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

Ofa Atu!

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

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

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

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

It's a strange feeling to come home after living overseas for almost a year and a half. We watched out the plane window as our little green palm-dotted islands disapeared, and coming into our first landing back in America we watched row after row of cement, buildings, and houses come into view in LA, with hardly anything green. After living abroad you come back with a different perspective, it definately changes you. Have you ever thought about how weird some things are in our own country, or what some foreigners must think? For example, coming from a tiny Pacific island to a main-land and flying for 4 hours over nothing but land was a different feeling. Hot showers are amazing. The first shower after Tonga the feeling of the water was like air it felt so much lighter than the water we had. And food, you never realize how many different flavors there are, and it's like tasting it for the first time after going so long without certain foods. But I have to say, the pineapple is disapointing here, we're spoiled now after the fresh, sweet pineapple we had in Tonga. And water, we don't have to wake up every morning and haul our drinking water in from a water tank outside, and we don't have to boil water and wait for it to cool. In LA we had a layover for a night, and in the hotel Brett walked down the hall and came back with bottled water, forgetting that we could drink the tap water again. The most amazing feeling right after leaving Tonga was just having clean feet and clean fingernails. The whole time over there your feet are just black. We'd clean our feet often, but no matter what they just turn black with dirt and sand and whatever. Wearing flip-flops the whole time your feet just get dirty. And we'd clean the floors in our house often, but they'd just get dirty so fast from living on the beach and having dogs. And I don't know what happens at night, but you go to sleep clean and wake up with dirt under your fingernails. I don't know. So it's nice to see that our feet are actually pink again (but we do still have calouses on our ankles from sitting on the floor mats so often). And after sleeping under a mosquito net for so long, we felt exposed at first sleeping without one here. But it's nice going to sleep now in sheets that aren't damp from humidity. And driving again is weird - to be on the right side of the road and not the left. And on our island we really were rarely in cars and when we were it was very slow going over the roads we had, and short distances so I noticed now I get a little car sick here.

So those were some of the basic differences we noticed right away coming back. But we also had some reverse culture-shock. Some people say the culture-shock is worse coming back to your own country after living abroad. I think it's better though when you expect it, we didn't expect to come back and things to just be normal again, we knew there'd be an adjustment. One of the first things we noticed was how connected people are now to the Internet, everyone has fancy phones they're constantly typing on, it's a little annoying. It was nice to be somewhat detached from that overseas. People here are becoming more detached from real conversations and interactions when they're just using facebook or things online to communicate. And it's very easy here to go days without having real interactions with people- you can sit at home online or shop around malls or places and not really talk to anyone, and the neighborhoods are more isolated - you can't walk down the street and be in town. In Tonga if you left your house you were greeted by every person you saw in town just blocks away, and even if you didn't leave the house the neighbors would come over to chat. You just had no option of isolating yourself. And commercialization, what can I say. In Tonga, you wore whatever clothes you had, no matter if they didn't match or were stained. You couldn't even buy clothes on our island, unless they had them at the market on Saturdays and then they were used old clothes that probably wouldn't fit. People didn't buy decorative vases, pictures, pillows, etc. for their houses. They just had the basics that were needed, sometimes not even that. Most of the time you sat on the floor and that was perfectly fine. We didn't have many options for shopping on our island because it was so hard to get stuff to our island. We already know what the stores are like here, but still knew it would be a little bit of a shock. At first we avoided going shopping. Then we went to the mall with Brett's family, I started converting prices to Tongan and things are so expensive here! We went to the Mac store, and I was overwhelmed by all the things they had, knowing that on our island computers are so old and constantly breaking down. Later Brett and I went to Target, and that was the biggest culture-shock I had coming back - just seeing row after row of all these products and things that we couldn't get on our island, but here they had a whole row of selection. For example body wash, which we couldn't get in Ha'apai, but here there was a whole row and it all looked the same - moisturizing, deep moisturizing, hydrating, sensitive skin, exfoliating, etc. I had to stop and breathe, and just grab one after looking at them all for 5 minutes or so. Walking around I glanced over at the food section, saw a huge row of different spices, and had to look away again. Brett said he had the same overwhelming feeling when we were shopping at a department store. I kept handing him dress shirts I was finding, and it was all so much and he said he was just thinking he didn't want any of them - he just wanted to wear scrubby t-shirts, shorts and flip-flops like in Tonga where fashion didn't matter. Here we have to dress up again.

