Wow okay so it's been more than a year since my last blog entry. Is anybody even still reading this??

To be honest, I don't really feel like hashing out the rest of the family drama that happened in my last days in Vanuatu, but suffice it to say, everything turned out fine. I've been back for a year and a half. I haven't spoken to either of my host families much, but that's mostly due to technical difficulties, which I hope to fix soon. I do know that Susian had her baby and named her after me so now there are two baby Justines in Vanuatu. Soon we will take over the world.

In the last 18 months or so I moved to Austin, where I lived for about a year. I worked as a Service Manager at Texas' version of Safeway, but never found a job in my field or got into grad school as was the plan. So when I got a job offer as a lab tech in Maryland, I jumped at the opportunity and moved back home. That was in July.

I miss Austin a lot. The amazing weather, all the outdoorsy people, artists, musicians, etc. Looking back on my time there is like trying to remember a dream. It was so surreal, but maybe that's because I had almost zero responsibility there.

Living back here in MD I feel like an adult for the first time. Real job, very real car payment, etc etc. But mostly it's awesome being nearby my family and friends, who I've really missed over the last three years. Of course my brother moved to L.A. last April but that was probably for the best anyway.

I'm still sortof in "fresh back from Peace Corps/Austin" mode, which translates to me trying to make elaborate plans with people all the time. There's this need to make up for the three years I didn't have with everybody. I try to curb it, but not really, haha! This is a picture of me and some friends at the MD Renaissance Festival last month. It's always an amazing time and I highly recommend it!

So at the risk of this becoming a long rambling entry (too late?) I'll stop here and do my best to post more regularly...

Let's back up a little. I started to write a closing post to my Peace Corps experience and before long, realized that (because I hadn't written in so long) I was going into tangents within tangents within tangents. So I'm going to create a few separate posts to keep things simple.

The subject of my first post will be Susian's pregnancy. I won't go into all of the details, but suffice it to say that she told me that she was pregnant shortly after our trip to Naviso. My host parents weren't exactly jumping for joy, especially when Susian's baby's daddy disappeared, but they eventually got over it. They began to view it as happy news, even more so when they learned that my brother Hensley, who lives in Vila, was going to be a father soon. Suddenly my family dynamic changed. With school back in session and Susian taking it easier, my family began to struggle. Food around the house was more scarce, in direct contrast with the dirty clothes and rubbish, which were piling up. Also, Susian could mo longer spend nights at my house.

So I slept alone at nights. Worthless Stuey was out chasing females. I was so frightened at night that I couldn't fall asleep until I heard the roosters start to crow around 3 am. Some nights, I pulled my mattress out into the sitting room just because it made me feel safer. Two weeks hadn't passed before I asked my cousin, Shelda, to be my new roomie. (Shelda on the left, Susian on the right.) She moved in and what a difference! First of all, she decorated her room with pretty fabrics and mats, which Susian never did. She swept floors, washed dishes, and brought me food! I love Susian, but living with Shelda was awesome. Because Shelda was trying so hard, I found myself trying harder as well. I would walk her back to her house almost every day and hang out for a while.

And thus it started. I would go to my family's house for dinner, only to find that there was barely enough food for them. I felt guilty asking for a helping, even when I contributed. So I started going to Shelda's house for dinner. They had been bringing me plates of food anyway, and their food was soooo good. I still tried to hang out with my family, but my mama was always going to the garden and Susian was usually resting.

My family became the subject of gossip within the village. People were already talking about Susian's pregnancy, but pregnancy out of wedlock wasn't anything new. However, Susian's morning sickness was particularly bad and she could stomach only a limited range of food. She lost a noticeable amount of weight and people began to question how well our family was taking care of her. Once they saw that I was no longer eating with them, people really started to talk. Fact of the matter was that my papa spends his days hungover from kava, then nights drinking the stuff, so my mama was bearing most of the work every day. I felt guilty that my spending so much time at my auntie's was hurting my family's reputation, but I didn't know what else to do. I was so much happier there. My auntie and uncle were better educated. They had more daughters so their place was cleaner and there was more food and people to talk with.

So the last few months of my service went like that. The larger Susian got, the less we'd have to talk about. She began to hang out more with the mamas, while I spent more time with the girls who had yet to marry. Sortof an abrupt ending to this post, but it has to do with later events so stay tuned...

Sitting here at the hotel feeling really strange. Tomorrow I go back to my island for the last time. This trip to town has been a lot of fun and very busy. Sandy and I are putting on a Kamp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) and a Kamp BILD (Boys In Leadership Development) when I go back to the island and I've been running around town buying things for them. For three days we will host 40 young men and women from the main villages of Central Maewo, giving sessions on things like Goal-setting, Decision-Making, Adult Reproductive Health, Leadership, etc. We have to figure out a lot of logistics like where everyone will sleep, shower, what they'll eat, who's going to cook, lalalalaaa. Luckily there are about eight other volunteers coming to help us. The workshop participants are really excited to meet volunteers from other islands. It should be fun.

I bought all of my plane tickets home yesterday. I was really surprised at how emotional that was for me. I've been looking forward to seeing my friends and family for so long that the repercussions of leaving didn't really hit me until I clicked that "confirm" button to buy the ticket out of here. I'm going to miss this place a lot. Things here are so much slower. Less stress, worry. More forgiveness and love. That sounded really hippyish, but it's so true. Okay, gonna sign off now, maybe I'll get on and write a bit more soon. Otherwise, I'll write a little something next month when I come back into town.

I am not an experienced hiker. In fact, I believe I’ve done more hiking in my service here in Vanuatu than I ever did back in the U.S. I’m not necessarily a city girl, but I come from a suburb just outside of D.C. and my circle of friends was made up of photographers, singers, musicians, and actors. I always liked to be outside, and I enjoyed playing sports, but hiking was always something that seemed a bit weird to me. Okay, so you buy all this fancy gear to go walk for miles and miles? Hmmmm. I saw the outdoor appeal, but just never got around to actually doing it. That’s not to say that the D.C. area doesn’t have nice places to go hiking. To name a few places, there’s Rock Creek Park, which is very beautiful, though not too challenging. There’s Cunningham Falls in Catoctin Park, and my personal favorite is Great Falls, which separates Maryland from Virginia and can be viewed from both sides in a national park with nice trails and views of the C&O Canal. It is with the experience of day trips to such places that I immigrated to Vanuatu, completely confident that I would be up for the bush walks and whatever else. Over the last two years I have done quite a few hikes. All of them have been challenging and all have made me realize how inexperienced I really am. I laugh to think about the hikes I did in Maryland as I look down at my mud-covered, flip flop adorned feet. One of the more recent hikes I have done was a trip from my village, Narovorovo, on the Western coast of Maewo, to Naviso, which is on the Eastern coast and a little north. Ever since I arrived on Maewo, I have heard many stories about East Maewo’s lone village. White sand beaches, lobster, coconut crab, naora, fish, clear cold swimming pools, etc. I felt like it was a must-see before my service was up. But it’s always been near impossible for me to gauge the difficulty of proposed hikes based on what Man Vanuatu tells me, and I think it’s because they have no idea what I am or am not capable of. Some of the really fit Ni-Vans will tell me that it’s really close, no problem whatsoever. Some of the mamas will say, “wokabaot slo slo…” Some of the older or more overweight Ni-Vans will shake their heads, but then say, “be, yu wan yangfala so maybe bae hemi olraet.” I’ve learned that it’s best to just prepare for the worst and do the walk. The following is a tale of an experience when I didn’t prepare myself quite so well, and what ensued as a result.

Since coming back to Maewo from my trip to China, I felt restless. I had been in the village for two weeks, one week of which was spent in bed with a bad cold. I wanted to go to the garden, walk up to see Justin and Sheridan, just do something. One evening, sitting outside of my family’s kitchen with my sister, Suzy, she told me that her and my brother and cousin would be walking across the island to Naviso the next day. “Bae yu kam wetem mifala?” Looking back, I don’t think she really believed I’d agree, which explains the surprise on her face when I immediately said yes. How bad could it really be? I had practically walked across Tanna, so long skinny Maewo wouldn’t be a problem. It’s rumored in the village that Gwen, the volunteer I replaced, had walked to Naviso and then some in just one day. This wouldn’t be so bad. I packed a bag for two nights, filled my water bottle and camel pack, prepared a first aid kit, and set out.

