I love our cat, Smack, but he hates sleeping humans.

At first it was pouncing. You try sleeping with a cat jumping on and gnawing your feet every time you move them under the covers.

Next it was the door attack. When we couldn't take the pouncing any longer, we would lock him out of the bedroom at night. So he took running at full speed down the long hallway, launching himself at the top of the door and then scratching he claws all the way down to the floor. Rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat...... Once, in a sleep deprived stupor Cale got up and zipped him into a duffel bag.

"What did you do with the cat?" I sleepily mumble.

"I put him in a bag," Cale replies.

"You can't put him in a bag, he might suffocate. Let the cat out of the bag," I explain (enjoying the ability to use that cliche for real).

Then he learned how to flip light switches, leading us to believe intruders were in the house in the middle of the night.

Next it was the standing on the bed at 4 in the morning (remember I was working at newspapers and not getting home until after midnight) and screaming about being inside when he could be outside and why don't we let him outside?

When we moved to Samoa and left Smack in Indy with friends we felt guilty, but we looked forward to sleeping. Unfortunately we quickly discovered that roosters and Samoans also hate sleep.

Now that we are back and Smack has been living with us again he's been acting out in new ways. The stress of the move and being reunited with his family irritated his bladder (apparently this is a normal thing) and he took to peeing all over the house. Hooray. He also got in fights with the neighbor cats and required medical attention for a black eye. These problems might not seem like sleep-hate, but they are. Since Smack was ill and on medication, the vet recommended keeping him in the house. However, he was also refusing to pee in his litter box because he associated it with pain. If we didn't let him outside when he demanded he would pee on our things. So once again it is the 4am cat demanding to go outside.

With all these sleep-hate activities, last night took the cake. We had let him out and left the cat door open and crawled back into bed. We had barely had the chance to fall back to sleep when there were strange noises. It sounded like another animal was in the house. My first thought was that Smack had brought another cat back in with him or a small dog. Cale got up and could see in the gloom that Smack had deposited something on the rug just outside our bedroom. Cale turned on the light and with the audience he wanted finally paying attention Smack bit the head off the bird he had captured and proudly brought home with him.

Thanks Smack. Just what we need, 5am bird carcass cleanup.

— Sara

I suppose 10:45 pm isn't really late night, but it is for us old folks.

Cale and I had given up watching the Back to the Future marathon on the ion channel (which appears to be some sort of wholesome broadcast channel that usually only shows reruns of Without a Trace, Criminal Minds and Ghost Whisperer) and were heading to bed when Cale noticed someone running across our lawn with a flashlight. Seconds later our neighbor was at the door, "Your horses are out."

I am sure you have already figured there is no way that Cale and I own any horses, but our other neighbors do and two of them were out in the middle of the night, running next to a state highway with a 55 mph speed limit (the highway, not the horses). Not good for the horses or for the unsuspecting driver that might hit one.

Luckily they galloped back through our yard and into the neighbors'. The pony ran back into the corral and the owners were able to get the other one on a bridle (I don't know horse terms, but there was some sort of rope involved) and lead it back into the pen (if horses have pens).

Strangely enough this isn't the first time we've dealt with our neighbors' loose animals or with escaped horses. Three weeks ago, while celebrating Cale's birthday, some of their goats got out and Rob used his expert country skills to wrangle them back into their pen. Two years ago Cale and I were house-sitting up the hill from Apia (capital city of Samoa) when we looked outside to discover horses on the tennis court. They ran out on to the road and galloped up the mountain. Cale stood in the middle of the street and directed the horses home when they came pounding back down the hill. He's lucky he didn't get trampled.

On an unrelated note, we've been nursing a sick cat. Smack's been acting a little strange the last few days (though he hasn't peed on anything in a week [a week ago he peed in our friend Lindsey's purse. That's right, in, not on. On her phone to be exact]). He had a large, raised scab on his head. Yesterday day, he'd been favoring that area of his head and hadn't been opening his right eye all the way. We broke out the scissors and clipped all the fur from around his scab and started fussing with it. After aggravating it a little, the most amazing amount of puss started to pour out (oh, no, there goes Sara taking about puss again). That's right, Smack's gone and gotten himself an infected abscess again. With all my boil experience, I know how he feels. We've been cleaning him out and putting bactriban on it and he seems to be feeling better. Hopefully we won't have to take him back to the vet, the last visit was pretty pricey for what they eventually diagnosed as an imaginary disease (yet still prescribed steroids and antibiotics for).

Last night we went crazy and stayed up until 11 pm. Looks like tonight we are going to try for midnight.

— Sara

Apparently, I am not alone in thinking that the new Glade Sense and Spray looks questionable.

— Sara

Dear Target,

You've broken my heart. Over the years I thought I had gotten to know you, trust you, even love you. You were everything I was looking for in a department store. Where else would I go when I needed a cat toy, new bedsheets, school supplies and t-shirts in one stop? Walmart? Walmart is the evil empire, but you are Target. You were different. Maybe I was just letting the graphic designer in me cloud my judgment with its love of you displays and products. I thought you were more than just a pretty face, I thought I saw something good on the inside too (founding sponsor of Weekend America, you).

Now it's like I don't even know you anymore. I gave you my wallet and you've gone and thrown it in the trash. Target, how could you do this to me?

I think we need to take a break. I have started seeing other stores. They can't give me everything, the way you once could, but they don't cheat on me with bigoted politicians either.

This doesn't have to be the end of us. I could see it in my heart to take you back if I knew you were truly sorry and I could trust that you had changed your ways.

Regretfully,

Sara

PS. Tell your friend Best Buy I am not talking to him anymore either.

Yesterday afternoon I was in a computer lab having a class on the program I will be using for my statistics class (it is called SAS in case you were curious) and I was having strange flashbacks to Samoa. Someone has drawn an Excel table on the whiteboard. There were more students then there were computers ("you're just going to have to find someone to share with"). In-class notes were Word documents saved to each student's computer (though in this case they were downloaded from the online class management web site).

Computer programming: The manipulation of data by means of writing instructions in a particular computer language

Computer language: A collection of words and symbols assembled according to a precise set of rules and are interpreted by the computer to accomplish a variety of tasks.

Syntax: The set of rules of a computer language.

Computer program: A set of instructions written by a user in a particular computer language in order to carry out one or more tasks. In this class, our computer programs will be used to read, format, organize, manipulate, analyze, and report data.

Record (AKA observation): Any one of the horizontal rows of a file representing all of the data maintained for a particular unit of observation

Field (AKA variable): Any one of the vertical columns in a file that represents a single piece of information about all of the entities of interestAll my fellow Peace Corps Samoa ICT volunteers know what I am talking about.

But this time I was the student, not the teacher.

One other note from my statistics lab last night. Visual proof that Lotus 1-2-3 references still exist in the real world too:

— Sara

Today was the first day of classes for Cale and I in our going back to school adventure. I have spent the last two weeks in math camp and orientation, while Cale has been scratching his eyes out with boredom.

Mondays will be easy for us. Our first classes do not start until 2:30pm. I only have one class on Mondays; Cale has two. Both of Cale's classes are freshman business school classes: finite math and business computers. My only class of the day is Public Management Economics, which was way more interesting than it sounds.

Things have changed since we were last at school. For me that was more than seven years ago and for Cale it was at least five. One of Cale's classes is a huge lecture hall that requires the students to have a clicker, which is basically an electronic way to "participate" in the lecture.

My economics class is presented by Prof. Ross in a pretty interesting way. He styles his class on instructions on how not to kill people and starts the lecture asking questions about whether or not seat belts should be on school buses and referring to the FDA as an effective killing machine. Ask yourself:

1. There are 531 billion barrels of known oil reserves in the world. Annually, 16.5 billion are consumed. When will we run out of oil?

2. Why do so many cities and towns run out of water in Southern California?

3. A valley is flooded. Houses in the plain are damaged, while homes higher up are not. Who, if anyone, should we feel sorry for?

Keep in mind this is an econ class when attempting to answer these questions.

Cale and I both managed to have articles of clothing that required Oxycleaning by the end of the day. Cale dug through piles of empty ammo boxes at the army surplus and filthed up his brand new dress pants. I was surprised by a slightly early visit from Aunt Flo. Thank goodness I was wearing my brand-new, bright-white underpants from Victoria Secrets.

< . Side Note >Can I just take a minute to talk about my undergarments?

People not interested in Sara's breasts or women's panties should probably skip this part.

So its been more than two years since I bought a bra. The last bra I bought was over the internet from Target while in Samoa. I went to Samoa with about four bras and three sports bras. Several of them had been stored away in ziplocks to preserve the elastic, but even that wasn't enough. It's been so long since I have owned a new, appropriately stretchy bra that I forgot what they were like. Supportive. That's what they are like.

Sunday I went shopping for undergarments at Victoria Secrets. Aside from three pairs of panties purchased at the mall in Los Angeles immediately after our return to America, I have never shopped there before. Holy Shiznit! I have never owned such comfortable bras in my life! Usually, after a particularly strenuous day one of the first things I like to do when I get home is take my bra off. For get that. After school today, I wandered around the house without a shirt with just my new bra. That's how comfortable it is. Furthermore, I was always under the impression I had small, flat terrible, boobs. Apparently what I had was bras that gave me small, flat, terrible boobs. You know what I have now? Cleavage! I have never...ever...ever had cleavage. I just though it was something my boobs couldn't do. Shows what I know. My boobs are so spectacular is these bars if it wasn't for my belly fat, I would want to wander around outside without a shirt on just so the general public could enjoy my breasts as much as I am.

Also, I now own underpants that can be called panties. I usually have sturdy underpants. These underpants get the job done. They are no nonsense. They are Hanes-Her-Way. They can be washed on the heavy-duty cycle and come out is the same condition as they went in. They are underpants. What I got in Los Angeles from Victoria Secrets are panties. They are delicate. They have ribbons or lace. They do not react well to the type of washing that happens to clothes when you are backpacking around Southeast Asia. My new panties from Victoria Secrets are slightly more utilitarian from the last, but are still delicate and luxuriant and I have promised to wash them on the hand-washables cycle in the washing machine.

Enough on my undergarments

Where were we? Oh, yes, the first day of school.

Cale got called Sir. I discovered I cannot seem to print on any computer on campus. We both came home to find piles of books shipped from Amazon waiting in our mailbox and on our front doorstep. What more could you ask for?

— Sara

PS. Do you know how tricky it is to add ironic html code into a blog entry when blogger supports html? it just hides all your ironic coding as if it was code. Unless there really is an html code for side note.

Cale and I have this game, the goal of which is to come up with names that will fit into the rules. However, we don't really have any rules. You just know a name that fits when you hear it.

