooking it, and the restaurant area was decked out in flowers, plants, colored lights, etc. and you could see the ocean from the ceremony. We were all seated before the guest of honor arrived - the Prime Minister of Tonga was our guest of honor!! He was older, and had a few security guards with him, and was seated at the front facing us all along with the country director for the ceremony. There was an opening hymn and prayer, and speeches from the country director, training manager, and then the prime minister addressed us all and gave a speech and talked about his history with peace corps, it was really cool to see that he cared and he said his office and the government offices are open anytime to us if we need anything! We all had to raise our right hand and repeat an oath to the country director to be officially sworn in as volunteers, then we all got pins and a certificate handed to us one by one by the country director and the Prime Minister. After the swearing in, a few members of our group performed a ta'olanga dance. Then a little later we had a buffet dinner with tongan food, and the resort had some entertainment on stage - a live band that was really good, and traditional dancing. Our host family from Navutoka also came to the ceremony along with some of the other host families. It was nice that they took the time and drove all the way out there, it's a long ways from Navutoka. They gave us huge flower leis to wear! So it was a really fun night, we went out for awhile after we were driven back to the guest house.

Today Brett had emergency coordinator training most of the day (he's gonna be the back-up for the ha'apai group), and I shopped for more last minute stuff. We leave tomorrow for our new home in Ha'apai!!! And our all our stuff won't arrive until next Tuesday (hopefully) on the boat, so we've gotta get by without our oven/stove, supplies, etc. until then. And for anyone wondering, our address will stay the same.

New photos of the swearing in, I'll label them later, gotta go do more shopping now.

Our group with the prime minister in the middle, country director, and chinese ambassador

New photos

2008-12-14T14:11:00.000+13:00

There are new photos under the link to the left from thanksgiving and our navutoka homestay.

We're relaxing today, about to leave and go hang out at a hotel pool/bar area, and might watch flight of the conchords later tonight in the volunteer lounge here. It's so nice to be back in town and at sela's guest house! Last night we had a good time hanging out with a few current volunteers for dinner and drinks.

Osi Homestays!!

2008-12-14T08:47:00.001+13:00

We're finally done with homestays, it's a huge relief!!! And we get one week here in the capital city, Nuku'alofa. On Monday we have our big language test, and Wednesday 12/17 is our swearing in ceremony. Then we leave to move into our house in Pangai, Ha'apai on Sat. a week from today!

We've already got a lot of our shopping done for things we need for the house, we bought an oven/stove, fridge, washing machine, dishes, material for curtains, surge protectors, fan, towels, mat for the floor, and a bunch of other stuff. And I'm buying a small bike from a current volunteer (all the ones for sale I've seen are too big, and we save money this way), and we still need to buy one for Brett. The peace corps mandates bike helmets and provides them, along with life jackets. We have so much stuff to sort through and box up, it will all be shipped up to ha'apai by boat and will be there by the time we arrive.

Tonight we're going out for dinner and drinks, and tomorrow if the weathers good we're going out to an island close to here with our group and some current volunteers for the afternoon.

We've already been in Tonga a couple of months now, hard to believe, but at the same time it seems so long ago that we were back in the US and working at our old jobs. Sometimes sitting at the beach I'll think about if we weren't in peace corps here I'd be sitting in a cubicle reading emails. And I'd much rather be here on the beach, with a more relaxed schedule and sense of time. Even with the parasites or other health issues you have in a country like this. And language/culture frustrations.

One more note, the two phone companies here are having a dispute, and the connection from anyone calling from the US is shut down right now. So we can call out to the US and others, but if you call us from the US you might not get thru right now.

Navutoka homestay, tongatapu

2008-12-11T13:53:00.002+13:00

Well we're staying alive and surviving our last homestay in Navutoka, Tongatapu! We only have 2 more nights, and leave on Saturday back to Nuku'alofa the capital city and stay at a guest house for a week before leaving for our site in Ha'apai! On Wed. 12/17 we swear in officially as volunteers so think of us on 12/16 back home!