The purpose of our trip was interesting. People on Maewo believe strongly in kastom magic and medicine. Jealousy inspires the poisoning of dozens of people on a monthly basis, who in turn have to be cured by a kastom doctor. Soon after learning that he had passed Year 8, my brother Larry dislocated his shoulder. Apparently a stingray had come and slapped Larry’s shoulder with his wing. According to my mama, the stingray had been sent by someone who was jealous of my brother’s success. I’m not sure if Gabriel, the kastom doctor in Naviso, is Maewo’s only kastom doctor, but he seems to be the most popular anyway.

We waited until about 10 am to leave so we could get to the other side before high tide. Once you reach the east coast there’s still about a two hour walk along the coast to get to the lone village. The walk was easy, mostly just going through level gardens, crossing creeks here and there. It was all very beautiful, but very hot. After about 90 minutes, I had to rest. I sat down and immediately vomited. My heart was racing and I was shaking. I knew it would be foolish to try to keep going, but I knew I couldn’t turn back either. Instead, I told my sister I would sleep right there for a little while. I realized that I ran the risk of multiple cheekings after the walk due to the fact that I had to spell, maybe even have that be the story they tell about me to future volunteers. But there was nothing I could do. About an hour later I sat up, ate some baked taro, and felt good enough to keep going. We walked through the muddy bush for another hour or so before we came to the summit and could see East Maewo. All we had to do was climb down and walk along the beach, but we had to hurry to make it before high tide. But the climb down was long and steep, leading me to announce several times that I would sleep on the hill. Even Stuey had to be urged down the slope and slept in the grass whenever we rested. He even vomited. That made me feel better actually.

We reached the bottom of the hill but were still racing the clock. Where was the white sand beach? All I could see were the black stone beaches that we have on West Maewo. My sister explained that the stones were a recent development; that the ocean had washed the stones onto the shore. I was skeptical, but was ready to believe anything at that point. So I picked my way carefully along the stones, observing the underground springs that bubbled up on the beach and the small waterfalls that we encountered. We admired all of the random objects that had washed up on the shore from who knows where. Actually, most things that had labels on them were from Fiji, but one did say “propiedad de tarantia” on it. There were paintbrushes, markers, sandals, etc. In people’s houses you can find larger items such as barrels, Styrofoam boxes, and old fishing nets used as hammocks. But the most popular items people like to collect along the beach are plastic bottles. About halfway to Naviso we realized that we would never make it before the tide came in. We came upon a bush kitchen and settled in to sleep. Jarina went to gather bananas while Suzy made a fire and I went to swim in the river. Refreshed, I came back and went through my photos of China with the others before we had our dinner of boiled bananas. We storied some more then laid down. I didn’t sleep much that night, as I was constantly pulling off various insects and snails off my body, but I was glad to be awake for the sunrise, which was probably the most beautiful I had ever seen.

We set out early and continued on the black stone path. The merciless sun felt hotter on the east coast of the island. Luckily the path cut away from the coast and into the bush, where we found some relief from the heat. The first thing I noticed in Naviso was a clear blue ice cold swimming hole. Children jumped off of tree branches into the pool as men swam all around. I wanted nothing more than to throw my bag down and jump in, clothes and all. Unfortunately that pool was only for men, and the women’s pool was a little farther along the way. We eventually came to a large half permanent house. We went inside and relaxed for a bit before they brought us something to eat…more bananas. After scarfing those down, we walked a little ways to the pool where we could swim. It was crowded with mamas doing their wash and pikanini swimming. The screaming and crying began as soon as I entered the clearing where the pool was located. Now, it’s been a while since I have been the cause of such angst and terror, so it took me a while to realize that I was the cause of the disturbance. Unlike the large deep pool I observed the men swimming in, this pool was nothing more than a large puddle. But it was cold, which is all that really mattered. People stared as I splashed around and then sat along the edge of the pool. They spoke language, asking my sister questions about me while I hoped my smiles and nods were appropriately timed. After a little while, a rather large woman with a friendly face waddled up to the pool. She rendered herself topless and splashed down into the pool with the grace and fervor of a hippopotamus. I’m not trying to be mean; she purposefully threw herself into the pool in that silly way as to entertain me. Apparently she couldn’t speak Bislama so our communication and resulting friendship revolved around body language and goofy physical humor. When Suzy asked me in Language if I was hungry and I replied in the affirmative, this woman, Lusian, ran away with more speed than I could have thought possible, and had a leaf full of simboro manioc in my hands before I could say…hippopotamus. Oh. My. God. My family being flas as it is, we rarely eat laplap of any kind. In fact, at the time I couldn’t remember the last time I had eaten simboro, let alone simboro manioc, obviously the best kind of simboro. And this lady had milked it and put salt on it too! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Suzy looked at the three large pieces in front of me and told Lucian that I usually could only eat one or two pieces of simboro, tops, and was surprised when, just a few minutes later, the leaf was empty. I think it was that that sealed my friendship with Lucian. On the days that followed, Lucian would come visit me and bring simboro manioc, an arrangement that I couldn’t find fault with.

The food in general was delicious. I couldn’t figure out why the food in Naviso would taste so much better than food in my own village. Maybe it was more coconut milk? Salt? It wasn’t until the third day that I noticed the small gold tin of monosodium glutamate in the corner of the kitchen.

Eventually we walked back to the house and hung out. We roasted breadfruit, rassed banana and fried it, and storied. Talk about a vacation. My hostesses were extremely accommodating and wouldn’t allow me to lift a finger. I refused to let them talk me out of doing the dishes and rassing the bananas, but as my sore quadriceps healed from the walk to the village, I accepted that I wasn’t allowed to go to their gardens with them. Larry had an appointment with the kastom doctor the next morning and we were to leave for home the next day. Plenty of time for my legs to get better.

The next day, Larry couldn’t find the kastom doctor until late in the day. He gave Larry a leaf to eat and told him to wait four days to see if it would work. In the meantime, I was whiling away the days with no idea as to when I’d be going back to my village. My 25th birthday was fast approaching and I wanted to be in a place with mobile reception so I could talk to my family and friends. When the kastom doctor told Larry that he’d need to give him a second leaf because the first hadn’t worked, I knew I would have to spend my birthday in Naviso. I was pretty disappointed, but knew that it would be a very memorable birthday.

While my hosts were away at the garden, I didn’t have much to do but read. Luckily I had brought Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut with me. I read it twice. One day Jarina took me for a walk throughout Naviso, which is actually comprised of four villages, only one of which is actually known as Naviso. It was a nice easy walk, but very hot. The village was beautiful, and the school was a sight to see, as it had a vast waterfall looming up behind it on the right. The houses were all kastom, built of bamboo and natangura. The grass was trim and green and clotheslines traversed the yards. The villages were connected by narrow paths through the bush. All in all, it was a beautiful place.

On my birthday, Jarina and her family killed two chickens and prepared laplap taro for me. It was a delicious meal and afterwards we went for a swim in the pool. By that time it was dark outside and the stars were bright. Swimming in this pool is how the women bathe. So I was only mildly surprised when the others started to take off their clothes and dive into the pool. They all urged me to do the same and I obliged, softly saying, “be…skin blong mi i waet lelebet…” making me way more visible than my counterparts. No matter. I swam in the ice cold water with the others under the stars. It was such a free feeling and I really enjoyed myself.

My remaining days in Naviso were pretty uneventful. Not only did my stay coincide with

the school vacation, but also Jarina’s parents were in Santo. It was kindof like going to stay with a bunch of teenagers. Instead of eating baked laplap we would eat the rassed banana and fry it. Kindof like the difference between Mom’s macaroni and cheese and Easy Mac. When the kastom doctor decided to try a third leaf on my brother, Suzy decided to walk me back to our village the next day.

The morning we left, my leg muscles were almost 100% better. We had been in Naviso for almost a whole week. We set out around 7 am. We made it down the black stone beach in 90 minutes and up the hill from hell in about the same amount of time. Much to my surprise, the whole walk took only five hours. As we started nearing my village, we encountered friends in their gardens, all of whom exclaimed that we had just walked back from Naviso. I couldn’t believe how far away some of them were from the village itself.

Several weeks after my trip, I look back on my walk to Naviso and am glad that I finally did it, but I don’t think I’d ever do it again. Villagers no longer talk to me about how great Naviso is, and I no longer feel something nagging me to go and see it. After that walk, I feel that much more confident in my abilities as a hiker. Maybe I’ll turn over a new leaf when I get back to the States and show my artsy friends what a real hike is all about.

So China blocks blogspot. So all of my travel updates have been via email. I'll do a recap for whoever hasn't been in the loop...