Venn Diagram

Vector Graphic

Do you see the trend here? First name Venn? Middle name Diagram? It is a thing and it could be a name. Also, the word that is the first name isn't so weird that it is unbelievable.

There is more to the game than that.

casE sensitive

casE is pronounced Casey. The capital letter is key here; making the name itself case sensitive. I know, you are amazed by the cleverness of this name.

Also, if you happen to be a French/German couple:

Reaux Beaux Kaup

You get it? Robo Cop. Another kid that will never resent his parents.

We also have ones that don't quite fit into that category. Like brothers Alpha Male and Beta Male. I suppose it sucks to be the younger brother. Or an entire family of boys: Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan and Tamerlane Khan. I suppose this one would work better if Khan was your last name and not as first and middle names.

Cale, as you know, goes by his middle name. That's right folks, some of you out there don't even know Cale's real first name! Shocking. He likes the idea of kids going by their middle names (I suppose so they can suffer through first day of school roll call the way he did). Cale also happens to be named after his father and likes that idea too. So he has suggested:

Also Cale Reeves

and

Other Cale Reeves

Names I am sure that any kid would appreciate.

What about you? Have any names that would fit into our game?

— Sara

McCormick's Creek State Park. Only 10 miles from our front door.

I am a city girl at heart.

At least that is what I kept insisting as Cale and I slept outside on mats in tiny towns in Southeast Asia and Samoa, like this one.

Also, I do not camp.

Anywho.

I didn't grow up in a big city like New York or Chicago, but Indianapolis is still the 14th largest city in the country (population-wise). I think I might have gone to an apple orchard as a field trip in elementary school. When my parents took us to the state fair as kids I saw farm animals in cages. And that is about the extent of my country living in America. Even when I left Indy for college, I still moved to a respectably-sized town. Columbia has a population of over 100,000. My first job was in Evansville (a city I considered way too small) with a population of more than 120,000. Next on the list was Orlando, population more than 230,000 (metro area, more than two million).

However, outside of American Cale and I like to stick to the tiny towns. The entire population of Samoa is just slightly more than Evansville, Indiana. Our village, Faleula, had an estimated population around 2,000 (the smallest place we have ever lived). In Thailand, Bangkok was obviously too big (nine million people in the city alone), but so were Chiang Mai (just under 150,000) and Chiang Rai (62,000). We had to get out into the country in villages of less than 10,000 to be comfortable. Our favorite place in Cambodia had a population of less than 40,000.

Now we are in Poland for our first attempt at small town living in the States. Poland is unincorporated, so it is tricky to find population information, but it appears there are about 2,000 of us out here. In Samoa we were 20 minutes out of Apia (38,000). In Poland we are five minutes out of Spencer (20,000).

We've decided to approach our new lifestyle here with the same sense of adventure we used to explore the rural in other countries. We've already been to a county fair (take note that one of the top links on the site is hog wrestling), swam in a farm pond and burned our trash in our backyard.

One of the benefits to living in the country is all your friends and family have huge gardens and are constantly insisting you take free food with you.

In the spirit of more food than you can possibly eat before it goes bad, Cale and I have decided to start experimenting with canning. Recently we turned about 20 pounds of tomato (and other ingredients) into seven pint jars of salsa.

I am also learning about maintaining huge tracts of land (actual farmers will of course mock me and my "huge" three acres, but it is immense to me). In the picture below, I am not driving a lawn mower (as you city folk might think). That is in fact a tractor. A surprising number of things in the country are tractors.

However, this thing, that Cale is driving, is a lawn mower. Yeah, it confuses me too.

I quickly learned that my delicate hands aren't used to all this manual labor. Took the skin right off my thumbs after raking for only 10 minutes (there was much more raking in my future as well).

Cale promises to take me to "the races" and fishing! Stay tuned for more country living adventures.

— Sara

Smack wanted to help can.

I suppose it is a little contradictory of me to refer to our return to school as part of our continuing effort to not grow up and then complain about being treated like a child, but this is ridiculous.

{SCREEEECH} COMPLETE BREAK FROM TOPIC

I have noticed lately that when I start typing a blog entry, I usually start with the sentence that should probably be found halfway down. I have provided no explanation or set up for the above statement. It's just dropped out of no where. In previous entries I have gone back and cut the offending sentence from the beginning and moved it to a more appropriate place, but in this instance I am leaving it. I am not sure why my mind works this way, but its been doing it for a long time now. Back in my magazine writing class at Mizzou I did the same thing with several stories. We were asked to re-write a story our professor (and editor-at-large at GQ magazine) had written. My lede was a scene halfway through his story when the protagonist finds himself sitting in his backyard with his gun collection thinking about shooting himself. When I wrote a profile on one of the guys inside the Truman the Tiger suits, I started it with him on the steps of the basketball stadium with a bloody fist. I just like to start in the middle I guess. Either that, or it is a cheap gimmick to make up for the fact that I am not that great of a writer to start with.

{SCREEEECH} AND NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM

So things have been a little entertaining on the Cale-is-going-back-to-school-as-an-undergraduate front. First we had to be back in America in mid-July so he could attend one of those welcome-to-college days where fresh-faced freshman wander around with their parents in awe and sleep in a dorm for the first time. Granted his was specifically for transfer students and was in theory less geared towards 18-year-olds, but not by much. They still seem to assume you are 19 or 20 years old and transferring from a community college where you probably lived with your parents. There were sections on renters' rights and the dangers of credit cards. For all the jumping through hoops and presentations, all Cale really needed to do was see a academic advisor and register for classes, yet he wasn't allowed to simply do that. He was required to attend one of these welcome events. They don't seem to offer any sort of option for adults who are returning to finish their undergraduate degrees. It was frustrating enough for Cale, but I am trying to imagine what something like that would be like for, say, a retiree, who decided to go back to school. You're 65 and you have to watch 20-year-olds give you talks about managing your money and using the library.

Cale is going back to school for a business degree. Very few of his existing credits count toward this degree, but he has is electives totally taken care of. He joking refers to all his 300-level classes that are meaningless now. "You mean my credits in playwriting don't count for anything in the business school?" However, his life experience doesn't seem to count for anything either. Cale has run a million dollar restaurant, he was a corporate fixer who went around to failing franchises to set them straight and he was self-employed when he was making studio furniture, but there is no way for him to get out of the mandatory careers in business class.

Recently Cale received an email from school telling him he must complete a two-part, multi-hour online alcohol education course before he can register for classes in the spring semester. He even called to ask if he could get out of it. "I'm 30 years old," he explained. Doesn't matter. So Cale spent two hours watching videos of edgy teen-agers read from scripts about drinking, drugs and healthy relationships.

He was asked questions like:

"How likely are you to get in trouble with your parents for your drinking."

"How likely are you to drink more than four drinks in a night and be taken advantage of sexually"

And had to account for his living situation.

At home with mom and dad? Off-campus apartment with friends? Living with his steady girlfriend/boyfriend?

It seems surprising to me that there is not an admissions option for transfer/returning students over a certain age that would exempt them from all these requirements obviously created for teen-agers or people living away from home for the first time.

Oh well, at least Cale is getting almost weekly reminders that he is currently successfully continuing to not grow up. Or possibly daily reminders that despite his best efforts, he may have inadvertently grown up — just a little bit.

Cale's response? "I'd better hurry up and buy a motorcycle."

— Sara

Before Cale and I joined the Peace Corps in 2007 we sold everything we owned. Had we moved into a married-student slum while attending IU, it would have been one empty apartment. No furniture. No dishes. No nothing. One of the benefits to moving into Cale's grandmother's home is it was already furnished. However, we still wanted to make this house feel like our home.

The first step creating a home was to bring our family back together. For the first time in almost three years we have been reunited with our cat, Smack. I have to thank Rob, April and Jason for caring for him while we were away. He was with them for almost a third of his life.

The final stepping in feeling at home was breaking out the boxes of artwork we hadn't seen on almost three years either and finding them a place on the walls.

With our family complete and our walls decorated we feel pretty comfortable. Sure, we are still sleeping on the floor and find the couch too comfortable, but it is a start.

— Sara

PS, The top picture looks better to me, but this one is a better picture of Smack.

Wikipedia

Poland, Indiana that is.

As you already know, Cale and I are going to be pretty stationary in good, old Indiana for a while. Exotic adventures abroad have been put on hold temporarily. Luckily, we can still imagine we are traveling right here in our new home in Poland, Indiana. We are southeast of Brazil. And southwest of Lebanon, Peru and Mexico.

Cale's grandmother owns a house in Poland, just outside of Spencer, Indiana. She rarely lives there, spending most of her summers in her other Indiana home and her winters in Arizona. When she learned we would be moving to Bloomington for school she offered her place to us rent-free. At first Cale and I were interested in living on campus, but after applying for married-student slums and being assigned to a crappy, one-bedroom apartment with rent of $707 a month, Cale's grandmother's house looked like a god-send.

Cale and I moved our belongings down here two weeks ago with the help of Rob and Connor. Everything we own fit in the back of the jeep and Rob's trunk. We've unpacked and settled in. Stay tuned for more on Poland in the coming days.

— Sara

In our continuing efforts to refrain from growing up, Cale and I are going back to school. You should be able to find us in the vicinity of Bloomington at Indiana University for the next three years-ish. I will be working on a Masters in Nonprofit Management at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs (maybe with a little Comparative and International Affairs and Policy Analysis thrown in for good measure). Cale will be in the Kelley School working on an undergraduate degree in business with a focus in Entrepreneurship. Cale likes to say that I'll cover the nonprofit and he'll take the profit and one of us should end up managing something in the end.

There were probably be fewer cultural revelations in the blog for the next few years. Or surprising foods. Or unidentifiable plants. However, I will do my best to keep it interesting. Stay tuned for fascinating stories on life with air-conditioning, travel in your own car and restaurants, restaurants, restaurants galore. Oh, and possibly some studying.

— Sara

www.slashphone.com

You may remember a little rant I posted to the blog a month ago. Long story short, we were having a problem with our Discover card. We had been told we could use our card in Thailand. It wasn't true. We were told we could use our card at Western Union. It wasn't true. We were told we could do cash advance transfers to checking. It sort of wasn't true (we hadn't made three "qualifying" payments).

Earlier this week Cale received an email from Dawn at Discover card. She had been made aware of our blog entry and wanted to apologize for the situation. Apparently, we could have accessed Emergency Cash while in Cambodia. However, in order to access this cash, we needed to know the secret code. Though we repeatedly told the customer service representatives we were in a foreign country and that we really wanted to get money from our Discover card, none of them seemed to know any way (well, any real way, they offered plenty of false ways) for us to use our card. According to Dawn, we needed to tell the customer service rep on the phone to transfer us to Global Traveler’s Assistance, From there that person would have been able to get us the Emergency Cash. Unfortunately, because we didn't know the code words (Global Traveler's Assistance) we weren't able to get our multiple customer service reps to transfer us to the people who could help us.