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

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

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

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

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

We are very excited to see our family and friends back home. Thank you for all the love and support while we've been here in Tonga. We are actually surprising everyone back home, so this will be posted later once we are already home. Then we will post some more about our last week in Ha'apai, going away parties and such. We are looking forward to whatever comes next for us - either looking for new jobs again or spending some time traveling. We will keep up the blog for a little while longer going through our culture shock back home and first few months or so. Then if we start a new blog we'll post a link. Below is our "wall of love" of cards and things we've gotten in the mail while in Tonga. Thanks again everyone for following our blog, and also let us know if you have any job leads for either of us.

And good luck to the rest of our group of volunteers with the coming year, and new volunteers just starting their service on our island, here are a few blogs you can watch for updates from our area: http://tongabunga.blogspot.com, http://johnoutsidethelines.blogspot.com, http://juleigh.wordpress.com, http://aliciapeacecorps.blogspot.com, or just check out www.peacecorpsjournals.com to see blogs listed by country.

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

So check out our Ha'apai tourism website!

http://haapaiholiday.com/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today was the tourism festival here in Ha'apai, and since I now work for the tourism bureau I took lots of photos for them and for the new website. I also got roped into being a judge for the English speech competition on the importance of tourism here in Ha'apai. It was supposed to be a tourism week, but was cut down to only one day-long event of a float parade, arts and crafts display, speech competition, and lots of dances and singing competitions. It is a little odd that they have the tourism festival in December, when there are absolutely no tourists around in the off-season, but they do have more overseas Tongans back in Tonga for the holidays. Some of the highlights - one of the floats had actual running power tools on it (pretty sure that wouldn't be allowed in the US for safety reasons!), another had a live fire pit going that they were feeding with leaves from the bush, it was the float for the local restaurant and they were pretending to cook! I was really impressed with how decked out all the trucks and cars were for the parade, and how many there were for our small town - about 25! In attendence we had the Ambassador of China as guest of honor, Miss Tonga and Miss Tonga Tourism. Another highlight - judging the English speeches by high school kids, I realized one of the speeches I had actually helped edit and write - the Governor's office had asked for my help for a speech I'd assumed one of them was giving, but actually it was for this high school kids' speech competition! It was pretty obvious that other adults had written many of these speeches when the kids couldn't pronounce many of the words. And there were still many mispellings, my favorite was "scooper diving" instead of scuba diving. It seemed like a few of the kids had written their own speeches, so I tried to judge those with higher scores. I'm not sure who ended up winning, we left before the prize-giving since we'd already been there over 5 hours and just couldn't sit through anymore singing and dancing. We also heard today that there's a cyclone level 2 in Fiji, heading our way maybe on Wednesday or so. We'll see what happens, the waves have been pretty big so we'll probably get some kind of storm here. I think we're pretty used to the natural disasters now so we're not too worried about this one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is a ta'alunga dance, done by young unmarried girls. It's mostly hand movements, and the whole time their knees are bent. All the motions translate the words of the songs. During the dances people come up and put money on the dancers, the girls are covered in coconut oil. It's a type of fundraiser, this one was for Brett's school. Many times people will also be dancing behind the dancers, showing support for them.This is an example of some of the dances the boys/men do here in Tonga. These dances are much faster paced than the ta'alunga dance the girls do. They often have drums in the music, and wear these grass leaf skirts. There are also some sitting dances the guys do. The dance in this video was from a performance when the US Navy was here on their humanitarian mission.Dances (koniseti) are big fundraisers here at events or feasts. But then they play more modern music between the traditional dances, so it's funny to watch a dressed up ta'alunga dancer switch to "la bamba" after her dance is done.Sorry the clips are so short, but it takes a long time to upload large video files here.