Seeing as how I had already experienced Christmas in a Ni-Vanuatu village, I decided to try something new for Christmas 2009. I ended up going on a month tour of China via Sydney with Dan. Other than Vanuatu, I hadn't seen any other country besides the U.S. and I had been in Vanuatu for 20 months. I was very excited to begin our trip.

We spent two nights in Sydney, eating Western food, drinking delicious beer, and seeing the sights. I loved Sydney. It's a gorgeous city (if not pricey) and there's water everywhere. The weather was pleasant as well. The opera house was a bit disappointing, but I had a lot of fun just people watching. It was strange wearing a dress that went up to the mid thigh region, hehe. I had some difficulty not staring at people, but I don't get to see a lot of white people other than the other volunteers now and again, and Australian fashion is so different. Also, Dan was nice enough to see the second Twilight installment, New Moon, at the movie theater. If I wasn't such a fan, I'd say the movie was a bit dull, but I just love all that tension between Jacob and Edward haha...

We spent five nights in Hong Kong. As our journey went on, our enthusiasm and energy for cramming in as many sight-seeing activities in a day waned a bit, but the cold we both caught might have had something to do with that as well. We hit HK hard. We mostly just walked ALLLL over the place. I discovered that's what I like to do the most when sight-seeing. Other than those featuring natural history, I find most museums to be a bit boring. In China the museums featured all of the same things: jade, ceramics, bronze, calligraphy, watercolors, etc. Not to say that it wasn't impressive, it just got a bit repetetive after a while. There was a really neat museum featuring the tomb of an emperor from around 1000 B.C. (don't quote me on the exact date, but it was B.C.)His body was wrapped in small jade pieces and red silk ribbons. He was buried with live human sacrifices, animals, ceramics, and more. Anyway, HK was cool because it had helpful tourist signs everywhere and we were able to walk around without having to look at a map too much. We stumbled upon a lot of cool market streets with exotic foods and trinkets. We even went to an amusement park and rode a rollercoaster. There was a dolphin show and I cried I was so happy, haha. We saw parks, gardens, etc.

We found it a bit difficult walking around the city. Pedestrian signals at crosswalks were hard to find and the cars moved quickly. Maybe it was just a lack of practice, but I was terrified. On our way back, we discovered that the city has an extensive pedestrian overpass system that connects the larger buildings. No crossing roads and worrying about speeding cars. I was impressed. Too bad we didn't discover that the first time around. HK also had a nice metro system. The double decker buses were cool too, except for the time we got locked inside of one, hehe.

Next was Guangzhou. Just a short train ride from HK. We had a bit of trouble finding the hostel, but the three nights we stayed there were nice. One of the highlights from Guangzhou was this dim sum place we went to. It was something like 5 stories, each story packed with hungry patrons and delicious food. A good portion of the ground level was an aquarium of fish and such ready for the eating. Amongst several delectable items, I ate frog for the first time. Tastes like chicken, of course. Another day we got ourselves pretty lost wandering through a meandering market, probably the biggest and most exotic market we saw in China. There were fuzzy chickens, for crying out loud.

And these weren't chicks. Guangzhou also had a really good metro system, but two separate train stations with similar names. I think one was Guangzhou Railway Station (East) and the other was the East Guangzhou Railway Station.

Next up was Shanghai. The train ride was about 16 hours and it was very crowded. There were three seating selections in the train: chairs, hard sleepers (which is what we had, basically just two sets of three bunked beds in each compartment), and soft sleepers, which were considerably nicer and had access to a dining car. For that particular journey we had the middle bunks, which had little head room, you couldn't even sit up.

We took a bus from the train station to our hostel. As the bus had an electronic sign and voice to announce every stop we found ours relatively easily. We learned quickly that the bus drivers there are completely insane and that the bicyclists and mo-ped drivers are pretty ruthless as well. We got a lot of good road-crossing practice in Shanghai. There was loads of construction going on too, which made walking around even more difficult. Luckily, there was Yamazaki...everywhere. Yamazaki is a cafeteria style bakery chain that sells some of the most creative and delicious pastries ever. I've never been a big fan of pastries, but soon we were frequenting these establishments at least once a day. It was hard to resist at $1 a pop.

On a side note...many nights were concluded with an episode or three of Arrested Development. If you haven't seen this show, and you have any sense of humor, you MUST watch it. It's only three seasons and it's one of the funniest shows I've ever seen. Please, I beg you...watch it.

One day, on the way to seeing the Bund (a road in Shanghai known for its rich history and interesting architecture) we ran into a group of two Chinese tourists and their guide who wanted to practice their English with us. They were a quirky group and asked us to go see a tea ceremony with them. The guide spoke almost no English while the two women spoke pretty well.

The tea ceremony was wonderful, if not a bit expensive. At one point it occurred to me that they might just be ringers for the tea ceremony, but they were so fun and accommodating I didn't care. At one point the guide was trying to explain a Chinese proverb about love through his cell phone's translator. When he showed it to us it said something to the effect of lobster bits on top of garlic green beans.

After Shanghai we took a short train ride to a city called Hangzhou, supposedly one of the prettiest cities in China. I agree. Although there was no metro system, the buses seemed in order and there was a huge lake in the middle of everything. Gorgeous.

It was a pity it was so cold, because there were lots of boats willing to take us out on the water. I get my fill of boats in Vanuatu anyway I guess. We basically just did a lot of walking around. Towards the end of our stay there I came down with a cold so we took it a bit easy. We had to take a train back to Shanghai to catch a different train to Xi'an, the last city in our tour of China.

The ride to Xi'an was equally crowded and about 18 hours, but we had the bottom bunks, which made all the difference. Xi'an was China's capital back in the day and is at the beginning of the Silk Road. It was an extremely important city, hence the walls. The walls that exist today were built in the late 1300s and don't surround nearly as much of the city as the original walls did. The city is also surrounded by a moat. Very cool. In fact, Xi'an was freezing. There were even traces of snow here and there. The hostel was really cool. We went on a tour of the Terracotta soldiers, which was awesome.

I didn't realize that it was going to be an excavation, I thought there would just be lots of clay soldiers all around. We also wanted to see the Emperor's tomb, but we couldn't find enough people to do a tour. There was another emperor's tomb that we could've gone to, but people aren't actually allowed inside as it's said to be too dangerous. It's rumored that there are rivers of mercury underground with the body. We walked around the walls surrounding Xi'an, which I'm told put European castle walls to shame. It looked as though you could put four lanes of traffic on top of each wall, for their width.

We wandered around for a few hours before we found the Muslim Quarter. It wasn't as spectacular as all the other tourists made it seem, but maybe that's because we had already been touring through China for a couple of weeks already. There were a lot of interesting sights and smells, that's for sure.

The ride back to Guangzhou took about 27 hours. In fear of boredom, I bought a cheap gaming console called an "Ear" which really is a p.o.s. but I can play Mario World and PacMan on it so I'm happy :) Fortunately the train was almost empty and we had the entire compartment to ourselves. When we got to Guangzhou we had to take the metro to a different station to take another train into HK. During our last couple of days, we gorged ourselves on Indian and Mexican food, so much so that neither of us could drink the champagne that we had bought to bring in the new year. Very disappointing, but I had no regrets, hehe. We saw the Sherlock Holmes movie along with Avatar. Loved Avatar, Sherlock was pretty good too.

I parted ways with Dan in HK. It was very intimidating traveling internationally by myself, but I made it. I leave tomorrow for Vanuatu and hopefully I can get back to Maewo before too long. I have lots of errands to run, but very little money so I gotta get back to the island where (almost) everything is free! It was a great trip, I'm so glad I did it. Hope everybody had a merry christmas and happy new year.

For the last year or so, I’ve wanted to climb Ambae’s volcano, Manaro. If I hadn’t lived on Ambae for seven months I probably wouldn’t have cared at all about this particular geological feature, or maybe even the island itself, but I had and I did.

I was just waiting for an opportunity to go. A bunch of volunteers and I attended a Camp G.L.O.W. (Girls Leading Our World) training session on Ambae and we decided to hike the volcano after the workshop was finished. Dan arrived from Malekula on the last day of the workshop and planned to come with us.

While we were still on Maewo, Sheridan reserved a truck to take us to Ambanga, the last village on the road to Manaro. Turns out she has an uncle in the village. She called him several times before we left for Ambae to make sure he could take us. Each time he said he would be there. When he asked Sheridan to buy him phone credit, she happily obliged. As the workshop drew to a close, she called him again, and again he confirmed that he would come to get us.