To Dawn's credit, from her email I get the impression that she was prepared at that time to do whatever it took to assist us. She did not know we were already back in the States by then (since we had told Discover we were going to be overseas from April to August), so she provided us with this information in the hopes that we would use it if necessary. She also credited $75 to our account for our troubles, which was appreciated. Furthermore, when we were back in the States Cale made a transfer from Discover to our bank account. After seeing this transfer and knowing that we were supposed to be overseas still, Discover put a hold on our account (though, now that I think about it, I don't think they notified us about this hold). When the card wouldn't work any more, Cale called them, told them we were back in America and that these were authorized transactions. I appreciate Discover cards quick action to prevent our card from being misused when they had reason to suspect that it was not us making the transactions.

So, long story short. Discover card could definitely do a better job in educating their customer service reps on what options are available to card users overseas, otherwise they are less crappy than previously indicated. Dawn, we appreciate your efforts on our behalf.

— Sara

Homes and businesses in Thailand and Cambodia with tin roofs will frequently have a roof sprinkler system. It can be an actually garden sprinkler on the roof or simply a hose with holes or advanced professional systems. Whatever the method, they will turn it on during the heat of the day cooling the tin roof and helping keep the temperature down inside. Brilliant. I see no reason why this wouldn't be effective in Samoa (at least in the places with abundant running water). Our PST village had free water pipe and a river, I bet it would be easy to cool off houses in this manner.

On the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok we saw the place where toilets go to die. It was a massive porcelain graveyard.

It happened frequently enough for me to wonder if it was just a language issue. Someone would tell you how much something costs or how many of something they have saying one number while holding up a different number of fingers. They would say five and hold up four fingers. Mostly it happened in English, which is not their first language. However, usually the number they were saying was the correct number and not the fingers. Also, Cale said he had it happen to him a couple of times in Thai and Khmer.

Cale and I had an argument over whether or not he could tie me to the table (don't ask) with is flip-flops. I don't think it could be done. He seems to think that they plastic-rubbery straps of his jandals would be enough to hold me.

Wow. I thought I had more tidbits than this. Looks like my last entry on Southeast Asia is mercifully short. Tune in next time when Cale and Sara go back to school and hi-jinx ensue.

— Sara

*Audience Participation Portion: Please imagine the red dot is on Indianapolis and not Bangkok. The map was originally made on a Mac with Illustator and now I have Inkscape and cannot open the EPS to edit it.

So, yeah, we're back in America. I mentioned that earlier. I figured I would fill you in on the final details of our trip and the last few tidbits I have to share.

Saturday, 10 July, we caught the train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok at 2:50pm. This time we got sleeper seats. They were not air-conditioned and I found that way more comfortable than the air-con seats we had on the ride in the opposite direction. This time around we were too smart to fall for their meal tricks. However, we were also arriving in Bangkok at 5:30 in the morning, so they weren't offering an overly-priced breakfast on this train anyway.

Once again, the views from the train were lovely. Train travel, especially over long distances is way preferable to the bus. Even if we had splurged for the first, first, first-class bus from Chiang Mai to Bangkok it still would have been like 12 hours in a seat on a bus. This way we could walk around and then at night we had relatively comfortable beds. The only disadvantages is they do not turn the car lights out. If you want dark for sleeping you need to draw your curtain. However, if you want the breeze from the fan (especially for top bunk people with no window) you need to leave your curtain open. I opted for the open curtain.

Cale and I settled down to sleep pretty early (it was like 8 or 9pm). It was pretty good that I started sleeping so early. Even though I had taken a Benadryl to aid with my sleeping, I still woke up every hour or two. No reason for that; I just couldn't seem to stay asleep.

Our train was scheduled to arrive in Bangkok at 5:30am. Maybe that is the time we crossed the line into the Bangkok metro area or something because we sure didn't pull into the train station until 7am. Oh well, the subway didn't start running until like 6am anyway, so if we had arrived at 5:30 we would have just had to wait around.

We went immediately to the train to the subway. We switched to the skytrain at an interchange station and took that to the stop for the Buri House (where we had stayed with Nancymarie and Hayden three months ago...almost to the day even). While sitting in the Buri House waiting room we ran into Portia (another Peace Corps volunteer we had met in Chiang Mai...it's a small world after all). After checking in we proceeded to crash for several hours in obscenely cold air-con. We already had a full day and it was only like 9am.

We quickly discovered that the Buri House is in a pretty expensive part of town. The roads are lined with high-end malls and interior design shops. If you are getting married this must be bridal row or something, with all the dress and bridal-planning shops. Cale was still a little weary from a bout of stomach problems he had experienced in Chiang Mai and didn't want a repeat just as we were going to begin our 30-hour airplane adventure, so he didn't want to eat street food. The restaurants in the area were pretty expensive (one Korea joint we went into had a buffet that cost 500 baht..that's $15USd!). So we ended up eating McDonalds in the mall (don't tell anyone...or that we had KFC in the mall for dinner).

The check out from our guesthouse was 12pm Monday, 12 July. Our flight wasn't until 12:30am Tuesday, 13 July. For those of you who have trouble with the whole midnight/noon am/pm thing, that means our flight was so late Monday night it was really Tuesday morning. It also meant we had 12 hours to kill from when we checked out of our guesthouse until our flight took off. At first we considered seeing a movie and getting food and wandering around. However, we had all our luggage to deal with, the area of town we were in was expensive and, well, we are lazy. So instead after checking out from our guesthouse we caught a taxi to the airport. That's right cats and kittens, only 12 hours early for our flight.

How to kill almost 10 hours in the Bangkok airport before even going through security:

1. Wander around the entire pre-security area. Get a feel for the restaurants and 7-11s. Keep an eye out for any electrical outlets near chairs.

2. Find a comfortable place to set up camp at one far, abandoned end near the restrooms. Choose seating strategically to keep an eye on all the electrical outlets. For some strange reason, all seats near electrical outlets were taken and most of the people in the seats weren't even using the outlet. Also, note to BKK, why go through all the effort to wire up that support beam and put an outlet in if you are only going to include a single plug. Why not two plugs? Or, heaven forbid, several?

3. Watch Alien on the laptop and drink a beer (cause you can do that anywhere).

4. Experience false advertising after ordering the "Burger Set" at the Black Canyon Coffee outlet in the airport. I counted, I got less than 10 fries with my burger and I won't even get into the burger.

5. Read

6. Take turns walking around.

7. Watch Where the Wild Things Are on the laptop and drink a beer.

8. Take turns walking around.

9. Read.

10. Get really excited about the prospect of checking into your flight.

11. Get your hopes dashed and return to waiting.

12. Check in for your flight. Watch an old man in line ahead of you open his suitcase and pull out socks and pants and proceed to get dressed while waiting in line.

13. Passport inspection.

14. Security.

15. Now begins the waiting on the other side of security.

We were flying with two large groups. One was a group of sporty looking people from Nepal. The other was some sort of large group of people who all appeared to work for the same company (the matching windbreakers were the clue). Both the Nepalese and the employees were wearing laminated pieces of A4 like unaccompanied minors that listed all their travel info and their names and whatnot. Can these grown people not travel on their own? Is there some worry they might get lost? I suppose if this is their first international flight. But they were more than 20 people in each group, I feel like it would be tricky to get lost.

Anyway, we fly to Korea. I have very little memory of this. It was five hours. I think there might have been breakfast. I think I made the mistake of choosing the rice porridge, which would have been fine if I hadn't added the "green tea" flavor packet that contained seaweed. Had I known about the seaweed I would have left out the packet.

Next we waited in the Seoul airport for four hours or so. This was done mostly in a delirious haze in and out of consciousness. Before boarding the flight to the US, Cale was made to throw away his bottle of water, even though he had just bought it on the other side of security.

The flight to Chicago was 12 hours. Our seat mate was a little too chatty for my liking. I now know all the details of his life. Where he used to live, where he lives now, why he was in Bangkok, his wife, his divorce, his dead grandfather, etc., etc, etc. I think he took the hint when I put my earphones in and didn't remove them for the next 12 hours. I watched Alice in Wonderland, Date Night, and Youth in Revolt. I tried to watch Bounty Hunter and Valentine's Day, but they were too terrible to continue with.

Lunch was chicken and mashed potatoes (my seat mate doesn't eat meat, but doesn't advance order a vegetarian meal, instead he just lets you know he cannot eat anything on his plate, do you want it? so I gave him my salad). Dinner was either Korean noodles or seafood. Even though our seat mate could see the Korea noodle dish in front of me and Cale (and how it was entirely vegetables) before making his choice, he chose the seafood. After opening it he discovered it was full of (surprise) seafood, which he could not eat. Also it was in a cream sauce and he cannot eat milk. Or gluten. I am sure the stewardesses love him. Some time in the middle of the night (to be honest, I have no idea what time it was) they came around with a snack, either these crazy pizza sticks or tuna-rice balls that were in a triangle instead of a ball.

Aside from the time I walked in on an old lady in the bathroom (you have to pull the lock so the door says occupied!) the flight was pretty uneventful. Just long.

We landed in Chicago and drank a beer that wasn't Chang or Angkor (or the like). I also showed an old lady with very little English how to use the automatic flush toilets. There is just something about me and old ladies and toilets I guess.

When we finally arrived in Indy we had been in transit for more than 40 hours. Our Tuesday had been more than 30 hours long and it was only 4pm Tuesday there. We still had eight more hours of Tuesday to get through.

The last of the tidbits will be in the next blog entry.

— Sara

Jane has successfully named this plant the Rainbow Gum Tree (that's Eucalyptus Deglupta to you). According to Wikipedia, this is the only eucalyptus tree native to the northern hemisphere. It is most commonly grown for pulp wood in making paper and for ornamental purposes.

"This tree is also grown for ornamental purposes, due to the showy multi-coloured streaks that cover the trunk. Patches of outer bark are shed annually at different times, showing the bright-green inner bark. This then darkens and matures to give blue, purple, orange and then maroon tones"I had no idea such a tree existed. Cale and I were walking around in the national park up the mountain from Chiang Mai, when we happened to turn the corner and stumble on this tree. At first we thought it had been painted, until we realized that they were everywhere and all the trees were equally colorful. Cale describes them as Picasso trees. They are my new favourite plant.