This homestay has been a lot different, for one thing it's only 2 weeks and you don't really get to know the village or family in that short amount of time. It's a bigger village than where we stayed in Vava'u, so it has a different feel to it, a little more urban but still no internet or large stores or anything. There's a lot of little falekoloas - stores that you walk up to and order through a window what products you want from the couple of shelves inside. This is the standard way of shopping in most places in Tonga. There are the tongan falekoloas and the chinese, the chinese have a lot more products and are open all the time. The tongan falekoloas aren't always open, but people just yell the shopkeeper's name (the stores are always right in front of the person's house), and they come out and open the store. There's a falekoloa in front of our homestay house in this village. You'll usually find chips, candy, water, noodles, flour, salt, ketchup, toothpaste, soap, kava, canned tuna and beef, and a few other things at these stores.

Our house at this homestay is huge (by tongan standards), 2-stories, lots of bedrooms, and a nice big wrap-around porch. But there are three families living in it - the mom and dad (Sia and Pauli) and their 5 kids, and their two older boys are married and have their own kids and also live in the house with their families. So it's a little confusing and chaotic at times. But this is a normal set-up in Tonga, once a young couple gets married they move in with the husband's family. One of the host sisters wove me a really pretty kiekie. And this time it was me that got really sick and not Brett, I think I'm over it now though, it was pretty bad earlier this week. It's definately not fun having a temp over 101 in the heat and humidity here! It was something probably from the food our group all ate, there were about 5 or 6 of us sick with the same thing. Not fun.

It was nice though that our village here is right on the ocean, with a little beach and benches lining the road along the ocean, it's a really pretty bright turquoise color and very shallow for a ways out. One day last week we went with Micah's host family out to one of the tiny islands you can see from shore. We thought it would just be a couple people from his family and us, but when we got to the water there was a tiny boatful of about a dozen tongans and Micah, it was already sitting really low in the water and Brett and I and Monica all squeezed in! This is how tongans normally travel, they squeeze as many people in as can fit, even sitting on laps at times on buses. It was fun, they made an umu so we all ate chicken and they had root crops too. They handed us sticks with roasted chicken, and a huge hunk of watermelon with a bush knife to cut it with. On the way there and back in the deep area between the island and main land the waves were huge like a roller coaster.

We've had more language classes here, and center days, soon to be done! Yesterday we had an interesting speaker from the center for abused women and children here in tonga and some of the statistics shocked us. In Tonga the land act/bill that is still being used was writen in 1875, and women have no right to own any land. Even if they're a widow, if they start a new relationship they then have to move off the land/house because they didn't stay true to their dead husband. (tonga's working on a new land bill now). And only first-born sons have a right to claim land. There's also a lot of domestic abuse, and they're just now starting public awareness on it, the only abuse center was just established in 2000 I believe. And for child abuse, they can't do anything about it if it's the parents. I think they're trying to get signed onto some UN child act, but don't have anything yet. In the local laws, there are none against child abuse or rape. Just some interesting facts on the topic here. We've also had more business and education sessions.

A couple more days and we'll be back in town, and will have more internet access again, and we have a lot of shopping to do for our house. I heard we might have to take the twelve hour boat ride to site in ha'apai, they're trying to work things out, so I hope it doesn't work and we can take the plane instead!

Beach house!!

2008-11-30T06:26:00.000+13:00

So we had good news yesterday, after talking with some of the PC staff about our housing situation, we will get the house we wanted between the two houses that were open for us in Ha'apai!! We'll be living in a good sized house (2 bedrooms, indoor kitchen, bathroom and shower), and it's RIGHT on the ocean!! We'll be facing west in Pangai so we'll see lots of sunsets, and the cone-shaped volcanic islands are right on the horizon. Also, during the whale season in their winter (june-sept-ish), we heard you can see whales from the house swimming by! I'm excited about the location and the house sounds really nice too. Just pray that there won't be any big hurricanes or anything!

We're about to go grab lunch in town here, then we leave in the afternoon for our last 2-week homestay on the eastern side of tongatapu. Probably won't have much internet access during the homestay.

Thanks for the letters and packages we've been getting to those who've sent!