On the morning of the climb, I awoke at 5 am and groggily packed my things, trudged out to get some breakfast and waited for the truck. My fellow would-be Manaro climbers and I sat around waiting. And then we waited a little more. Sheridan called her uncle repeatedly, but his phone was turned off. Around 7:30 we decided to give up and took a local truck into Saratamata, Penama’s provincial capital, to the house of a PCV who was nice enough to let us crash at her house while she was away. Realizing that it was already too late in the day to start our Manaro trip, we decided to set out for Ambanga in the afternoon on a local truck and get an early start up the volcano the next day. We later found out that Sheridan had the wrong number for her uncle and had actually been calling some random guy in Pentecost.

The ride was about an hour long. The first half of it was smooth and enjoyable. It was the kind of day that makes you wanna keep taking deep breaths, as if breathing in deeply would help you take in all the beauty that much more. Then the roads became the roads I remembered from my stay in South Ambae. Hilly and full of potholes. Still, there were stretches where the grass was thick, green, and trimmed short, almost like a golf course. I spent the rest of the ride wondering if someone had actually taken a lawnmower to the sides of the road or if the several cows I saw along the way were capable of keeping such a large plot of land looking so good.

We arrived in Ambanga, but had trouble finding anyone who knew the whereabouts of the Duviara Guest House. After no little amount of confusion, we saddled up and set off on a road of unknown length and hoped for the best. The road was a little tricky. Extremely narrow at some points, steep at others, and at once there was a 2x4 to cross over a small ravine. It was gorgeous though, and after only about five minutes, we had reached Duviara.

Huh. A large blue tent. And a huge white guy with a Broncos t-shirt. Vanuatu never ceases to amaze me. Turns out the Broncos fan was a missionary from Georgia or something. He lives in Vila but goes out to stay in Duviara every few years to preach the good word. Because he was using the main house, Justin and Sheridan got to sleep in the tent while the rest of us divvied up the remaining four beds. That night we drank kava. We hadn’t given the guys at the guest house much notice that we wanted to drink that night, so it came rather late. The lady who runs the guest house prepared a whole bunch of really delicious-smelling food, which made waiting for the kava even more difficult.

When the kava finally came, I thought that I might be able to handle one shell. I’d discovered that taking ibuprofen lessened the symptoms I usually feel after drinking kava. Shaking, fever, sleeplessness, itchiness, etc. I listened to the kava for a bit and even managed to take a few bites of food before the shaking started. I went to my room, swallowed some ibuprofen, and waited. I started to feel cold. Then I started to shiver. I put on my socks and got under the covers, the shivering coming on stronger now. I curled up into a ball and concentrated on relaxing my muscles by taking deep breaths. After about 15 minutes I finally succeeded, but I felt sore all over. For the third or fourth time since coming to Vanuatu, I vowed to never drink kava again.

We set out the next morning at 7 am. I was stoked because we got to eat gato, which are like doughnuts, and drink milo, which is like hot ovaltine, for breakfast. We chatted excitedly about the walk. How it wasn’t very difficult. Not too muddy, not too steep. We were surrounded by dense bush and the path became more narrow. About 90 minutes into the hike our guide informed us that we were about halfway there. Although I was incredulous (it’s often been my experience that Man Vanuatu grossly underestimate both distances and time) I couldn’t help but be excited to reach the top of Manaro in just another 90 minutes.

Two hours later, I felt my excitement begin to wane. The path was becoming tedious, lots of ducking under and climbing over fallen trees, avoiding large stones on the path, etc. We were muddy, sweaty and tired. On several occasions Justin joked that we were “halfway now.” The guide seemed intent on providing us all with walking sticks, though I felt like I got on better without one. Sheridan got the brunt of it as she was walking in the front. After another hour, we started to get silly. Sandy and Lauren took pictures of goop seeping out of plants, Sandy playfully whined the question on everyone’s minds: “Are we theeerrree yeeetttt?” We even began to sing what would later become, in our minds, the trip’s theme song: Living on A Prayer by Bon Jovi. Oh, we’re halfway there…Ohhhh livin’ on a prayer…Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear…Ohh, livin’ on a prayer.

After 5 ½ hours we reached the top of the volcano. It was misty, rainy, and very Exorcism of Emily Rose-ish in general. We rested for about 30 minutes, eating lunch and admiring the beautiful view revealed whenever the mist cleared.

The crater lakes of Manaro are the highest lakes in the South Pacific. Apparently Ambae has five crater lakes, but only two on the very top of the volcano. A good hike down from where we stood was the lake, electric blue and wind-rippled. I know people who have gone down near the water, but the guide told me that we couldn’t and I was too tired to argue it any further. As I stared at the water, I remembered stories about how the lake on Manaro was special because the lake’s waves came to shore, but never pulled back. I studied the water for a good while, but didn’t really see waves at all.

We took off our shoes and socks, wearily admiring our wrinkly feet. We ate the lunches that the guest house prepared for us. Taro, rice, and macaroni (ramen noodles) wrapped in banana leaves. Food never tasted so good. We gobbled it down and snapped a few pictures. Inside the lake is the cone of Manaro, shaped like a semi-circle. We could see the other shores of the lake, covered in trees and mist.

I was glad that Justin and Sheridan were there to push us on because when it was time to start hiking back down, I did not want to move. But it was getting late and we all wanted to get back down before dark. As is usually the case, the walk back down seemed to take a lot longer than the walk up. Justin was at it again with the “halfway now” jokes. We unconsciously broke up into three groups: Justin and the guide chattering together way ahead, Dan and I working our way steadily down in the middle, then Sheridan, Lauren, and Sandy bringing up the rear. We had to stop occasionally to allow them to catch up, but I was always happy for the rest. I felt like a couple of the toes on my left foot were broken and my legs were getting shaky. Then it started to get dark.

Luckily we all brought flashlights with us. My light wasn’t very strong and I found it challenging to avoid every stone and root in the path. I was sortof worried about falling, but never did. When the trees began to thin, I all but got down on my hands and knees and rejoiced. Disclaimer: I am not a hiker and did not ever go on a long hike until coming to Vanuatu. Out of the group, I think I was the most inexperienced and out of shape, so sorry if this sounds whiney. Looking at my cell phone I realized that we probably still had another hour to walk. I went into robot mode and sortof just spaced out as my legs moved underneath me.

Eventually we made it back to the guesthouse. The lady had been pretty worried about us and the truck to take us back to Saratamata had been waiting for a good hour already. I feebly packed my things and suddenly felt nauseous. Everybody wolfed down the boiled bananas that were brought to us, but I couldn’t eat. It felt like I was walking on pins and needles. The walk back down to Ambanga where the truck was waiting was like a dream. I was just going through the motions and was soon ecstatic to be sitting in the bed of the truck, although that too was uncomfortable. All of us, save Dan, were flopped down in the bed of the truck moaning and groaning. Dan stood up the whole ride back to Saratamata, I couldn’t believe it! When the truck started moving, I immediately felt the motion sickness. I concentrated on breathing but, before long, threw up off the side of the truck. “Who’s unhappy?” Justin asked everybody. We all chuckled then groaned as it began to rain. Best trip ever.

On the sunnier side, I don’t think I’ve slept that well in a while. I woke up feeling sore, but refreshed and accomplished. I was proud and happy that I had finally done it. I felt like I had earned the kastom tattoo that Sandy, Lauren, and I had arranged for ourselves to get later that afternoon. Once upon a time there was a PCV who lived in Sakau, a village in South Ambae. Through this PCV other volunteers met Bob, a man from the village who is skilled in doing kastom tattoos. We paid for Bob’s transport up to Saratamata and talked with him for a bit about the kastom story behind the road to Manaro tattoo. The tattoo itself looks like two parallel lines, an equal sign, or the number eleven. It represents the road and it is said that, if you have this tattoo, upon your death your spirit will dance on Manaro for eternity. Kastom tattoos are done with needles from the orange tree, leaves, and soot. Juice from the leaves are squeezed out onto the soot, making a black paste that is put into skin broken by the orange needles. Bob informed us that he had given 17 tattoos to PCVs over the years. One might say that Bob is our official kastom tattoo artist. He’s a good guy and loves to talk about the U.S. We gave him some gifts, storied for a bit, and he went on his way.

I got the tattoo on the right side of my right foot. It was a little painful just because of the location, but Bob was professional and efficient. Over the next couple of months my tattoo healed and peeled just like any other tattoo and now it is glorious. Every Man Vanuatu who sees my tattoo is fascinated by it and happy that I shared in their kastom, but can’t understand why I got it on my foot. The women in my village have all sorts of ridiculous “kastom” tattoos on their arms. Mostly initials that look like they were scrawled on by a 3 year-old. Others are more funny. The Nike symbol is my favorite.