— Sara

I am sorry. For those of you following the blog who are not on the facebook, I failed to mention we are back in America. I will post the final entries of our Southeast adventures very soon. Things are a little jet-lagged and hectic here at the moment.

— Sara

Peak Ness has successfully named this plant Longan in a facebook comment. She does have a slight advantage though, what with living in Thailand and all.

According to Wikipedia, the names for this fruit in Chinese and Malay mean "dragon eye" and "cat eye" respectively. I would not argue with this assessment. Longan falls into the category of eyeball fruits.

Wikipedia

Mark Kaplan guessed this fruit might be lychee or rambutan (also via facebook). You may remember rambutan from the very first Name This Plant. Lychee, also like the longan and rambutan, has an outer shell with an eyeball-like fruit inside. All three fruits are frequently sold on the roadside here in bunches still attached to small branch.

Lychee/Wikipedia

According to Purdue's horticulture web site, logan is often named in reference to the lychee:

"Closely allied to the glamorous lychee, in the family Sapindaceae, the longan, or lungan, also known as dragon's eye or eyeball, and as mamoncillo chino in Cuba, has been referred to as the 'little brother of the lychee', or li-chihnu, 'slave of the lychee'. Botanically, it is placed in a separate genus, and is currently designated Dimocarpus longan Lour. (syns. Euphoria longan Steud.; E. longana Lam.; Nephelium longana Cambess.). According to the esteemed scholar, Prof. G. Weidman Groff, the longan is less important to the Chinese as an edible fruit, more widely used than the lychee in Oriental medicine."Though I am a fan of the flavors of all these fruits, I am not a big fan of their consistency and eyeball-like qualities. I rarely eat them.

— Sara

Sara, why are you posting so many blog entries all at once?

Because we are almost ready to leave and I haven't caught up with our adventures. It would be silly to be back in America and still blogging about Thailand.

Oh..ok...well hurry up already.

The people of Thailand seem to have a thing for the old American West. There are country-western bars and whatnot around. However, this resort/campground outside of Chiang Mai really takes the cake. I am not sure if you can sleep in the teepees or not.

I did find it strange that the hot springs that are in no way affiliated with the above resort also incorporated Native American stuff.

You can also buy dreamcatchers at the Chiang Mai Sunday Walking Market.

Dear tourists, your hand does not actually emanate a force field.

For some strange reason we have been witness to a strange phenomena. A group of tourists will be standing on the side of the road waiting to cross the street (usually these groups appear to be family groupings with kids in tow) and the leader of the group will just decide that now is the time to cross, regardless of the traffic. They will step out into the street and put out their hand at the oncoming cars. "Stop in the name of the farang!" They don't actually say that, but that is the impression that I get. What exactly do you think you are accomplishing with your hand? Either the traffic sees you and will stop or they don't. Do you think that with out the hand signal the drivers see you but aren't sure what to do and will run you down? Stupid tourists, wait for a break in traffic or, this is craziness, cross at the designated cross walks where there is a light and a button you push to indicate you want to cross.

Speaking of Chiang Mai traffic, it is insane. At least around the moat. All the traffic goes one way in a circle on the road inside the moat and all the traffic goes the other way in a circle on the outside of the moat and there are occasional places to cross over. It makes getting somewhere specific an adventure of U-turns.

Thai and Khmer people are practically born on motos. These guys can drive a moto like nobody's business. They weave in and out of traffic. They are up and down one-way streets, regardless of the direction of traffic. It is almost an art form. However, they also drive four-wheel vehicles like they are motos and that not a good idea. Note to drivers of cars and trucks in Southeast Asia, your car is much bigger than a moto and cannot fit into that space. Also, it is recommended that you stay in between the lines indicating the lanes. I have never seen a person in Thailand or Cambodia park a car without a passenger getting out to direct the parking (and I am not just talking about parallel parking here). I have also never seen any one pull out of a parking space or parking lot with out either making an elaborate 19-point turn or having a security guard with a whistle stop traffic so you can pull out. Craziness.

Things you might not consider luxuries, but that I do:

Cold drinking water

Hot showers, with soap, and a real towel afterwards

Dry, ironed, folded laundry

— Sara

Cale and I wanted to do something American for the 4th of July. We learned about this official event* the day before. Though it was tempting (four different salads!), we thought the 300B price tag (about $10USD) was a little high. Instead we decided to resign ourselves to eating hamburgers. Cale had scouted around a little the day before and had found what he thought might be an American bar. The Chiang Mai Saloon sort of had the feel of a Texas Roadhouse-type restaurant and we thought we would have burgers there.

*How can you not love that official American food includes Polish and Italian sausage and quesadillas and tacos? Those all are truly American foods.

When we finally sat down to dinner, I realized that I wasn't up for a burger. I just haven't been a big fan of burgers for, well, years now. Too much meat in one place. Instead, I was excited to order the mozarella sticks. The menu describes the mozzarella sticks as such:

Mozzarella Sticks

Italian breaded and deep fried, served with marinara sauce.When they arrived, things looked a little fishy. To start with, they were not Italian breaded and deep fried. Instead they were tempura, which was good enough. However, the dipping sauce was obviously not marinara. I decided to give it a go anyway. It tasted a little like the sweet chili sauce often served with spring rolls or samosas, but it was not as clear as that sauce. I held up my sauce to the waitress and asked her if she had any marinara, as this was chili sauce or something. She returned with mayonnaise. Hmmm....

Now let me put forth a disclaimer. Had we been anywhere else in Southeast Asia I would have just moved on. I am used to getting Western foods that are not as advertised. I am in Thailand, I should be eating Thai food (which I do, but it was America Day). Bu, we were not really in Thailand, we were in the Disneyland Epcot-like equivalent of America town with a wild west theme and I figured I should be able to get the advertised marinara sauce here of all places. Finally, they have spaghetti bolognese on the menu, so I should be able to get the spaghetti sauce, no?

At this point the waitress is confused. I tell her that marinara is like spaghetti sauce. She heads back into the restaurant (we are out on the patio) and I find a menu and follow her. She is talking to a woman behind the bar. This woman tells me they don't have marinara. Once again, I normally would have let it go at this point (ok, no sauce, not a problem), but I know they have the spaghetti on the menu. I point to the marinara listed next to the mozzarella sticks on the menu and then tell her it is like the spaghetti sauce (and point to the spaghetti bolognese), can I have the spaghetti sauce? She tells me that I cannot, that they make that sauce special for the spaghetti bolognese with the meat in it. I say fine, can I just have whatever sauce you use without the meat. She tells me that I cannot. This sort of angers me a little. You have this spaghetti sauce, but I cannot have it? So I tell her that she shouldn't advertise marinara on the menu if they don't actually have marinara sauce.

This is where it gets interesting.

The woman behind the bar starts to insist that what was given to me is in fact marinara sauce. Listen lady, my maiden name is Carusillo and I know a marinara sauce when I see one. I don't go around telling you what is and isn't Pad Thai do I? I am not asking for grandma's homemade red sauce here, just a little Prego or Ragu or something out of a can is just fine. Obviously, I don't tell her this. I do explain that marinara is like the spaghetti sauce they use in the bolognese (obviously sans meat) and that this (indicating what I was given) tastes more like chili sauce. She is still really adamant that this is marinara and explains to me that they use tomato sauce (which is what they call sweet ketchup here) and add tabasco sauce to it. Voila, marinara. She also insists that no one has ever complained before.

At this point I don't want to be having this argument anymore. I have established that I will not be getting any sauce for my sticks and I just want to eat them. So I thank her and go back to the table.

She follows me back to the table! Where she continues to insist that it was marinara and tries to take away my food, telling me I can order something else. I keep insisting that I am hungry and I am going to eat the mozzarella sticks. She keeps wanting to take them away. When she finally decides I can keep them, she makes a point of telling me that if I eat them I have to pay for them. Well, no duh. Thanks for that.

Anyway, so that is how I spent my Fourth of July, arguing with a Thai woman over what is and is not marinara sauce. Hope you enjoyed your holiday.

— Sara

PS. After I went through this whole episode a guy two tables over ordered something off the menu and we could clearly here him ask, "This comes with marinara, right?" We were so super tempted to stick around just to see what he got and whether or not he thought it was marinara, but decided not to.

When we leave Chiang Mai on a night train back to Bangkok Saturday afternoon we will have been here for about 10 days. Ten days is the length of some people's vacations. For us it is the time to kill between Cambodia and our flight home.

Chiang Mai is a completely different city this time around. Songkran is over, it is the low season and the protests in Bangkok significantly affected the tourism industry. Chiang Mai is almost a ghost town when it comes to tourists. Don't get me wrong, it is still crowded. The city itself has a population of 150,000 (just under the population of all of Samoa) and the metro area is home to just under a million people. Its just the farang that are missing.

We've had a chance to do some things we didn't do when we were here the first time. We rented a moto. After a significant amount of experience in Cambodia, Cale was feeling more confident about driving in Chiang Mai traffic (which is still ridiculous) and I was no longer deathly afraid of the moto. We motoed out to Bo Sang, Baan Tawai and other handicraft "villages." Talk about deceptive marketing. These are not villages where people make things, these are outdoor strip malls where every store sells just about the same thing. We were less than impressed. We were also less than impressed with the hot springs. I think mainly because it was already hot outside. Hot springs are better in colder weather. That and the geyser wasn't natural, there was a pump. You can buy eggs and put them in the hot water to boil, but we weren't hungry, so we didn't.

We also motoed up the mountain, Doi Suthep. We skipped the mountain-top temple (the only temple that charges admission in the city) and the tourist clap-trap village that has sprung up at the entrance and continued on to the Doi Suthep National Park.

We also visited the Night Market repeatedly. When we were here the first time Cale told a musical instrument vendor that he would come back at the end of our trip to buy the instrument. Two months later we returned and the first thing the guy said to Cale? "You're back!" He had remembered Cale. How crazy is that?

We saw Holland kick Brazil's ass at a bar we originally thought was called Holland House, but have since discovered is called The Wall. The Dutch owners just covered it in signs saying Holland House to encourage Dutch football fans to watch the games there.

Cale had a suit custom tailored. I got a manicure and pedicure. We ate an excessive amount of Mexican food from Miguel's. And I had a 4th of July argument with a Thai woman about marinara sauce (more to come on this one later). All in all, I would say a good time was had by all. Tomorrow we are back on the train for another 14 hours back to Bangkok.

— Sara

Tuesday, 29 June, we were up early to catch a bus to the border. Our Cambodian visas were set to expire the next day and we planned to be in Thailand before that could happen. Our bus was at 8am. Sophara said he would pick us up at 7:45am. How we ended up at the bus station before the 7:30am bus left, I will never know. Anyway, we hung out at the bus station for a while and then hopped on our bus to the border. It was a bus to Poipet (border town) and then on to Bangkok. We were not taking the bus on to Bangkok though, we were taking a train.