Tongan Thanksgiving feast

2008-11-28T13:05:00.001+13:00

We had our first American holiday in Tonga! A bunch of us got together for a Thanksgiving meal, probably close to 20 of us at a current volunteers house. We had all the normal palangi food - turkey, mashed potatoes, salad, stuffing, bread, and watermelon, it was so good! Before we ate someone said a prayer and we all went around the room and said what we were thankful for - mine was being done with our first homestay and closer to being done with training! It was a lot of fun hanging out with current volunteers here, and there were 4 other trainees from our group.

It really has been like a vacation week this week staying with a current volunteer, eating normal food - we even had mac 'n cheese one night! And being able to do what we want when we want, not having a schedule. And more access to internet and stores in town. I just got three new kiekie's today from a volunteer that had a lot and was getting rid of some (thanks Karen!!)Now we just have to survive a 2-week homestay, then we're basically done with training! We're getting our housing figured out hopefully today, I think it's between two houses in Pangai.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home, enjoy the cold weather for us. Keep in touch - email, facebook or mail us stuff we love to hear from you all and keep up with what's going on with your lives!

Nuku'alofa, the big city

2008-11-25T12:05:00.000+13:00

We made it back to the capital city of Nuku'alofa this morning, it's amazing how different it feels/looks this time to us! When we first flew in here it seemed so small, hot and humid. Now it feels like a big city compared to our training village in Vava'u. And where we're staying we're just down the road from the peace corps office and free internet!! And lots of stores and restaurants! We went and ate at the Friends cafe for lunch when we got here, the toasted sandwiches and iced vanilla latte were so good!

When we left Vava'u it was pouring sheets of rain out, they gave us umbrellas to walk to the plane and up the stairs to board. Brett and I, and the other volunteers were surprised at how hard it was to say goodbye to our host families. It was definatley a challenge living with them - not having the freedom we're used to, eating whatever they cook, and difficulty sometimes understanding eachother. But we were really touched by how much they really cared about us and all they did for us. Our family roasted a pig the last Sunday we were there, we think it might have been there little pet pig!! I hope not! And our host mom cried at our last dinner together, saying she was sad they won't see us anymore to say good morning and good night and look after us. She also made us kaloas - flower lei necklaces like she usually does for any big event. They were really pretty! The kids were pretty sad too. Our host brother asked us to name his new puppy something that would remind them of us, I think they'll name it "snow" for the minnesota winters. They all loved the little presents we gave them too. And we were given carved bone necklaces and woven fans, and I got shell earings and a woven purse. (yes I'm still collecting purses even here!)And if we don't have a woven mat at our house in Ha'apai our host mom said she'd make one and ship it to us. They came to the airport to see us off this morning.

So now it almost feels like a vacation week, we're staying with a current volunteer in town and shadowing current volunteers for a few days. We're all getting together, I think almost 20 of us in town here for Thanksgiving on Thursday.

Sad Days in Tonga

2008-11-21T11:59:00.004+13:00

On Wednesday and Friday we had to say goodbye to our good friends Trent and Bronzie. They decided to leave Peace Corp service early for personal reasons which all of us here in Group 74 support. Trent was a great teacher who was planning on teaching high school computer in the city of Nuku'Nuku on the main island of Tongatapu, which he would have been great at. Trent was an inspiration in our home stay town of Tu' anekivale, he was always playing sports with the local kids and swimming at the local beach with them. Bronzie was planning on running a computer lab in Leimatu'a on the island of Vava'u and was going to try and increase computer usage throughout the village. Bronzie was always seen at kava and got along great with the local men, he might of not always understood the language at kava but he was always able to catch the jokes and throw them back when needed. All of us in Group 74 will miss them both.
It takes a lot to come to a place far from home and give of yourself, many people only think of doing something like this and never act on it. I give Trent and Bronzie a lot of respect for come here and trying Peace Corp, and even though they were only here for a month and a half they were both able to make a difference and do things they would not of been able to do if they had not come to Tonga. We wish them the best and hope they find their nitch in life after experiencing Peace Corp Tonga.

Good Luck Guys,

Brett
Here's our Tu'anikivale crew with our two teachers Paea in the front and Tasi in the back. The two guys that left are Trent in the gray wifebeater in front and Bronzie in the red shirt in back. This is the porch we had morning and afternoon tea at everyday in language class.