In short, I’d say that if you enjoy hiking and are in decent shape, Manaro would be fun for you. If you’re a beginner and/or out of shape, I’d seriously reconsider this one, or bring a tent to camp out and take your time with it. The view on top was spectacular when and if the fog clears. And then, of course, there’s always the bragging rights.

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Hey. It’s finally cooling down here and I’m feeling pretty good. What a day! Woke up and circuit trained with my sister Suzy. At least I think it was circuit training, I’m not entirely sure. We ran for a little while, then did pushups. We ran some more and did crunches. We ran some more and did squats, etc. We did some stretching then ate some of that delicious Weet-Bix that I love so much. With milk powder and a dash of cinnamon. Yum! I took a bucket bath, got my dirty clothes together along with the bag of powdered laundry detergent I purchased in bulk in Vila, and headed over to my family’s house.

We took the road by the ocean so as to avoid the church service that was going on. There’s an Anglican festival thingy happening here this week and there are services pretty much all day every day. I feel like such a sinner walking on the road that goes through the village whenever I pass a church service that I’m not attending.

I washed. Thankfully Suzy helped me because I had a lot to wash and the sun was pretty hot already. I hadn’t washed my clothes since before I left for the workshop on Ambae two weeks before. Throw in my bed sheets and a towel and pretty soon I had 2 hours worth of laundry on my hands.

I hung up my clothes to dry then prepared to rest a bit before heading home to relax and make lunch. My mama asked me to buy a kilo of rice for her to cook our lunch with, but because I had brought no money with me, she told me to go to the garden with Suzy and get some cabbage. She said the equivalent of “oh, it’s not far at all,” in Bislama, which means it’s a lot farther than it is closer. People in Vanuatu live very close together and grow most of their food in the bush, sometimes upwards of a 30 minute walk away, up hills and through mud. They are some tough people. I struggle to slip and slide down the hills as we come back from the garden only to see old women walking down confidently, carrying large loads of taro or firewood on their backs and on top of their heads.

Luckily there were no hills to climb. I had actually been to this particular garden before. It’s a nice walk through a small coconut plantation and a few clear, ice cold creeks to wade across. We got to the garden and picked watercress and Chinese cabbage then headed back.

By the time we got to the house, I was very hungry and suffering slightly from dehydration. Boy does this country make me feel like a princess. These days I get motion sickness just smelling gasoline. (In the last week or so, I’ve vomited once while riding in the bed of a pickup truck and then again taking a boat from Maewo to Ambae). I also get dehydrated basically everyday. Sigh. I asked my mom to send me some more Gatorade powder to mix with water though. I always hated Gatorade in the States, but it’s a real life saver for me here and I swear the powder has more sugar in it or something, it doesn’t taste like flavored sweat. Anyway, when lunch was served, I felt so nauseous I could barely choke it down, but I forced myself to eat small bites and soon felt a lot better. I also sipped my water. After I ate, I walked back to my house, took some Tylenol, and laid down for a bit. About an hour later, I was good as new. That’s the cool thing about it, if there is a cool thing about getting dehydrated daily: I know exactly how to fix it. Obviously drink more water, but, if you really wanna feel better quickly, eat a little bit (preferably something with salt), take a pain killer, and sleep. Taking a cold bucket bath never hurts either.

I woke up to somebody calling my name. Nicholson, the mechanics teacher, was at my door, asking for chalk. I had told him a week ago that there was no chalk, so I’m not sure if this was just him making sure I was sticking to my story or if he was hopeful or that forgetful. Once he left, I puttered about my house and talked on my phone for a bit.

I worked on my “field of interest” piece for a graduate school program I’m trying to apply to. I wrote “trying” because applying to grad schools without telecommunications is frustrating. Hopefully I can pull it off successfully, but part of me wonders if it might be better to just wait tables for a year back in the States while taking my time to research schools. But then I remember the nine months I worked at Barnes & Noble between college and Peace Corps and shudder. I loved my experience there, but going in 40 hours a week not knowing what my next step would be was difficult. I guess in this case I would have a plan and be researching schools so it might not be so bad. Maybe I’d even move to a different city. I’ve always thought about living in Boston, but the west coast sounds cool, as does Austin. It’d be easier to save money living with my parents back in Maryland, but I feel like trying something new.

Anyway, I really need to wash some dishes before I go back to my family’s house for dinner. There are so many people from Naviso, the sole village on East Maewo, here in my village for the Anglican thing that I feel like I just arrived in a new village all over again. People in Naviso rarely see white people, so many of them come up to me just to touch my hair or look at my nose ring. They’re fascinated when I take it out. They also love it when I get Stuey to sit and shake hands. But it’s weird walking around in my normally quiet village being greeted by people I’ve never met, who seem to know me.

I’ve been meaning to walk over to the East for some time now. They’ve invited me over there for Penama Day, which is Penama Province’s annual celebration. Each province has one, but ours is September 15. There’s going to be a big party in Naviso and they want me to come. I made the mistake of telling them I’d think about it, and have since had tell people (the same people) over and over that I would think about coming. I’d love to go, but I think I’ll wait until a non-holiday time when things aren’t so crazy. When there’s dancing and drinking, it’s nice to have your own house to go to and hide in if things get too crazy. Plus I’d like to go with the other Maewo volunteers, who also don’t want to go during a holiday. In fact, I think all three of them are coming to my house this weekend and staying through the 15th to celebrate here. Yay!

Also, a Peace Corps Staff member called me today about hosting a few trainees here on Maewo next month. I’m really excited and I hope it works out. I’m hoping they’ll send my good friend Stephanie out here. I haven’t seen her in about a 18 months and I’d love her to see my site. Lots to look forward to, but I should really wash those dishes…

When we got off the plane, it was clear that something was different. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but we definitely weren’t on Maewo. There seemed to be more coniferous and less coconut/palm trees maybe. Also, despite Tanna housing one of the world’s most active volcanoes, there were no mountains looming anywhere. Dan, a volunteer on Malekula, and I hopped on a truck and pointed out the differences between Tanna and other islands we’d seen during the ten or fifteen minute ride into Lenakel.

We got off at the market, and were met by some other volunteers. The market was incredible. Not too much smaller than the one in Vila, but it had a lot of produce that I had yet to see outside of the supermarket monopoly here, Au Bon Marche. Tanna is one of Vanuatu’s southernmost islands and is farther from the equator than islands such as the one I live on. As a result, Tanna is able to grow produce that I, as an American, am more familiar with. Things like carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, apples, and fried dough.

We walked along the dusty dirt road towards the stadium. At the time, Tanna was hosting an “Arts Festival” and the festivities were taking place there in Lenakel. Upon discovering that my trip coincided with the festival, I was excited to see some local handicrafts. Unfortunately, it seemed as if “art” meant kava, lots of people, soccer, trash, dancing, and group of New Caledonians. The only art I really saw were at the market. Woven baskets, mats, and naios. Naios basically look like sticks covered in colorful feathers. I believe Tannese women, also known as Woman Tanna, wear these in their hair during kastom dances. Lacking any sort of foresight whatsoever, I purchased a large purply pink one, and had to figure out creative ways to transport it around with me over the next few days of my stay.

Home base ended up being a stall in which another volunteer’s host family was selling food, kava, and coffee. After putting our bags down, we sat and watched a soccer game, helped make dinner, and marveled at how strange tourists can be. Later that night, there was kava and dancing. Around midnight, we pitched a tent and shivered ourselves to sleep.

The next day, I’d decided that I’d had enough of Lenakel and the crowds. We wanted to go to Port Resolution, which is on Tanna’s east coast (Lenakel is on the west coast), but were told it might be difficult to find transport and that it was an impossible walk. Always up for a challenge, we started walking. It was a beautiful day. Blue skies, no humidity to speak of, and a slight breeze. The hills were steep, but the views were worth the climb. There were plenty of trucks going our way, but they were all full of people and never stopped. Sometimes a truck going in the opposite direction would stop and ask the usual Vanuatu questions: “Where are you going? Where are you coming from?” The responses differed as we walked farther and farther. At first, truck drivers would basically tell us that what we were attempting was impossible. After a while, they would just apologize. Towards the top/middle of Tanna, they would shake their heads.

We encountered other people on the road during our walk. A little boy promised he’d get us on the truck that he was supposed to be taking later on in the day. A mama sent one of her sons to fetch us smoky-tasting water as her terrified youngest child cried and screamed. One kid simply gave me a high five.