The bus ride was about three hours. When we arrived in Poipet the bus dropped us at the Capitol bus station because our tickets were to Poipet. However, after leaving us at the curb, it then continued to the border crossing. Had we stayed on the bus, we would have saved ourselves a long, hot walk. Whatever, we needed the exercise. Doing the walk in reverse was an interesting experience. When we had crossed into Cambodia two months ago and were walking from the border to the bus station we couldn't beat the taxi drivers off with sticks. You may remember we were shadowed at slow speeds by one taxi driver that really wanted to drive us somewhere, anywhere for most of our walk to the bus station. This time around, no one was interested. We could only be going to the border and that wasn't that far away (in the grand scheme of things).

Once at the border we found ourselves in line behind people who had been on the same bus as us earlier. After we want through the checkpoint, Cale accepted an offer for a ride to the train station. The man phoned a truck that had already departed the crossing back. Surprise, surprise, there were the same barang (sorry, we are in Thailand now, farang) that were on the bus with us before. They were sitting on the benches in the bed of the truck and we were put in the back seats (extended cab) with the air conditioning. I started to wonder, about the bus to Bangkok from Siem Reap. I assume that the Capitol bus dropped them at the border and they crossed. However, it doesn't appear they just get on another bus on the other side of the border. Instead they were taken by this truck to a way station of sorts, where I suppose they were waiting for another bus. However, there were only farang on this ride. Where did all the Khmer (or I suppose Thai) people who had been on our bus go after they crossed the border? Weren't they also getting a bus on to Bangkok? They couldn't have been riding to just Poipet or they would have kicked them off at the Poipet bus station. Or would they? Maybe they were just to savvy to get off the bus there and saved themselves the long walk we had.

Anyway, we get a ride to the train station. The ride to the train station cost us more than the train ride to Bangkok. Hmmm.... A fifteen minute truck ride is more expensive than a six hour train ride?

The train wasn't going to leave until almost 2pm and it was only just noon, so we had a bit of a wait at the station. Cale bought some meat on a stick and wrapped it in the bread we had bought before leaving Siem Reap. Instant sandwich.

The train ride to Bangkok was way more enjoyable than the bus ride had been coming the other direction. You could get up and move around a little if you wanted to. People walked the aisles constantly selling drinks and snacks. There was leg room. However, the best part of the deal was the scenery. The view from the bus is just highway and industrial wasteland and mammoth gas stations. The view from the train is so much more enjoyable. One thing we noticed immediately is the difference a little rain makes. When we arrived in Thailand three months ago it was dry, dry, dry, dry. Did I mention it was dry? Everything was brown and dust and dead. Out the window of the train three months later and everything was lush and green and gorgeous. It was exactly what Thailand was supposed to look like.

The train came into Bangkok under the cover of night. As we entered the city. the train ran parallel to the BTS (Skytrain) for quite a while. In the shadow of the BTS supports was the most extensive shanty town I have ever seen. It continued on after the BTS veered off in another direction. Just miles and miles of houses and businesses constructed out of scrap wood and leftover roofing irons set up between the "real" city and the train tracks.

We pulled into the main station 30 minutes too late to catch one of the overnight trains to Chiang Mai, the only overnight train with room left in the sleepers. Instead we got tickets on the next train that had no sleeper seats left. We settled on air-con rather than fan seats. We had a two-hour wait before our train left and were famished. We had been up for more than 12 hours and it had been a long time since breakfast at the guesthouse. The street meat and bread also seemed a long way away. None of the cheap food stalls in the station food court were still open, so we had to settle on KFC. That's right, Kentucky Fried Chicken. The KFCs in Thailand serve chicken fried rice and some sort of green curry fried chicken; however, they also have original recipe. We got a meal for two for about 250B. Considering you can usually eat for 30 or 40B it was sort of a pricey meal.

Whew. This blog entry is getting long and I still have a 14-hour train ride to go. What do you expect though, I am covering a lot of ground here?

So 10pm comes and we get on the train. The seats in the aircon car are not horribly uncomfortable and the leg room is more than ample. In fact, I found myself wishing there was less legroom so I could have something to prop my legs up against. Also, one of our seats was broken and it could only recline. No seat backs in the upright position for that chair. Luckily we were provided blankets as we soon discovered the aircon was more than adequate. A group of four French guys took the seats in front of us. While Cale went to locate us some drinks in the "dining" car, these guys basically removed their clothes (seriously, they were standing there in their boxer shorts) so they could change into warmer attire for the train ride. Flash forward 14 hours and they will once again strip in public so they can change back to shorts and t-shirts.

Speaking of temperatures, the next day when the sun finally started to warm the train and the temperature inside became comfortable (i.e. I could sit not huddled under the blanket) someone went around and turned on a line of high-powered ceiling fans. It went back to being uncomfortably cold with the added bonus of being intermittently hit with a blast of cold wind. Hooray.

Also, speaking of the "dining" car. Less dining, more train car with no seats and some dirty tables bolted to the wall. Cale asked to see a menu and baffled everyone affiliated with the car, including me at that point. Can't you see this is not a place for food and definitely not a place with a menu?

At some point in the middle of the night a man came around waking people up and asking us if we wanted breakfast. A clever ploy indeed. Wake people up in the middle of the night to ask if they want breakfast. The answer was guaranteed to be a confused and groggy yes (at least from the uninitiated). So I mistakenly agreed to this breakfast. Flash forward about eight hours and it is morning. We have been up for a while (or in my case, all night as I could not sleep in the chairs) and have seen no indication of this breakfast. Women have been hopping on the train at stops and selling drinks and food stuffs. I have Cale buy us two packets of sticky rice for 20B. Pesky breakfast problem solved. Except the man with the breakfasts finally shows up about an hour later and presents us with plates with eggs, hot dogs, apple slices and bread. I eat my bread, eggs and apple slices. We are also given what is quite possibly the worst coffee ever in all of the world. The breakfast man has disappeared and I start to wonder out loud to Cale how this works. We are the only people in the car that got the breakfast. If it was part of the ticket price you would think that other people would have gotten it as well. So that means there has to be a price associated with this, but when will we pay, how much is it, how does this work? Just as I am wondering this, the breakfast man is back. We do have to pay. 260B!!! I cannot put enough exclamation marks on that. You may remember that we got two packets of sticky rice for 20B earlier and now we are being charged more than ten times that for this. We learned that lesson the hard way. I am not sure what a breakfast at Denny's costs these days, but I think it might be cheaper than that. I know I could get a Burger King breakfast for cheaper.

Finally, around 1pm we arrived in Chiang Mai. So we had left our guesthouse in Siem Reap not long after 7am the day before and traveled almost continuously for the next 29 hours. When I mentioned that we had just traveled that long on facebook, some friends had assumed we had returned to America. Oh no, we were just back in Thailand. We still have to do the 30 hours of Tuesday when we travel back to America soon.

— Sara

I put the wrong answer to the following GRE question up in yesterday's blog entry:

If the average of two numbers is 3y and one of the numbers is y-z, what is the other number, in terms of y and z?

The correct answer is 5y-z

I was looking at a different problem. Sorry ya'll.

— Sara

In the previous two years I drove three times. The first time was after more than a year of not driving. I took a vacation day and we rented a car on Savaii when Cale's mom was visiting. I think I did a pretty good job, though at around 40 miles per hour Cale thought I was going way to fast. The second time was six months later when my parents came to visit. This was before the road switch, but the van we rented already had the wheel on the other side. That was a little disconcerting. When we rented a car again six months later the road had already been switched. However, I was more comfortable that time around because the car we rented still had the wheel on the side I was used to. I work better with the wrong side of the road then I do with the wrong side of the car.

During the entire two years Cale did absolutely no driving. Why you might ask? Well, it what seemed like a good idea at the time, Cale had thrown away his driver's license. He had decided he didn't like to drive and didn't want it anymore. How handy.

So after two years of being almost always a passenger (granted in taxis driving by crazy people who go way to fast and occasionally fall asleep at the wheel or on buses that have a habit of participating in bus drag races) it was a little intimidating to return to driving. Especially since my first driving experience would be in LA. Hooray for the 405.

First of all, WHY IS EVERYONE GOING SO FAST?! You are all making me nervous with your crazed speeds of 40 or 45 miles per hour on regular roads. HOLY SHIT! THE PEOPLE ON THE HIGHWAY ARE DRIVING 70 MILES PER HOUR! And I am expected to keep up with traffic. I think I was able to finally convince myself to go 60. I don't think I ever got up to 70. What I didn't realize yet was that as scary as driving was for me (with all these giant metal death machines just flying by me) it was even more terrifying for Cale. As the passenger he had both the fear I was feeling, plus the added bonus of not having the sensation of being in control of the car. I got to fully understand that feeling when my family picked us up in the airport. My sister Teresa drove us home, AT SPEEDS UP TO 70 MILES PER HOURS! I was freaking out. She took an exit ramp (that was quite curvy) at like 30 mph and I commented that it felt like a roller coaster...because it did.

However, driving is like riding a bike. It doesn't take long to pick it up again. The nervousness and confusion go away quickly. Cale got himself a new driver's license and is back behind the wheel like he never left. Though, he says he hates it.

— Sara

PS. I totally forgot to give the answer to the last GRE question. It is in fact 5x+y.

In an apparent Christmas miracle we were able to get both the younger Carusillo girls (my sisters) together in a room together with out an ensuing brawl. The nuclear family gathered at my parents' house last night to decorate the Christmas tree. Marian had returned from Purdue Friday night, so we were all in the same city together for the first time, well, since they picked us up at the airport, but before that since October 2007.

Teresa and Marian are currently nurturing a low-level feud (mainly over uncomplimentary comments they had to say about the other's respective boyfriend) that I was told ruined Christmas last year. Mom went so far as to send out a letter before this Christmas asking everyone to be civil. It appears to have been a success.

We all had dinner together before the decorating. Cale made stir-fry with broccoli, red peppers, onion and chicken. It was delicious. I was befuddled by the rice, which came in a box (not a bag) and apparently can be cooked in a microwave. I asked mom where the normal rice was and she looked at me in a confused fashion. "This is normal rice." Cale suggested that perhaps the rice that I was thinking of as normal rice for the last two years, was in fact the abnormal rice and microwavable rice in a box is perfectly normal elsewhere in the world.

Dinner went off without a hitch. We managed to make it through the entire meal without Teresa saying "crotch" until someone pointed out during her expose on lactation that she hadn't said anything about crotches yet at this meal and we all got to enjoy what has become a family get-together tradition, Teresa talking about crotches in some manner.