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

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

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

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

(Above - one of the historical sites, an old quarry)There are a lot of historical sites here, but mostly they're forgotten and off the beaten path. There are ancient royal tombs, an old fortress that was the location of the first victory for King Tupou I, sites of massacres, pigeon mounds (part of an old royal sport), and more. There are also people still living here who are descendents of Europeans from these ships, or from missionaries and locals who first converted the King and Tonga to Christianity (one of whom I have worked with here). It's also interesting to hear some of the many ancient legends from the locals here, I think I've written some of them already on the blog here.Being in such an isolated corner of the earth many missionaries are still sent here. Most Tongans are Christian, so the missionaries that come here now are Morman, Scientologists and other types of such religions. What makes me mad is that when the Scientologists come here they are very sneaky and not up-front about themselves. They tell the locals that they want to do workshops or seminars on learning and higher education, which of course the Tongans would want. But then the seminars are all about the Scientologists' religion. And they've gone into many schools and other places doing this, taking advantage of the fact that many Tongans don't know yet what Scientology is and even that it's a religion. Many of the religions that come here try to bribe Tongans into joining - such as offering their kids scholarships and chances to move overseas, or free medical care overseas if someone in their family is sick. I could write a lot more about religion but I won't here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

-Brett

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

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

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

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

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

I attended a meeting yesterday that paints a typical picture of Tongan meetings. It was pretty pointless for me to be at, and all in Tongan. But I couldn't get up and leave, especially since a lot of very important people were there - the district officer, town officers from each village, the news reporter, etc. Throughout the meeting cell phones rang, and people didn't hesitate to answer them, or get up and leave for awhile. At one point the meeting leader answered a phone call and the meeting stopped for a few minutes. I saw others nodding off to sleep. A lady next to me was reading sex education training materials (it was for her job). And they kept talking about the same subjects over and over, dragging on the topic as they always do. Of course it started and ended with a prayer. And at the very end the district officer who had been leading the meeting askes me in English "Katie, do you have anything you need to say?" Of course he had to put the spotlight on me and ask me to say something being the only palangi in the room, and I had nothing to say since I'd tuned out a lot of the meeting after a couple of hours. Then they filed out after signing their names and receiving some money for attending the meeting, probably the main reason some of them showed up. And of course this meeting had been postponed from earlier that week, and postponed from the previous couple of months. The commitee meeting had been about rating the cleanest villages on the island and how to spend and divide money from a grant they'd received. As usual I ended up being confused, I thought it was going to be a meeting with the womens' groups from different villages, as I'd been told by my counterpart. Another language/cultural/palangi misunderstanding. Wouldn't it be surprising in America if one of your meetings was delayed 5 times over the course of 4 months, you can't understand much of what's being discussed, and it turns out the meeting is about a completely different topic than what you'd prepared for? This is one of the reasons why it's so hard to get things done in Tonga in any timely fashion.

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

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

It's interesting to look back at how we first were compared to how we are now in our community in Ha'apai. When we first moved to our island in Ha'apai we kept space to ourselves and enjoyed our own independence and not interdependence in the community. We had our own space in our house, wanted peace and quiet in our yard, had our own food, etc. We would keep the neighbor kids at a distance outside our door, we didn't understand why everyone shared our sima vie (water tank), we debated about sharing tools, food, etc. with the neighbors. It was just stressful to fight the Tongan culture at work and at home, not having privacy and sharing everything. But now it's become a part of us. Now the neighbor kids run in and out of our house freely, swinging in our hammock (as long as they have pants on, that's our one rule) and playing with whatever's on our bookshelf. Ana and Sailosi, our neighbors stop in whenever to use the Internet, talk or sometimes just to have a nap on our floor. The dogs also nap inside now, we're not so worried about fleas or things anymore. If the neighbors ask to borrow anything we give without hesitation. Because we know they do the same for us. There is still a lot of Tongan culture that we don't understand or agree with, but we've found a good blend of incorporating some Tongan ways into our own culture here. And of course it helps that we have great neighbors and friends here.A few updates, it was recently Tonga's Teacher appreciation day. The kids all gave presents to the teachers, and Brett got a little black purse, a bottle of perfume, and 3 bars of soap! It's the class 6 exam next Tues. and Wed., this determines what high school the kids will attend so it's a huge deal. I just started computer classes with the class 6 students from the Wesleyn church school. It went a lot better than I would have guessed, the students were all great and fast learners. We did some computer basics and some English games. And the Tongan teacher was really helpful too. I'm going to expand these classes to more primary schools once the exam is finished. Animal news - the pigs once again got into our water, this time our city water pipes. They completely bit through it so we have no water in the house until it gets fixed, hopefully soon. Ha'apai is also out of propane gas now for cooking, thankfully we still have some in our tank. Since the Princess Ashika tragedy, they're stricter on boat regulations and won't allow propane gas to be shipped along with passengers on the boat. We're not sure how we'll get gas here now, but heard rumors that they'll start bringing another ferry for cargo only.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here's a link to a news story on the earthquake/tsunami:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090930/ap_on_re_au_an/as_pacific_earthquake