When we reached the highest part of the walk, I was amazed by the view. We could see a few other islands from where we stood. The ocean glittered a deep blue color and Yasur was dark in the distance. A tourist truck had stopped at the top as well and the driver, a Ni-Vanuatu, chatted with us. When he found out that we were trying to walk to Port Resolution, he all but pushed us into the back of his truck to drive us. After coming so far, we were reluctant to give up. We asked him how much farther it was to our destination. He pointed to Yasur and basically said, “See that? Port Resolution is on the other side.”

The ride down the aptly named Snake Hill was bumpy and cramped, but glorious after walking for four hours. To the road’s, and perhaps the Japanese’s, credit, it was one of the best I’d seen outside of Port Vila and Luganville. A feat of engineering that other islands have yet to grasp, the road was constructed so that water ran into ditches on either side of it, rather than carving out potholes the size of a small vehicle. Nevertheless, we bounced along, and got a pretty amazing tour of Yasur’s ash plain. As the truck wove around the roadless sand, a light rain began to fall, creating small rainbows all over the place. I was so excited by the fact that I could see the beginning and end of the same rainbow that I struggled to keep myself from stopping the truck and begging the tourists to take a picture of me at one end and Dan at the other. It reminded me of my brother and how he always wanted to find the end of a rainbow.

The longer we drove on, the more grateful I was for the ride. So I was pretty dismayed when, after 30 minutes, the driver stopped at a bungalow and told us to keep following the road to Port Resolution. Turns out we were still about a two-hour walk away.

In the increasing darkness, we pressed onward, arriving at Sandra’s house around 7 pm. She boiled water for us to have warm bucket baths with, and prepared a very tasty meal. We set up our tent and went to sleep.

The next morning we went exploring on our own. We meandered down the beach and observed some of Yasur’s geographical features. There were steam vents everywhere. We stopped at one that was larger than the others and smelled more sulfury. The warmth of the steam was difficult to abandon, but the smell wasn’t so pleasant. We continued on and came upon some colored clay. It was warm on the top, and piping hot just a tad farther down. There were reds, blues, and yellows making up all sorts of other shades as well. We painted each other’s faces with the clay, played a little bit in the muck, and continued on.

A little farther was a rickety ladder down to a couple of underwater vents, which made the ocean water bubble furiously. The water was very hot in some places and it was here that we carefully maneuvered and washed the dried clay off of our faces.

Heading down, we realized that we should’ve packed a lunch. We thought there might be a store or something in the village along the beach, but no such luck. Instead, we found a couple coconuts and struggled to open them with a stake. Dan was doing fine, but I couldn’t seem to get one open. Eventually a couple of older Ni-Van men came along and offered to open them with their bush knives. Saved us a lot of time and energy. Conversation didn’t seem to be on their minds, so they continued on as we went to sit on the beach and enjoy our spoils.

When we got back to Sandra’s, she was still gone and her kitchen was locked. There were a couple of stores in the village, but the ones that were open only sold random items such as toilet paper and rice. We bought a roll for Sandra and a bag of rice to cook. We were so hungry, but Sandra didn’t make it home for another hour or so, so we just had to sit there. Was the wait worth the cheese and crackers she gave us? Probably. We munched on the jarred cheesy goodness and, before long, a truck came along to transport us to the top of Yasur. For just 1000 vatu round trip for the both of us. We hopped gleefully in the back of the truck and took off.

The truck took us up a windy and bumpy path up the volcano. It was a little bit like Mordor, I have to admit. It dropped us off at the bottom of a steep sandy path lined with wooden guardrails. Panting, I worked my way up the sandy slope and was reminded how windy the tops of volcanoes can be. At times I felt like it would knock me over. We walked up to the rim and looked around, wondering which side of the rim would offer the best view. There was an area down in the caldera where it looked like you could get a much better view of actual lava flow down in the crater and we wondered if we could go down there. We were answered soon enough, when a burst of Yasur’s liquid insides sent molten rock showering down on the place we were just considering standing. So we stayed where we were. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. I liked the scenery: the large sandy volcano at sunset, but the descriptions of Yasur that I’d heard always involved people wishing they’d had hardhats, or fighting the urge to turn around and run away, or molten rocks falling behind you. I guess the volcano was just a little quieter than usual, so we stood there while, every now and then, Yasur would spit out a bit of lava. It was windy and cold enough where, after about an hour, we decided to go back to the truck.

We left early the next morning to catch a truck back to Lenakel. It was a long, crowded truck ride and my rear end felt it. We hung out at the stadium again and, at some point, walked up to the Air Vanuatu office to change our return tickets to the following day. We were worn out. The agent gave us two options: Morning or afternoon. Wishing to get a early start on the day, we chose morning, to which he calmly informed us that the morning flight was booked. So we chose the afternoon flight. This ended up being a fortuitous booking because I really enjoyed exploring Tim’s site.

After drinking a shell of kava and drinking Sprite as kale, I walked with the other volunteers down a long road in the moonlight. It was a cold, humidity-free night, and the kava was working its magic. Eventually we turned right and began our ascent to Tim’s site. About 45 minutes into the climb, the kava was kicking and I was shivering in spite of the fact that I was sweating. I began to wonder exactly how far away Tim’s site was. Almost as if in answer to my question, we rounded another corner and we were there. We worked for a couple hours preparing a creation that Dan had thought up, which was basically a steak salad with an orange soy sauce dressing. Not bad, but I was drunk on kava and very cold.

The next day we went to the third largest banyan tree in the world. Or so it claimed. It was rather large, maybe the size of a football field. We spent a little while climbing around in it, bringing back memories of climbing pine trees in my neighborhood as a kid. This was a little more challenging, as the branches of the banyan tree (known as nambanga here in Vanuatu) stood in the way on their paths down to the ground. I was almost jealous of the little kids swinging from vines, barking like monkeys. What an awesome jungle gym.

We caught a truck back to the airport and said our farewells. Tanna was fun, but I was glad to be back in Vila where it was a bit warmer and clean.

I've been in Vila for a week now, and I'm just now getting a chance to sit down and write a blog. I've been running lots of errands and buying lots of stuff to take back to site. I'm really excited because I just got a laptop and it's already making my life a lot easier.

School's been out for the entire month of July, so I decided to use that time to see more of Vanuatu. Malekula's volunteers are infamous for knowing how to throw a party, so naturally I decided to go there for the fourth of July. Santo's a stop along the way, so I stayed there for a night and did a bit of shopping. It's not easy finding transport from the Luganville airport into town that isn't really expensive, but I met a taxi driver named Samuel who was nice enough to give me a discount. He's now my driver, or so he claims. I'm not allowed to travel by a taxi owned by anybody else. It's a fair deal. He's getting business and I'm getting a lower price. It's win-win...win. It's a bit overwhelming to go from the island to a city, and this was no exception. LCM's the name of a huuuge Chinese store that can ship whatever you buy back to your island. How's that for convenient? There's not much to do in Luganville when you only have a few hours, so I ate dinner at the Deco Stop and called it a day. There's a place called the Chinese Restaurant, but I couldn't figure out what kind of restaurant it was so I opted for pizza.

Wednesday's the day I caught the flight from Santo to the Kula, as it is known round these parts. Malekula's got a lot of coconuts. That's about all I can say about it. It's also flat, hot, and sunny. Norsup's airport was one of the first things I noticed. It's got no roof because it was fire bombed? It's dilapidated and there are papaya trees growing out of it. Dan's a volunteer on Malekula and I stayed with him during my stay there. He's got electricity, a blender, waterbed, computer, a fan, and, most importantly, seasons 1-4 of The Office. Dan's house is located close to Lakatoro, which is the provincial center for the Malampa Province. Lakatoro's amazing. It's got a huge mama's market, and there are stores where you can buy almost anything you could ever want. Dan's house is located at the school, however, so there are constantly children running around yelling, crying, and staring at us through his windows. That's a little awkward, but not as annoying as the school bell that rings at least ten times a day, or the rooster that likes to crow outside of the window, hehe.

Malekula's got a ton of PCVs. I've never been a huge sushi fan, but some of the other Malekula volunteers brought over several kilos of fresh tuna and mahi mahi that they had caught and we all made sushi. It's really weird to grab a chunk of fish flesh and put it in your mouth, but that's exactly what we did. Santo's got wassabe, so I picked up a tube of it and we made a good dipping sauce with that and some soy sauce (real soy sauce!).