Next came the tree decorating. Mom and Dad have a smaller tree this year than previous years and not all the Christmas ornaments were going to fit on. Dad appointed himself arbitrator of what ornaments were in and what ornaments were out. I am not sure what led up to the following events, but before you know it Dad is miming the sexy times with two stuffed bears that were put in the "not going on the tree" pile and everyone is finding it hilarious. Later in the evening he also had some string doll ornaments getting it on.

Finally the tree was decorated and nothing horrific had happened. Teresa went home with her boyfriend Mike to a bottle of vodka; Cale left to visit with his best friend and a bottle of scotch; and Dad, Mom, Marian and I stayed home to watch everyone's favorite Christmas movie, Pulp Fiction.

— Sara

The last of the Samoan related sidebars and blog elements have been removed. If you were using my sidebar links to find other Peace Corps Samoa blogs please direct yourself to the Peace Corps Journals web site from now on.

— Sara

These are not all the books. Cale was reading and returning them to the Peace Corps library faster than I could record them. Also, occasionally, I forgot to write some I read down. In retrospect, it would have been good to keep track of all the movies and TV we watched in the previous two years as well. You know you are hard up for good television when you find yourself commenting that Stargate Atlantis is soooo much better than regular Stargate. So very sad.

My Samoan Chief

Love in the Time of Cholera

How to Be a Jewish Mother

Progress Without Punishment

Positive Peer Culture

4:50 from Paddington

Methods for Teaching

Villa Incognito

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Citizen Soldiers

The Funnies

A Twist in the Tale

A Child Called It

The Elephant Vanishes

Shopgirl

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

Alpha 3

Fortress of Solitude

Saturday

The Foundation Trilogy

21: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas For Millions

Shakespeare: The World as Stage

Nine Stories

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

The Stranger

Black

A Wild Sheep Chase

The Sweet Hereafter

History's Worst Decisions and the People Who Made Them

All Souls Rising

Best Science Fiction for 1972

The Motorcycle Diaries

Off the Rails in Phnom PenhGhostwritten

Things Fall Apart

A Picture of Dorian Grey

Leaves of the Banyan Tree

The Historian

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Crypto-nomicon

Collapse (after a valiant effort, Sara gave up 3/4 of the way through)

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

Midnight's Children

Postcards from the Edge

Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates

The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

The Night Inspector

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Historian

Chronopolis

American Gods

The Last Temptation of Christ

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

The Road

Island

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

Less than Zero

Hell's Angels

Email to the Universe

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

One for the Road

Fahrenheit 451

"Surely You're Joking Mr. Feyman!"

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

A Brief History of Nearly Everything

The Sot-Weed Factor

Bitter Grounds

Lord of Light

Cell

Executive Orders

Rant

The Worthing Saga

The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Carrying the Faith: Methodism in Samoa

When You are Engulfed in Flames

Avoiding Prison and other Noble Vacation Goals

Gai-Jin

Atlantis Rising

Kon-Tiki

Hocus PocusThree Cups of Tea

My Name Is Red

Wizard and Glass

Drawing of the Three

Microserfs

Out of Sight

Hocus Pocus

In a Sunburned Country

I'm a Stranger Here Myself

The Family

Less Than Zero

Angela's Ashes

Infidel

I Will Fear No Evil

The Alternate Asimovs

War Trash

The Hipster Handbook

Hrolf Kraki's Saga

Hitchhikers Guide the the Galaxy

Brainiac

The Cardinal of the Kremlin

Bandits

The Alchemist

One Hundred Years of Solitude

Splinter Cell

Rainbow Mars

Lisey's Story

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Black Elk Speaks

Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs

This Much I Know Is True

Freakanomics

The Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Foundation

Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time

The Hugo Winners Vol. 1

Papillon

Praying for Sheetrock

The Innocent Man

The Kite Runner

Bored of the Rings

The Bluest Eye

Holidays on Ice

The Stand

As I Lay Dying

If Chins Could Kill

Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things

Expedition to Earth

The Life of Pi

Devil in the White City

Going Solo

Shogun

Catch 22

Freedomland

Icy Sparks

What is the What?

The Wastelands

The Gunslinger

The Handmaid's Tale

The Tao of Pooh— Sara

I am slowly ridding the blog of the old vestiges of a Peace Corps Samoa blog and converting it a regular old normal people blog. I thought I would give you a little walk down memory lane of our Peace Corps injuries and illnesses before I delete that sidebar. These are in order starting with the most recent.

1. One "hamburger" thumb caused from sticking it in a fan. This is what happens when you remove all safety protection from the fans to nurse them along and keep them working. You have spinning death blades that you must avoid in the middle of the night in the dark.

2. Fire-ball-singed hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. Next time remember that if the gas broiler you think is lit is not in fact lit, the gas has been running the entire time anyway and you should not attempt to light it while looking into the broiler.

3. One sprained foot that looks like it has the mumps. Cale has trouble walking.

4. All-day nausea and diarrhea.

5. One small, mysterious bug bite resulting in a mysterious rash

6. Minus a large chunk of yet another big toe nail. Very easy to do in jandals.

7. Two days of nausea

8. One dog bite. Almost all volunteers get attacked by a dog in country eventually. I got off scott free, but Cale got bit by a dog outside Erik's flat.

9. Two sunburns. I imagine there might have been more of these if it was ever possible to get to the beach. Cale feels he had one sunburn around his neck that laster for two years.

10. A touch of eczema

11. One cat bite. Never, ever touch Cleveland's belly.

12. Fingers sliced in the blades of a fan. Not even the same fan. Cale removed the protective covering from both fans.

13. Possible boil or cyst on an ear. Turned out to be that eczema

14. Heart burn

15. Protein-powder-fueled insane gastrointestinal distress. I don't know how K8 eats that stuff.

16. MInus most of one pinky toe's toenail.

17. One armpit boil. Miserable, miserable armpit boil. Late November through December is boil time in Samoa for Sara.

18. One ear making strange bubbling noises. Another ear with a strange fiber in it.

19. Minus a chunk of one big toe's toenail

20. Possible allergies

21. Two colds

22. One infected tongue. Every small scrap or cut in my mouth was getting infected during this time.

23. Two small puncture wounds from sharp stones. (One flying stone, one resting peacefully until stepped on). This was during the waterfall hike.

24. Two painful, swollen, itchy bites from large black ants. Also during the waterfall hike.

25. Suspected ant bites all over face and arms. From sleeping on Gal's floor.

26. Two suspected cases of the flu

27. Several sunburns. Ah, here are some more sun burns. We must have made it to the beach.

28. One twisted ankle

29. One slightly swollen and tender tear duct and I wasn't even wearing my contacts.

30. Mysterious armpit rashes

31. A multitude of mysterious (non-mosquitoe) bug bites

32. One continuing ring-worm-like leg fungus

33. One mysterious bug bite that could have been a centipede

34. A grand total of 11 boils so far. We'll add that armpit boil to this number later.

35. Many colds

36. Two or three cases of diarrhea (really, whose counting anymore?)

37. One rocking case of seasickness

38. Two suspected cases of bronchitis

39. One case of laryngitis

40. One mysterious body rash

41. Two large hideous butt boils

42. Two infected hair follicles

43. Two centipede bites

Notice how so many items were mysterious? You never know what it is but you wait a couple of days and it goes away.

— Sara

I finally uploaded the last of the Samoa pictures to the flickr.

— Sara

Pros: Boobs are bigger

Cons: Everything else is too.

— Sara

It wasn't too long ago that this pile of ie and some t-shirts could be Cale and my entire wardrobes. Though to be honest, I never got into wearing lavalava. I just wasn't a fan of an article of clothing that most people were wearing pants under anyway and had to be constantly adjusted to keep from falling down. Give me a skirt with a waistband any day. Hell, give me pants! Yay for pants.

We don't own a lot of clothes. Before we left for the Peace Corps we sold just about everything we owned and just about everything we had in the world fit in three large bags of approximately 40 pound each that came to Samoa with us. We returned from Samoa with three bags of approximately 50 pounds each (and a kirikiti bat wrapped in two fala). I was anticipating not having a lot of weather appropriate wear when we returned, but I am discovering that we do not have a lot of appropriate wear, period. Weather or not.

The other day I pulled on a long-sleeve t-shirt that had stayed with me through our time in Samoa. As I stood in front of the mirror brushing my teeth, I noticed the hole in the right armpit. I raised my left arm and saw the hole in the other armpit. I considered it for a moment and decided that maybe I was back in a place that visible holes were less acceptable professional wear and more a sign of homelessness. I changed shirts.

Cale got a call about a job interview and pulled on a "nice" outfit for my approval to be worn at the interview the next day. I shook my head. His Goodwill pants and bulky knit sweater were not cutting it for me. He went to our bags and pulled out the one nice outfit that had stayed with him from Samoa. It was his Express black dress shirt and dress pants. Standing in America, looking down at the pants in not-florescent lights, he realized something. "These pants have seen better days. They aren't actually very nice anymore at all." So we had to make a Target run.

For Christmas, my parents are getting me a suit and dress coat to wear for things like my campus visit. It took mom and me two days and 10 stores before we finally found a suit that fit me. I thought that not finding clothes to fit me was just a Samoa thing. I am a small person (5'4" if I stand on my tiptoes) and Samoans in general are bigger than me. Most stores over there didn't stock sizes smaller than a medium, which left me in a tricky spot. However, the suit shopping on this side of the planet has led me to believe that it is not only a Samoa problem. It appears that once again they have gone and changed the sizes. How I have managed to go from 7-8 to a 2-4 without dramatically changing my weight (sure I lost 20 pounds, but I gained it all back) is a mystery to me. The first stores we visited didn't seem to stock anything smaller than a 6 even in the petites. I am still confused as to why I am a 6 at H&M, but a 2 at The Limited. Granted, I am small, I get this. But I know lots of people that are smaller than me. Where are they shopping if the sizes keep getting bigger?

— Sara

PS.

Here are your answers to the last GRE questions:

ce

And here is a new GRE question for your enjoyment:

If the average of two numbers is 3y and one of the numbers is y-z, what is the other number, in terms of y and z?

So my dad has an excellent point.

"Why do you need this GRE thing? You graduated from college, doesn't that demonstrate your preparedness for grad school?"

Yes, shouldn't my successful undergraduate degree be sufficient proof that I am capable doing the school? Well, apparently not. And so, more than a decade after my last math class in high school, here I am trying to remember all the rules for special, right triangles and discovering that my vocabulary is desperately limited.