Yesterday we had some very sad news, Teisa who I work with at the Youth Congress, her husband just died the night before. He had a heart attack while he was working in the garden/bush, he was pretty young in his early 40's I think. They had 2 very young kids, around 2 and 4 or 5 years old. I was actually supposed to meet with Teisa to help set up some computers at the Youth Congress yesterday, but heard the news from our neighbors in the morning. And I had just met with Teisa on Wed. and she invited Brett and I to a barbeque picnic with her and Inoke, her husband, and some other people from Tonga Family Health on Monday. I'd met Inoke a few times and he was always smiling and very nice. It's just so sad that Teisa is now a widow at such a young age (mid-thirties), with two really young kids.

We also had heard that the embalming machine here in Ha'apai is broken right now, so they had to have the putu (funeral) right away very fast, and had to bury the body within 24 hours. It's too bad, because usually a lot of work goes into a putu here, they spend time making tons of food, having lots of people over to the house for the putu, and sit around singing and mourning. But this all had to be rushed. A lot of people didn't even hear about the putu until it was too late and was already over. We missed out on the putu since we heard too late, but made it to the burial in the afternoon. All day we wore all black and our neighbors gave Brett a putu ta'ovala to wear (mat around his waist). Then we joined in the funeral procession on the main street going to the cemetary right by our house. Inoke, Teisa's husband, had worked as an agriculture/science teacher at the Morman high school, so all the students were there with plastic flowers for the grave. Teisa was wearing a huge woven mat, that went up above her head in the back. And her two kids were all dressed up in mats. We watched as they lowered the body into the grave, then mounded up the sand/dirt pile above it and covered it with plastic flowers. I think Teisa was glad to see us there, I gave her a hug before we left and gave her the real flowers we had brought. She just looked so sad and alone, she sat right next to the grave and everyone else sat farther back. Next week I think we'll cook some food and bring it over to her house like we do in America after someone dies. It was a weird feeling to go to a funeral here of someone we knew, back home both Brett and I haven't been to many funerals. But I guess on such a small island death is a part of everyday life.