What's a fourth of July party without burgers and beer? That'd be an Ambae fourth of July. Dan's friend actually sent him a small grill, so we all grabbed that and had a picnic on the beach, listening to classic rock songs. It's dark by 7 pm round here, so we packed up our stuff and headed back to Dan's. I've never had such a chill fourth of July.

Jameson's not a liquor to be trifled with, so the next day was filled with laying around and recovering. I'm not a big fan of whiskey, so luckily I was okay. Malekula's known for making a kind of lap lap called lap lap sursur. Dan's host family had us over for lunch and I got to try it. It's just regular laplap, but they put hot stones in the center and then meat on top. It's really tasty because not only is there meat on top of the laplap, a rarity in Maewo, but it's really tender and the juices seep down into the laplap, actually giving it some flavor. There's also coconut milk on top, which makes everything ten times better.

That's about all of the exciting things I did on Malekula, but I'm definitely not complaining. It's nice to just hang out and relax and not worry about social obligations in my community. I've finally caught up with everybody on watching The Office, managed to finish season one of Heroes, and even watched a few movies. Dan's got a lot of movies, and I got a chance to watch No Country for Old Men, The Cleaner, Mama Mia!, Across the Universe, and a few others that I can't remember right now.

There's some sort of unspoken rule between some PCVs that when there are two or more of them present in the vicinity, and it's mealtime, something spectacular must be prepared. You've gotta keep in mind the fact that our standards are considerably lower here, so "something spectacular" to us might not be quite so spectacular to you. I'm of the opinion that, as long as something has flavor, it's pretty amazing. Vanuatu's beef is really fresh and, if you know how to cook it right, you can't really go wrong with that. There's this grocery store in Lakatoro that sells cheese, potatoes, canned tomatoes, eggs, cold drinks, pasta, and more. I'm not a creative person, but the possibilities are sortof endless with those ingredients, especially because their mama's market sells a lot of good produce like eggplant, green beans, chinese cabbage and cucumber.

That's pretty much it for my stay in Malekula. It's difficult to leave a place of such relaxation, but, as my next stop was Vila, it wasn't too difficult :) Vila's such a trip for volunteers living on the outer islands. It's so busy and congested, which is funny because, compared to any city in the U.S., it's nothing special. I'm a big fan of cheese, so naturally the first food I turn to when I get to Vila is pizza. There's a hotel in Vila where PCVs always stay and they put me up for the meeting. Internet's free there if you have a laptop (which I now do--thanks Dad!) so I curled up with my hawaiian pizza and got online for the first time in months.

It's getting down to my last day here in Vila, so I'm going to wrap this up for now in case I don't get on again. I'm having a great time in Vanuatu, and, now that I have my laptop, I'll be able to type up blogs at site and then post them when I come back in October. I'll try to keep in touch, but take care until next time!

Just spent two months at my new site on Maewo. I didn't realize how bad my first site was until I realized how amazing my new site is. The move from Ambae to Maewo was a very stressful experience, but well worth the trouble. A Peace Corps staff member, Richard, flew with me to Ambae. We then took a truck to my village. Did I mention that I ride in the bed of pick-up trucks on a regular basis? Lots of fun. Anyway, we got to Lolovoli and I packed up my things while Richard talked with my village about what was going on. It was weird to be packing all of my things with everyone standing around watching. Occasionally someone would pick something up and ask if they could keep it. Pretty standard for Vanuatu. So I packed my things within two hours, giving some things away in the process, and leaving much behind. I walked over to the nakamal and drank a shell of kava with my host papa before getting onto the truck to go back down to Saratamata. Some tears were shed, but mine dried completely as soon as I saw everyone emptying my house of its furniture. I was feeling sorry about leaving, but when I saw that, I knew I had made the right decision.

We got back down to Saratamata and, the next day, put my things on a motorboat and puttered across to Maewo. With all of my things, the trip took about 90 minutes.

The best part: I got to bring my dog, Stuey. He loved the boat ride. I, on the other hand, was pretty shaky and nauseous by the time we arrived. .

My counterpart's family helped me carry all of my things to my house.

My house is absolutely incredible. Cement floors, hurricane-proof windows with screens, running water, my own personal rain tank, and a toilet just outside the house. There's a gas stove, food safe, and bamboo couch.

The food safe was rendered useless by rats, and I've been waging a war against them on a daily basis. So far, they're winning. The bamboo couch is nice to look at, but is a bit like sitting in a church pew; after a little while it's uncomfortable. That night we drank kava and I storied with some of the women. It was a very different experience from my first few nights in Lolovoli due to the fact that I was more experienced with integrating into a community. I knew what to say, what not to say, and how to act. It was great.

The next day, the school committee held a meeting to welcome me and find me a host family. I introduced myself and met my host mama, Erima. I was then taken back to my family's house to meet my papa and siblings. My papa's name is Henry. He reminds me a lot of John Goodman. He's very big, and yells a lot. But not in an angry way. I have eight brothers and sisters. The eldest, Hensley, lives here in Vila. He's 21. Then it's Suzy (20), Darin (17), Ronald (16), Larry (14), Lucy (10), Hendrix (8), and Hancy (2). My host mama fully believes that Hancy was a result of black magic. Apparently, someone was upset with my host papa and decided to curse my mama with the burden of another child. Don't you hate it when that happens? I certainly do.

I share a bedroom with my sister, Suzy. She's pretty cool and, because she doesn't go to school, is free to take me wherever I wanna go. We went to the gardens, other villages, wove mats, cooked, storied, etc. The first month was just kinda us hanging out. But it did start to get a little boring.

Luckily school started at the beginning of March.

I'm super busy all of the time now, writing lesson plans, teaching, and trying to find time in between to have some time by myself. I usually get up around 5:45 and eat breakfast with my family. Then I walk to my house to shower and get ready for the day. I chose to live with my host family rather than inside my own house for several reasons: 1) Integration into the community is exponentially easier, 2) My house is kinda on its own, outside of the village, hence not the safest place at night, 3) I can eat most of my meals with my family, which saves me time and money, and 4) The volunteer I replaced lived with her host family the whole time and I don't want my host family to feel like they're not as good a family as hers was. This way, I feel safer and less lonely. If I ever need some "me time," I just go over to my house and hang out. Anyway, I teach from 8-11:30, then eat lunch with Rinisa, the woman I'm training to be my replacement.

I teach again from 1:30-3:30 then work on lesson plans until sundown, at which time I go back to my family's house and eat dinner. We talk for a little while, and sometimes I help my brothers and sisters with their homework. My youngest sister, Hancy, has really grown on me. She cries about everything, but when she's in a good mood, she's sooo cute. She always greets me with a big hug and sits on my lap, where she does her best impersonations of the handclap games she sees her big sister play. Then I go to bed and do it all over again the next day. Time flies.

On Saturdays I wash my clothes and meet Sandy, my closest PCV neighbor, at my house to cook. Every week, we choose different things to cook. We've cooked food like spaghetti, flat bread, guacamole, hummus, shortbread, fudge, onion rings, etc. All amazingly unhealthy, but delicious. We eat and story and it's a nice break at the end of the week. Around sundown we make our own "walk of shame" to the edge of my village, moaning and groaning the whole way because we've eaten wayyy too much food. After leaving her at the first creek, I go back to my family's house.

Sunday is church. Anglican. Not so bad. At the end of service on my first Sunday there, the priest started talking about church punshishment. Basically, whoever does something bad is "punished" by the church, and cannot take communion for a certain amount of time. In the meantime, I think they have to visit with the priest and work for forgiveness. It was weird to hear people being called out on their scandals in front of everybody. It seems a bit Salem witch trialish to me, but keeps the villagers in line, for the most part. I've done a couple of bible readings, which earns me HUGE brownie points, hehe. There's some talk about why I don't take communion, but I feel like it might be a bad idea to tell them that I've never been baptised. So I just say that I respect their religion, but mine tells me that I can't take communion. They seem to be okay with that, but every now and then I do get asked about it. After church, I go back to my house to get ready for the next school week and at sundown I go back to my family.

So far, so good. I've got about another year to go. I feel really good about the place because, for one thing, I did more with my host family on Maewo in the first week there than I ever did in my seven months on Ambae. Weaving mats, pinning natangura, going to the garden, etc. They care about me and want me to be happy. Volunteers claim that the second year goes by much faster than the first. I think it's because our projects really start to get going during that second year and time flies.

Which brings me to what I'm doing here in Vila. But because I don't want this posting to be too long, I'll stop here and write about my stay in Vila some other time. Hope everyone back home is seeing warmer days and sunnier skies. Miss you guys!