I took my online diagnostic quiz last week and scored a whopping 59%. I just took one today and a week of studying has bumped me up to 66%. This is poor even on a Samoan scale where 50% is passing.

I spent an extra $20 bucks to buy the Kaplan GRE prep book that had the words "LIVE ONLINE" in a big yellow arrow on the cover. I mean, a big yellow arrow has to be $20 more bucks worth of GRE prep, right? Actually, it indicated to me that there would be "NEW! LIVE ONLINE EVENT" which seemed like a good idea. Real people I could ask questions of. However, I discovered after registering online that all the LIVE ONLINE EVENTS are over. Had I turned to page 14 of the book before purchase I would have discovered that my extra $20 would only be useful in September and October of 2009 when the LIVE ONLINE EVENTS were taking place. I feel a little like I was lied to.

In fact, as far as I can tell, the LIVE ONLINE 2010 version of the Kaplan GRE book is about the same as the 2008 version of the book I was using from the Peace Corps office back in Samoa. They added in some new information about some experimental questions we might see in the 2010 exam, but other than that, identical. One problem with slipping new paragraphs into an existing book is you really have to check your jumps. Most of my copy-editing skills have atrophied over the years (I find myself asking Cale if I want to use affect or effect, don't tell any of my journalism friends) but without even trying I am noting mistakes all over the place in this book. Mostly little things like a reference to something as being on the "previous page" when it is in fact, on that page. Or a diagram that is sitting all by itself at the bottom of a page and the words that go with it at the top of the next page (which would be sort of ok if they were facing pages, but you have to turn the page to see the words).

However, despite these nit-picky problems, it is helpful. Some of the tips are no-brainers, but some of them are seriously helpful. Plus my online thingy does have some quizzes and practice stuff that will be useful. Though the outside of the book declares "5 PRACTCE TESTS," I can locate one in the book and am not sure where the other four, secret tests must be hiding in the online syllabus. Unless the monthly quizzes are in fact the test, in which case I am angry, as the quizzes are not full-length tests.

My biggest downfalls are the antonyms in the verbal section and the quantitative (read math) section entirely. I am also doing surprisingly poorly on reading comprehension. I read! I comprehend! Everyday I read and comprehend. These are trick questions, I swear.

The antonyms really are the bane of my existence. The biggest problem for me is that I am presented with word I don't know and usually don't know at least one if not all of the possible answers. I am discovering that I don't know a lot of words. Lots and lots of words.

Cale with his high school Latin and my mother with her medical background are all like, "Oh, well that word must mean something like...blah, blah, blah" because they know all the Latin roots. I do not. At least my mom has forgotten all the math too. That makes me feel a little better. Cale on the other hand remembers all the math too. If he was sitting the GRE he wouldn't even have to study. Jerk.

Anyway, here is a little GRE fun for you.

You must choose the antonym (opposite) for the word in capital letters from the multiple choice list. No cheating using the internets or a dictionary.

1. SATURNINE

a. magnanimous

b. ebullient

c. finicky

d. unnatural

e. impoverished

2. MERITORIOUS

a. effulgent

b. stationary

c. uneven

d. narrow-minded

e. unpraiseworthy

— Sara

After two years of freedom it is time to imprison our feet again.

I kept these tennis shoes for two years, wearing them for 10 days in New Zealand and the three or four times I jumped rope in Samoa. My feet have definitely gotten used to being sans shoe. After attempting to wear my shoes on the plane to LA, I reverted to my flip-flops for the first day we were back in America. It was chilly on my feet, but it was preferable to the confinement. In the afternoon of the second day my feet were too cold and I had to surrender.

I quickly discovered that my feet appear to have grown. Most people complain of their feet spreading out (getting wider) after not being confined to shoes for so long. I didn't notice that problem. What I was experiencing instead was the sensation that my feet were too long for my shoes. Like I needed one size larger. By the end of the day, my feet were killing me.

I went four days before I started lacing my shoes. Before that, I let the laces hang to give my feet more breathing room. However, after it snowed, I had to lace them up to keep the laces from dragging in the snow and getting all wet.

Now I am wearing shoes like a champ, though they are still not my favourite. I haven't resorted to barefoot or jandals again. I am wearing my new slippers most of the time instead.

— Sara

In Samoa our temperature options were hot and unbearably hot. It didn't take long for us to adjust to the two temperatures, what with us coming from Florida anyway. Unbearably hot quickly downgraded to uncomfortably hot. On several occasions the temperature went as low as 72 F (that's 22C for my Kiwi, Aussie and Samoan friends) and Cale and I broke out a blanket at night we were so chilly.

The weather back home in Indy is decidedly different. Currently, our options are cold and unbearably cold. I imagine given enough time I will adjust and downgrade it to uncomfortably cold. However, for now it is still unbearable. I am looking at a temperature of 32 F right now and I am used to a temperature of 32 C.

I thought LA was chilly and it was in the 60s there. When we got off the plane in Indy, I could see my breath walking down the connecty thing between the plane and the terminal (I am pretty sure there is a word for that, but heck if I know what it is). However, the weather wasn't satisfied with just freezing us, it had to add insult to injury. That's right people, it snowed.

We left Sunday morning and went to Ramsey with Cale's mom. She was lending us her Jeep while we are waiting to leave for Thailand. When we woke up Monday morning there was snow on the ground. A good inch or so. SNOW! That is just cruel. What was Mother Nature thinking? Cale and Sara aren't cold enough? I really need to highlight the extent of their climate change with this visual representation?

As I type this blog it is snowing outside again. I was sitting at the kitchen counter studying for the GRE in a long-sleeved shirt, hoodie, jeans, socks, slippers and gloves and I am still freezing. I checked the thermostat for the temperature in the house. My parents usually keep the house in the 60s in the winter, but they have jacked it all the way up to 70 for our benefit and I am still huddled around a space heater for warmth.

— Sara

It took two years and two months, but we are finally back in Indy. After an our layover in Milwaukee we finally arrived in Indianapolis about 9 pm on Friday. We were immediately surrounded by insanity. My family isn't too large, but it sure is noisy. Cale and I had been up for an indeterminate number of hours (we still aren't sure how long the flight was, went through several time zones and all our clocks were still on Samoa time) and were walking zombies. As we were leaving the airport Dad pointed out that we had flown into a completely different airport then we had flown out of. While we were away, Indy had gone and built a new airport.

Saturday we slept in until about noon Indy time. At 4 pm friends started to arrive for the welcome home party my parents had arranged for us. We treated our friends to some Vailima that we had brought back with us and some choice Samoan tunes (gotta love those slow jams). Eventually Cale mixed up some ava. The general consensus was it tasted like the ground.

At the end of the evening we went over to Rob and April's new house to see our cat, Smack. We hadn't seen Smack in two years. The reunion was a little bittersweet. Rob and April say Smack was acting pretty strange, like he knew that something was up, maybe because he vaguely remembered the smell of us. However, he was incredibly skittish and steered clear of us all night.

By the time we went to bed I was exhausted.

The next morning we were up early and headed down to Ramsey with Cale's mom. More on that next time.

— Sara

When we arrived in LA we were greeted by Meghan (a volunteer from Group 77 who left last year). She had a brand new razor and berries for us and we had a Vailima for her. It wasn't long before I was shaving my legs in a hot shower and she was drinking warm, bad beer.

Spending a couple of days with Meghan was just what the doctor ordered. We told her all our crazy stories and she totally understood. She also understood all the little things that no one else would understand, like the significance of Cale and I holding hands on the street (something we hadn't done in two years).

She fed us burritos and bagels and bbq and drank all the beers with us. Everyone should have a Meghan when they come home.

In addition to hanging out with Meghan, we drove out to Santa Monica to find Gal. Gal was an original member of Group 79, but went home early after his post was poop. He is working with a start-up now and loving it.

We also got to hang out with Kenny. We have known Kenny since high school. The last time we saw him was when he was at Disney World on a family vacation before we left for Samoa. Now he is working in TV in LA. We spent part of Thursday night back stage at his show, The Sing-Off. It is like American Idol for a cappella groups and will air on the WB leading up to Christmas. I even know the secret of who was eliminated in the first round and I am not telling. Make sure to check it out.

Friday morning we got up way to early to head to the airport thinking that we would have a lot of traffic to deal with. Instead we were three hours early for our flight. We got to spend some quality time in LAX before making the final legs of our journey home.

— Sara

I am not an experienced world traveler. The only international carrier I have flown is Air New Zealand. However, I am still going to go out on a limb and say that Air New Zealand is super posh. I thought it was pretty fancy when we flew to Samoa two years ago and it has only gotten nicer. I am miserable on airplane seats. They are all built for someone taller than me, but I was able to get relatively comfortable on the Air New Zealand seats and sleep some on the way home. There was a TV in the back of the seat in front of me with movies, music, games, audio books. I tried to watch Funny People (does not appear to be funny) and ended up watching He's Not That Into You. The food is also pretty amazing. I had oven roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and zucchini, plus a side salad and dessert. Breakfast was pancakes with blueberries! Berries!

There was quite a bit of turbulence on the trip, which I found a little unsettling. Visions of plummeting to the ocean danced in me head. Plummet, we did not. Instead we landed safely in America.

— Sara

So the pizza at Italiano's is bad and all the people we used to know there are gone (remember Jennifer? and Maria? nope, no more). So a last meal at Italiano's doesn't really have the meaning it once did. However, when we first arrived in country that was where all the volunteers were going on their last night (except the crazies that went to places like Bistro Tatau). We felt like a last night at Italiano's was tradition that we wanted to uphold. As Cale said, "I earned this hundred thousandth pizza."

We were there around 5 pm though we said we weren't starting until around 6 pm, mainly because we had ran out of things to do with ourselves. My energy levels were through the roof and I couldn't keep my hands occupied, so I kept doing this thing that Cale eventually started referring to as "hamster hands."

So many people were at our dinner. We took the entire front of Italiano's and then spilled into the doorway. Sorry other customers, you are gonna have to squeeze past the rowdy group.

Cale and I tried to play musical chairs throughout the night so we were just sitting next to the same people and could talk to everyone before we left. As the evening started to wind down the tequila shots came out. I am pretty sure that someone even did a Stuntman (Dylan knows what's up). I declined, which was very upsetting to Ryan who was really insistent that he buy me a drink before I go. I think he settled on a glass of water.

We had asked our taxi driver to pick us up at 8 pm. However, as 8 pm became 8:30 pm, we called and discovered he was still in Vaitele. So we walked to the office to gather together our luggage and he picked us up there. Erica, Casey and Erik walked back with us, so we said our final good-byes to them and hopped in the cab.