But with deaths there is also new life and we have two new babies here that I know of. Our neighbors had a baby girl in July, the first girl out of now 6 kids! They named her Mele after a grandma, (Tongan for Mary) but the middle name is Katamaria after my name Kate Marie! So I have a little namesake baby next door, a lot of the time Tongans will even be called by their middle name. She is another clone of the dad and smiles a lot, this is a photo of her below.My old counterpart at the computer training center also had a baby girl in July, much to my surprise! She hid her pregnancy very well the entire time with baggy clothes, since she wasn't married it was a huge shame to her and the family. Especially since the family is very well known and has a high position in the community. Some of the family living in the same house didn't even know until after she had the baby. So now I know why she was sick so much when I worked with her. The sad thing is that since they're trying hard to keep it a secret, they convinced her to move to New Zealand without the baby! So now she's gone, and her parents will raise the baby for now. This happens more often than I would have thought here in Tonga. Babies and kids also get passed around between family members often. An aunt of our neighbor boys, the oldest daughter so the head of the family, likes the youngest boy so much she tried to keep him and our neighbors had to take a boat to that island to get him back. Often kids will get passed around when a family gets too big to support, or if another family needs a boy or girl to help out with the mens or womens chores.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After only about ten minutes of leaving the harbour we spotted some humpback whales, between our island of Lifuka and Uoleva island just south of here. There were 3 or 4 whales swimming together, we could see their blowholes spouting water and their humpbacks and dorsel fins just above the water. There was a mom and baby calf in this group of whales swimming together. The backs of the whales above water were huge! Once we got up close to the whales we peeled up our wetsuits, threw on our flippers and masks and slowly slipped into the water - if you make too much splashing noises it would scare the whales away. It was us four girls in the water, and once we were in I realized the whales were a lot farther away than they had looked, and they were traveling so we couldn't catch up to them. The waves were big and rolling in the ocean so it was tiring to swim, and I was trying not to think of what else lurked below in the deep waters. But it was cool to see the spouts and humpbacks in the ocean not too far from us. We got back in the boat and moved along with the whales. This time a Tongan boat passed by the whales, a little too close for comfort I think. They acted differently, showing their backs a lot more to make sure the boat saw them maybe. We tried again slipping into the water, but they were still moving away from us. After observing them for awhile and seeing that they were staying at the surface in one place, we got the boat really close and slipped into the water, this time holding onto a rope on the boat and not moving too quickly towards them. Then Sabine (fins 'n flukes) stuck her mask in the water and motioned all of us to do the same, and I saw the huge tail of one of the whales! Brett jumped in, and the five of us snorkeled up closer and all of a sudden out of the deep murky blue appeared an entire whale, head to tail, and then another! It was amazing to see such huge creatures just suspended there in the water, right next to us! We got up close, I'd guess around 20 feet or so (the closest you're supposed to get is 15 feet). That close I got a little freaked out since you don't know which way the whale will move. But they're really conscious of everything in the water and any slight changes, and where their own body is in relation to us. And all of a sudden they were gone, moving farther away from us. It was only a minute or less that we saw the whales underwater, but it was incredible to be so close to such huge whales and see them in their natural surroundings. Tonga is one of the only places in the world where you can still swim with the whales, it's against the law everywhere else. So this really was the chance of a lifetime. After swimming with the whales we had a coffee/tea break on the boat, and Brian and Sabine have an underwater microphone on a long cord that they put in, and we were able to hear the whales underwater! It was cool to listen to, they were making all sorts of noises and sounded really close to the boat, but with this microphone you can hear them up to 20 kilometers or so away. We then boated around some more, and the Japanese volunteer caught a fish, a huge grouper. He filleted the fish and we had fresh sashimi right out of the sea, and some pasta for lunch where we anchored in a really pretty aqua lagoon area. It was an incredible day overall! More photos are posted in the link to the left.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bags:

- Bring one backpack for everyday use, or for girls a shoulder bag

- Consider bringing a good travel backpack, something you would use it backpack across Europe in, it makes travel a lot easier.

- For secondary bags we suggest rolling duffel bags, they tend to hold up well

- Use up to the allocated weight for plane travel if possible, don’t try to pack too light

Girls:

- mix of t-shirts and button down short-sleeved shirts (around 7 - 10). Make sure they all have sleeves that cover your armpits, and lightweight material. Have at least one black shirt.

- Tank tops - some white basic tanks, and some thicker strapped tanks for wearing at home, or tourist areas

- 5 - 6 Skirts that are below the knees, you’ll be able to buy the wrap-around skirts here

- Capris and pants - 1-2 capris that are below the knees. And one or two pairs of jeans or khakis for winter.

- Swimsuit - 2, you can wear them in tourist areas, or when swimming in local areas underneath shorts and shirt.

- Swimming - bring 1 shirt to swim in, and board shorts at or below the knees

- 1 rain jacket

- Sweater/sweatshirt, bring two for winter, and one or two long-sleeved shirts

- Underwear - enough for 1 ½ weeks or so, and comfortable bras that you can wear in hot weather

- Shoes - three pairs of sandals that are very comfortable and sturdy. Bring at least one pair of flip-flops, and one pair of strap-on sandals. Tennis shoes if you run.

- Jewelry - necklaces, earrings, etc, it’s something you can wear to feel more like yourself

- make-up - many girls don’t wear make-up here, I brought mine and am glad I did, another thing to make you feel more like yourself if you wear make-up back home.

- hairdryer - if you have one that converts to 240 voltage it’s worth bringing it and it’s nice to have when the weather gets cold

- tampons - they don’t sell them here! Bring enough for at least through training and then have more mailed

- razors, bring a few, you can buy cheap ones here as well

Guys:

- mix of t-shirts 5-6 (dark colors are good)

- 3-4 short sleeve button-up shirts, light weight if possible

- 1-2 long sleeve shirts for the colder weather

- 1 pair of jeans for cold nights or for vacation

- 1 pair of Khakis for cold nights or rainy days

- 3 pairs of shorts, light weight if possible

- 1-2 belts, try to find cloth belts, they work the best, leather does not hold up

- 1-2 pairs of board shorts or swimming trunks

- 1-2 quick dry shirts for swimming or casual wear (Target has cheap nice shirts)

- 1 rain jacket

- 1-2 sweatshirts or fleeces for cold weather or overseas travel

- 8-10 pairs of boxers or underwear

- 3-4 pairs of socks

- 1 pair of running shoes ( good for exercising and for vacation in NZ or Australia)

- 1 pair of good flip flops

- 1 pair of strap on sandals for walking on reefs or walking in the bush

- electric shaver/trimmer, no hot water to shave with unless you boil, electric shavers work good

(guys, remember not to bring any baggy cloths, you will most likely loose 1-2 inches in your waist.

-don’t worry about bringing jackets, if its really cold you can wear a sweatshirt and wear your rain coat over that, it works good.

　

Kitchen:

-good set of knifes and good filet knife

- one good frying pan, the ones they sell here are cheap

- measuring cups and measuring spoons

- can opener

- coffee perculater or French press if you’re a coffee drinker, and your favorite coffee.

- water bottles - sigg or nalgene type water bottles, you’ll be using them a lot!

- some food that you’ll miss - candy, granola bars, pasta mixes that you can make once you get to site, spices/seasonings or get them sent later in the mail.

- Hanging basket 3 tier for food

Bathroom: (bring enough with you for three month to last through training)

- supply of shampoo, conditioner, and body wash/soap. You can buy some stuff here that you get in the states like suave, but if you prefer certain brands bring that along.

- toothpaste - You can get expired crest here and some asian brands, we get most of ours sent in the mail.

- toothbrushes, bring a few extra, and bring toothbrush covers, you can also buy covers here.

- contacts - if you wear them, bring as much contact solution as you can, we brought six bottles and have had more sent in the mail, you can not buy it here.

- towels - you can buy them here, but bring one to start with

Other:

- Alarm clock

- wrist watch, timex makes nice rubber ones (Target)

- 2 pairs of sunglasses, things break easy

- knife or leatherman, good for fixing things

- duct-tape

- games - bring whatever games you can, that are good with a few people or with many, and easy to learn

- computer - yes, bring one! It’s great for watching DVD’s, typing up emails before getting to internet, storing photos, etc. Most people will end up somewhere with electricity. Chances are your computer will break here, bring a dry sack for your computer to be stored in when not using, this will increase its life here.

- hard drive - many volunteers bring hard drives to exchange movies and photos

- digital camera, underwater bag is also a good idea for your camera

- books - bring a few to start, but the peace corps libraries in each island group also have a lot of books

- hammock!!! - very glad we brought one, it’s the only furniture in our living room! Also good for camping.

- tent - good idea if you’re planning on camping at all.

- sleeping bag - lightweight, cheap sleeping bag, we got fleece ones at target

- 1 set of bed sheets - not as easy to find here

- good flashlights, hand-held and a headlamp is a very good idea, easy to use when biking

- I-pod, we brought ours along with a circle speaker

- Photos from back home - we brought an album with photos of family and friends, it’s fun to show the Tongans, and for decorating once you get to site.

- Presents - for homestay families. Some good ideas - women like perfume, give gifts that have to do with your hometown or state - postcards, calendars, food, etc. Bring stuff for little kids - toys, coloring books, etc. you’ll probably have kids at your homestay. Don’t waste too much space though on these gifts.

- adaptors - bring a couple of adaptors - Tonga is the same as Australia. You probably won’t need converters - most computers will convert the voltage, and you can get surge protectors here.

- Snorkeling - bring decent quality masks and snorkel, and flippers if you have room, if not you can usually find flippers here.

- Rechargeable batteries, if you have things that use AA or AAA consider bringing rechargeables

- Good pens, maybe one notebook for writing home or journaling

- Small sewing kit, clothes will get worn, buttons will fall off, etc.