Our taxi driver had banana chips, taro chips and ie as gifts for us. He even called his wife in Savaii on the cell phone and had us talk to her until the credit ran out.

We had one last stop on the way to the airport. The teacher who started teaching computers in the second term at my school had called and wanted us to stop at her house to pick up a gift. We were supposed to have met up on Saturday to go over things in the computer lab, but it didn't work out. Then we were supposed to meet on Sunday, but she never got my text. So this was a last minute drive-by farewell. We had no credit on the cell phone, so we sent her a "Please Call Me" when we were in Vaitele and she went and waited by the side of the road for us in Puipa'a.

In the airport we greeted by one of Cale's students (the one setting up the Linux lab). He and a friend had come to the airport to see us off. We waited until the last minute to see if Cale's principal could make it. He said he would try since he was in a village nearby. However, he was in the village nearby because it was the funeral for his wife's father. He wasn't able to make it.

Before we knew it, we were on the Air New Zealand plane that would take us to America.

More later.

— Sara

Bare with me, this one is long.

Sunday night we slept at Hanna's place in Apia. Monday morning brought Cale phone calls from both of his star pupils. Cale joked that neither of them had figured out that school had ended and had shown up on Monday morning like usual.

However, it was a gold star ending to Cale's service. The one student who Cale trained in Linux (and who Cale hopes to help go to school overseas) took it upon himself to ask at a local internet cafe if there was any part-time work for him. It was the cafe that Cale had been watching over while the owner was out of the country in the previous few months. So the owner knew Cale and Cale had talked up the student and introduced the two of the previously. The student was calling because he had been offered work to set up a Linux lab for this cafe owner and wanted to get into the school computer lab to get the how-to book he and Cale's other star pupil had written together on setting up the computer lab.

Cale was bursting with pride over this kid, who in addition to being smart and well-trained, also showed the initiative and self-confidence to go out and get himself a job immediately.

Cale also had the opportunity to talk to the director of the school board on Sunday. The director specifically asked about the student he had trained to talk over teaching next year. So Cale is feeling slightly better about the possibility of the school board actually hiring this student. There is still some worry, since JICA is advertising for a computer volunteer to teach either at my school or Cale's. I am having a hard time with that. There are three computer teachers at my school and enough classes for three teachers. How can you ever find out if they can do the job themselves if you keep sending in volunteers to do it?

Monday we ran lots of little errands around Apia and visited with our host family one last time. Things are a little rocky for them now. The father of the family just returned the private van he was driving for the owners. It was costing him $300 talal a week for the use of the van and because it wasn't a licensed taxi, he couldn't really make that much money on the car. So now our host mom is supporting the entire family with help from the oldest daughter in Samoa, who has a job at a restaurant. Hopefully our host mother will still find time to finish the classes she was taking on scholarship in adult education at the National University. She is interested in teaching. We told her to keep an eye out for available Peace Corps trainer jobs in October of next year when the new group arrives.

We also had our exit interview with Dale. It's a pretty short debrief where the country director asks about your service. It was interesting to me because walking out of the interview, I know we had been very negative, yet we had still insisted we would do it all over again. A lot of things that we are negative about are hopefully things that will change in the new program that Group 82 is piloting. It's a waiting game to see how things turn out for them.

My two biggest complaints with my service was the lack of appraisals for volunteers and the lack of accountability for host country agencies. This is the first time I have had a job that doesn't have at minimum an annual appraisal when some one sits down with you to assess your work and offer constructive criticism. Especially as someone who has never taught before, it would have been nice to have someone look at what I was doing and let me know if it was ok or not.

My other issue is a school can say just about anything necessary to get a volunteer and then not be held accountable with following through with any of those things. For example, there is a school that knows the Peace Corps sends vocational instructors for trades, so they request those, knowing full well that they have no intention of using the volunteers in that way and instead have them teach Social Studies in the secondary school. Very few of the teacher volunteers in country have true counterparts. We are all trained in co-teaching and told this is something we will do and then none of us have anyone to co-teach with. There's no sustainability if you don't partner with someone in country while you are here.

Because this blog is so long, I am going to break it up. Tune in next time when Sara writes about their last meal at Italiano's and the trip to the airport.

— Sara

We are in LA with Meghan. I will write more soon.

-Sara

Our last day in Samoa. At 11:58 pm tonight we will be on a plane to LA.

I thought I would catch you up a little on what has been going on, since we have been to busy and without internet.

Tuesday was Cale's faamavae lunch at his school that I mentioned before. I was invited as well. That night I was up until 1 am working on the textbook project.

Wednesday the school magazine was finally delivered. It was successfully printed! I do take issue with the quality thought. I specifically asked them how they would be printing it and they said they were going to print it off the laser printer they showed me. However, they definitely photo-copied it. The also told me that they would trim the white edges off the cover so it would have full-bleed and they did not. Finally, there was the issue of the number that they printed. Originally they claimed it would be $25 tala per magazine. For our $3,800 that was about 150 magazines. Then they told one of the ministers at the school they would print for $9 tala each. That would be more than 400 magazines. Later then went back on that deal and said the price would be $25 each, but they would make a present of more. The more was never specified. Even later they told the principal they would print 300 for oru $3,800. However, when the finally arrived there were only 200. Whatever, it is done.

After school I went to visit with Ryan and work on the textbook more.

Wednesday night was the night before Prize-Giving at my school. Traditionally, the Prize-Giving committee stays at the school practically all night sorting and wrapping the prizes. I passed the grunt work of the prize-giving program off to the school secretary this year, but she still asked if I could be the person who was there that night to add in the sponsors, as she had to sew uniform puletasi for people to wear to the prize-giving the next morning. I told her to tell the committee to come get me from my house when they were ready. I knew if it was anything like last year, it was going to take all night to figure out what prizes were going where and last minute donations would arrive late in the night. I finally went over to the school at 9 pm to help wrap prizes and wait for the donor list. At 2 am I was still at the school trying to print out all the programs. A member of the prize-giving committee insisted I go home, even though I wasn't finished. She said that she would be in early in the morning with the school secretary and finishe printing and folding.

When I arrived at 7:30 am on Thursday the prize-giving committee member wasn't there. So the school secretary and I printed and folded until after 9 am. The Prize-Giving started at 8 am. So we missed the beginning. The prize-giving went off without a hitch. The DUX (what they calle the valedictorian here) was also my top computer studies student. I distributed letters of recommendation and flash drives to all my Year 13 students.

Thursday night our host family came to our house with food and we all ate together. That was nice.

Friday was Cale's Prize-Giving. However, I missed that because I spent the day holed up in my computer lab finishing the textbook project. While I was in the room I heard applause and singing and wandered outside to discover I missed the final school assembly of the year. Some students as they were leaving stopped into the computer lab and gave me some necklaces.

After school all the teachers were taken out by the principal. One of the teachers made a speech thanking me and they gifted me an envelope with $200 tala in it. Funny story about the lunch. I orginally had my exit interview for the Peace Corps scheduled at 3pm that day, but we didn't even leave for the lunch until 1 pm. Luckily Cale called to say that we were rescheduled for Monday. However, after we had been at the venue for a while with no food, the principal's wife decided to use my now rescheduled meeting (she knew it was rescheduled) to try to hurry along to food, saying that Sara has to leave soon. However, they only brought out food for the principal and me, which foiled her plan and put me in an awkward position of telling him that I didn't have to leave when he tried to give me a ride right after we finished eating.

That night we had dinner with John at the Yacht Club.

Saturday we came into Apia and shopped for souvenirs. Then at 3pm we went to the Charge's house for Thanksgiving. It was beautiful. I ate turkey and mashed potatoes and green beans, and stuffing and corn and pumpkin pie and apple pie. And I was stuffed. Afterwards Cale went out with some other volunteers but I was tired and overfull, so I hung around the peace corps office.

Sunday we packed up all our stuff and I met with my principal at the school to give him all the details on the computer labs. I made a couple of "how-to" sheets for the computers and saved it to the desktop of the server. Then we packed up everything that was left into a taxi and came into Apia. We spent the night at Hanna's.

Now it is Monday morning. We still have our exit interview and Cale is repacking all our bags for maximum efficiency. Tonight is dinner at Italiano's and then taxi to the airport where we will most likely be seen off by our principal's and the family of one of Cale's students.

See ya'll in America.

- Sara

We don't have the internets at home anymore, so these entries will be short. I promise to write about Prize-Giving soon. Today is our thanksgiving celebration.

More later

- Sara

So, you ever go to a store, and look around, and get distracted, and still just keep looking around. Looking, and looking, and looking for a long time and gettnig distracted over and over again, and then finally its time to leave the store because you sold somebodey else tat you would meet them. And so you leave, and you wonder to yourself as you walk towareds the door -

What was it again that I came here for?

Just asking.

Cause that never happens to me.

-Cale

Wednesday Cale was making macaroni and cheese. Or should I say macarrones y queso (it's spanish here, I don't know why). But, man, that water just wasn't boiling. Oh! I see, the gas it out. Brillant. Five days to go and we cannot cook anymore.

Then I had what I thought was a brilliant idea. Put the noodles in the electric tea kettle and then just keep pressing the button to keep it boiling. Brilliant in theory, less brilliant in practise.

Other electric tea kettles have large openings and would work just like those little water-boiler things we had in college for making ramen. This one, however, was specifically designed to keep particles from getting out. It has a small opening to put the water in, a small opening for the water to pour out and screens over them to keep crap from getting in and out. Once we had the noodles in and boiled, we had a heck of a time getting them out.

— Sara

Well this is it - hump day.  After this one, the rest of our service should just fly by. And don't tell anyone, but i think were are going to knock off early on friday so - even shorter!-Calep.s. - our internet access will get pretty spotty starting tomorrow - the time has come to sever our services

Today is it, I won't be seeing another Tuesday in Samoa. I better get all my Tuesday stuff in.

Yesterday afternoon we went to visit our host family for what we thought was the last time. We took Cale's bike to give to them as a parting gift. Our host mom was pretty insistent we have a last dinner with them, so we will be back in to have dinner with them on Thursday after my Prize-Giving.

We also had our last dinner as Group 79. Well, sort of. Erik and Max weren't at the dinner, but we will see them at Thanksgiving on Saturday. This was the last time we will see Rosie in Samoa. She headed back to Savaii and won't be coming back in for Thanksgiving.

Tuesday Cale's school had a lunch for him and invited me. His pule gave a wonderful speech about how we will both be missed. There was food and Cale' students gave both of us some parting gifts. The sewing instructor also made us one last set of matching clothes, you cannot have too many matching outfits.

— Sara

PS. I finally got around to posting this after midnight, so this is really Day 5 now, but I won't tell if you won't tell.