- A couple months supply of multivitamins (the health office also has some available, not sure what kind)

- pop-up laundry bin or laundry bag, or stuff sack

- Things you’ll have supplied by peace corps- any kind of medical needs, sunscreen, bug spray, bike helmet, kerosene lantern, FM/AM radio, mosquito net for your bed, and a peace corps tonga cookbook

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

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

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

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

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

~Brett

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The night we spent in Mooloolaba we had kebabs for dinner then went to Omally's Pub where we used to go when I lived there. On the way in we started talking to a couple of Australian guys who were very excited to meet Americans, and after awhile they invited us to go 'roo hunting (yes, kangaroo) with them in the outback the next day. They were very serious too, it would've been quite the experience but we'd already planned to be back in Brisbane the next day for the dance festival. The last three nights of our trip we spent in Sydney - Peace Corps would've flown us back a few days early since they couldn't do anything more with medical, but we decided to stay and take a few days of vacation in Sydney before returning. We found a good last-minute deal on a hotel right downtown near the Rocks area, and were able to walk everywhere from there. It was a lot more walking than Brisbane, and a lot of Sydney is on hills. It also felt like there were a lot more business professional people all dressed up, not as many families or college students. So we felt a little out of place in our casual clothes downtown. The first night we didn't get in until later, and went and walked down by the harbour bridge and opera house all lit up at night. The second day we did a lot of sightseeing - the main shopping street, Pitt Street, the free art museum in the park, and the botanical gardens with a view of the harbour bridge and opera house at sunset, and had a lasagna dinner at Darling Harbour with a nice view of downtown. Our last full day in Sydney was mostly shopping, getting groceries and things we can't get in Tonga. We also went to the barracks/history museum, and had burgers for dinner down by the harbour bridge. It was nice in both towns since I'd been there before I remembered some of the area and what sights to see. Overall we both liked the Brisbane area better than Sydney - the city itself is pretty and set up nice and is close to both the sunshine and gold coasts. We flew back to Tonga last night, the flight into the main island here is always pretty turbulent, maybe something to do with the way the winds come through here or something. The wing on our side of the plane was turned way up, we thought we were still circling high above the island, then all of a sudden lights started appearing right next to the wing and we were on the ground, almost landing at a tilt! But we're back now, hopefully heading home to Ha'apai tomorrow.

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

Here is a link to the local news story on the ferry sinking:

http://www.matangitonga.to/article/tonganews/outerislands/20090805_askika_missingwomen.shtml

And a New Zealand news story:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10589081

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After dinner everyone got up and socialized, someone from our table that works with the Prime Minister asked us to come and meet him! Right away when he introduced Brett and I the Prime Minister said “I remember you, we’ve met before!”, he remembered us from our swearing in ceremony in December!! Then he asked if we wanted our picture taken, so of course we got our picture taken with him. It was really incredible that the Prime Minister of Tonga knows who we are!! Then we spent some time talking with other Tongans from the government, and taking photos with a lot of the navy that we’ve gotten to know and Tongan government officials. It was pretty fun! We also had a conversation with Captain Cully, the Commodore of the Pacific Partnership mission, the person in charge of it all. He gave speeches at all the big events and was always the guest of honor seated up front. He said he was grateful for all of our help, and liked that we were so involved and friendly with them all. He said in the first country they visited it wasn’t like that. We told him of course we wanted to help out as much as we could and we were just so excited to have so many other Americans and foreigners here working with us. So many of them were interested in what Peace Corps is and asked lots of questions. This is the last country on their tour they’ll have Peace Corps volunteers. After the open bar ran out at the farewell dinner we all moved over to Mariner’s Café for awhile, then a few of us stopped at a new dance club by the wharf. My counterpart at the computer center also just set up a dance club in an old abandoned building right on the ocean by the wharf. We’ll see how long it lasts, it’s good to have something like this for the youth in town. So it ended up being a fantastic night!On Saturday, there was a closing ceremony at Brett’s School for the Pacific Partnership mission here in Ha’apai. They had speeches again and prayers, gift-giving from both the US navy and the Tongans, a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new school building, and then there was a huge feast. By huge, I mean the entire islands of Lifuka and Foa were probably there along with most of the navy ship. We guessed over 500 people. They had two huge tents set up with long tables overflowing with food – the normal piles of wrapped food plates on top of each other and whole roasted pigs every few feet, whole huge lobsters, octopus, chicken, fish, and more. We were seated, then noticed tons of Tongans standing all around the edges and filling up all the cars parked all around the event. This is the first time in Ha’apai I felt like if I wanted to find someone here at the feast I might not be able to in the crowd! They had lots of dancing again from the school kids during the feast, and the navy band and the Weslyn school band played music. This was by far the biggest feast I’ve seen in Tonga, bigger than the church conferences. We went to Mariner’s last night, the last time it will be this busy. It will feel really empty now after the ship leaves today.In animal news, our neighbor’s dog, Kimone, just had her puppies last night! I think there are about 6 of them, it’s hard to tell – they’re all huddled up under our back stairs. And the piglet our neighbors gave us, Ifo (delicious), was stolen along with another piglet. We’re guessing Ifo ended up on the feast tables today, hundreds of piglets were killed and roasted for this feast. Some other big news, we leave for Brisbane, Australia next week on Thursday! We go to Nuku’alofa for a few days, leaving on Tuesday then on to Australia. We’re going for medical, Brett needs to get his leg looked at, it shouldn’t be anything serious but they don’t have an MRI here in Tonga so they have to send him out of country. And I’m going along as well paying my own way. So we’ll have a little bit of a vacation there for around two weeks – we’ll see how long we’re there after the test results. I’m really excited to get back there – I studied abroad for a semester just north of Brisbane on the Sunshine Coast. Hopefully we’ll have time to get up there and down to the Gold Coast. It feels weird leaving again so soon after our New Zealand trip last month. It felt pretty sad coming back here after our New Zealand trip with my family, and now it feels a little sad leaving Ha’apai since so many things are just getting started - my Internet café, I’m missing the first women’s group meeting with MAFF and just started working with my counterpart there, I won’t be able to start computer classes until we get back, and Brett’s school was just re-done and his library. But I am really looking forward to the restaurants and hot showers again! And we’ll just pick up where we left off here, hopefully they’ll be able to keep the Internet café open while I’m gone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was my birthday on Friday, the first time I've had a "winter" birthday!! But it was still probably in the 70's and sunny, and we spent the afternoon on the beach by our house. Then met up with friends at Mariner's for dinner and drinks, the staff sang happy birthday for me, and we had cake later back at the house. It was a fun night, but different to be in another country away from family and friends back home. For my birthday present Brett wrote a song for me on his guitar. And the most unique present, in the photo below, was a huge ufi (yam) from our neighbors!!

We also had some visitors stay with us for a few nights this last week, two volunteers from Vava'u and one from Eua here on vacation during the school break. It's always fun to hear from volunteers in different parts of Tonga, the island groups are all so unique from each other. These volunteers were surprised at the lack of things available here in Ha'apai, but really enjoyed our beaches.

Yesterday we ran into one of the US Navy people here getting things ready for their July humanitarian visit (13th - 25th). There will be about 100 US Navy people here, they're doing a tour of different countries in the Pacific helping with different projects, medical, and dental. In Tonga they decided to focus on Ha'apai (maybe we're seen as the most needy or most isolated), and they're going to renovate and fix different government schools and water tanks, and they're bringing in doctors, dentists and optometrists to set up clinics and workshops. I heard they're bringing in thousands of pairs of glasses, and toothbrushes. They also have a veterinarian so we'll get Lucky our dog fixed. It will be crazy having so many palangis (foreigners) in our small islands here, the town will be crawling! It will be fun to see what they're doing and to be able to help out. I like that the US Navy is sending in people to these types of countries to help out, and that they're not giving out ANY money. Everything is brought in for doing medical and dental clinics, and all the equipment and everything for the projects at the schools. And all the projects they're doing with medical, food sanitation, dental, etc. they want to be sustainable. Which is a great idea, but will be hard to do. The guy we talked to said that here and in most of the countries they've been to, the local people always ask for money or say they need money to do these kinds of projects or workshops. They're so used to getting foreign aid, and used to this aid just being in the form of money and not service. So it's good to be doing these types of tours/projects to start changing the locals' perceptions on foreign aid. Brett and I are just having another relaxing Sunday, not doing anything. It's a little overcast and cool out today. I have a few days of work this week, then go to Nuku'alofa on the main island for a volunteer advisory meeting for a few days. And it's almost the 4th of July, we'll have to figure out how to celebrate here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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