Hi All-

It's been a little over a month since I got here and I have sooo much to tell you! We've been stuck in Epau for almost a month now. No computers and no televisions! At least not in my neck of the woods. I live about a 20 minute walk away from the Peace Corps office where we have school learning the language and culture M-F. Saturdays we all hang out mostly and Sundays we have church.

My host family is great. My papa is about 29 years old and my mama is about 26. My little brother and sister, Dorah and Anjem, are very cute. Nobody here knows exactly when they were born, hence the approximate ages. It's very different, hehe. It's felt a little like prison here to be honest. Every day I go to school and it's very boring. My Bislama is coming along okay, but the teaching sessions are redundant and often pointless. I try to exercise the patience that we'll need for the next two years. It's gotten to some ppl though. Tensions are a little high, but we're all helping each other cope and get through it. This trip to the capital was a life-saver, hehe. Anyway basically I go to school, then come home and help my mom with chores and "story on" with my family. I take a bucket shower with ice cold river water, which actually feels really good. We eat dinner and story on some more, then we go to bed. Women aren't allowed to wear trousers, so most of my days are spent in the island dresses, aka mumus. They're pretty funny.

Breakfast consists of either crackers with peanut butter or bread with peanut butter. The bread here is the most delicious I've ever tasted and I don't think I could ever tire of peanut butter. Lately they've been giving me fried bananas, which is tasty. Instant coffee with evaporated milk is served with every meal. At lunchtime the mamas bring food to the PC office for us. It's usually rice, manioc, taro, yam, grapefruit, tinned meat, or noodles. Not bad. Dinner is about the same. Although last night my mama made tuna with green onions, lime juice, coconut milk, and rice. It was amazing! So all of you who said that I'd lose a lot of weight, think again, hehe...I'm eating wayyy more carbs than I know what to do with :) Of course the boys are all getting thinner...what the hell?!

On a side note, my mama is pregnant. She'll have the baby in September. She told me that if it's a girl, she'll name her Justine. If it's a boy she'll name him Benjamin...how cool is that Benny Boy??? You might have a little Ni-Vanuatu boy running around here with your name! I've shown them pictures of my friends and family so they all know what you look like hehe.

Out of the 21 volunteers who originally came to Vanuatu, only 17 now remain. One broke her foot in six places falling down the stairs. Her recovery time was too long so they sent her back to the states. She might be coming back next year. Three have opted to go home for various reasons. The remainder of us are going strong though. We've all gotten our sites assigned to us and today we went to the All-Volunteer Conference, which is why I'm in the capital right now. The conference is on this island called Iririki. It's a resort that costs roughly $9000/night for a suite, which holds about 7 ppl. As the Ni-Van say, it's "flas tumas" or very expensive. But it's soooo nice, I couldn't believe it. Because we're only trainees we were only allowed to go there for a few hours, but we can go back next year and stay. DC is actually trying to cut All-Vol from the budget, but we all think it's pretty necessary seeing as how it's the only time all of the volunteers can fly in from the other islands to see each other. Really no other PC country has so many islands.

Anyway I got to talk to the guy I'm replacing, Josh. He's a pretty cool guy and he showed me some pics of his village. I'm going to a village called Lolovoli on Ambae. It's a small island north of Efate. It's cool because women are valued more there and actually have some status. They actually are the ones to kill pigs during the marriage ceremonies. Sweeeeet. Ambae has a volcano with two lakes on its top-the highest lakes in the South Pacific. They're slightly acidic, so you can go swimming in them for a little bit and make your skin super soft, hehe. Everybody says my site is the nicest on the island-right out of a National Geographic magazine.

I'll be going for training about slope stability on Nguna, another small island this weekend. Then it's Emau, another island, for agriculture training. I'll meet my new Ambae host papa and talk more with Josh. Next Saturday is "Walkabout week" where I'll go to my site for one week and scope it out. Josh is leaving me his house for the week and I'll be on my own! It'll be a great time to find out what I need and meet the nearby families. He has a bunch of stuff that I'm going to buy from him so I don't have to worry about shopping or shipping. After that I'll come back to Epau for another month or so of training. That will be the hardest part...continuing training after I've already tasted what the rest of my two years will be like.

My internet time is running out so I gotta go but I'll be back in the capital in a couple weeks and I'll write again... Miss you guys!

Love, Justine

Hey Guys so I forgot to mention...the process of getting out to Vanuatu was crazy and exhausting. I boarded a plane to Chicago from DC early but then had to wait at O'Hare for about 3 hours. Got to LA and had fun for about a day and a half...the hotel was nice, but there wasn't much to do around it. The flight to New Zealand was amazing, everything I'd heard about international flights was true...I watched three movies: Jane Austen Book Club, Death at a Funeral, and Enchanted. Slept very little. We got to shower and drink a few beers in the six hours we had to kill at the New Zealand airport. I slept for about 20 mins.

The flight from NZ to Vanuatu was about 2.5 hours. They served us a really good meal with lots of alcoholic beverages :) The view from the plane when we landed was beautiful. The current PC volunteers welcomed us with noisemakers, leis, sarongs, and coconuts. They gave us a van tour around the city and took us to our motel. The vans are called buses here and you can get on one wherever and whenever you see one for just 100 vatu, or $1...Currently.

Thursday here in Vanuatu, on my lunch break. The weather here has been cloudy and very rainy for the past couple of days, due to a tropical depression somewhere out in the Pacific. We should be fine here though. A few of us went to a discoteque via a truck ride-my first...I got to stand up in the bed of a pick-up and hold on for dear life. Luckily the roads here in Vila are relatively okay and the driver was good, it was fun :) A few times I had to duck to avoid hitting tree branches so it was similar to a video game hehe. We were pretty much the only ppl at the club but we had a decent time. It was strange because there was all of this reggae music playing with a big screen with ESPN playing.

Yesterday we went to the Vanuatu cultural center and saw the National Library. Mom, you would've loved it. Apparently that museum is a huge deal in the South Pacific, but it was teeny tiny by American standards. We saw the chief's nakamal and drank kava and "storied on" about the history of Vanuatu. I tried some Vanuatu grapefruit, which is much sweeter than our grapefruit at home. I also tried something called naous I think...not very good, almost like eating a raw potato.

Last night was kindof low key...we all sat around and watched a movie and went to bed. This morning Deb, one of our grandma volunteers slipped and fell and fractured her wrist. We think she got medevacced (sp?) to Brisbane. That was a little scary, I've never seen a broken bone before. It was weird because she was just saying how she couldn't wait to get out on her own and then she left the motel and boom!

Today we got some info on a lot of the gastrointestinal problems we can encounter and got our first training on Bislama. We were taught that green coconut water can hydrate a person for up to six hours! Later on we'll be separated girls/boys and get the dreaded "sex talks." The current volunteers have been really nice to us and are showing us the ropes...apparently there will be a couple parties at their homes for us this weekend.

I haven't given very much info on the basics here. Right now I've been staying in a motel with about ten rooms, a beautiful gazebo in the middle and a small pool. Each room holds an avg of two ppl and has a main room and then a bathroom. The beds are bunked and the lower is a double-sized bed. I got the lower bed, mwhahaha. The bathrooms are nothing special. Because it is so humid here, we have trouble with mildew. Nothing ever dries completely. Papers get damp and crumply. The towels and sheets are washed every day and, as a result, are pretty threadbare, which is okay seeing as how its so hot.

The PC office is just a few blocks away and is a set of rudimentary buildings. We sit at tables barefoot and listen to different presentations.

There's a separate room with A/C where they keep these computers and books to check out. That's where I am now. There's a supermarket down the street called Au Bon Marche. There's also a market downtown where the mamas (what women with children in Vanuatu are called) sell their goods. We ate lunch there yesterday for about $3 and it was delicious. They have the most interesting produce. There's breadfruit trees, passionfruit, papaya, grapefruit growing everywhere. There are also lots of stray cats and dogs that I wish I could take home with me. It would break your heart.

On another note, the ppl are very friendly here. According to the U.N., Vanuatu is #128 in the world for GDP, but #1 in terms of the happiest ppl. They say it is because of the traditional economy that exists here with ppl living off of the land. Anyway, there's lots more to tell, but so little time! I'll try to email again soon.

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Hey Guys,

So I'm in the capital for the day. Our trainers are giving us some time to buy presents that we'll give to our families when we swear in. I wish that the village wasn't making such a big deal about exchanging materialistic possessions as it goes against their own kastom economy, but I guess it'll be nice to offer some token of appreciation.

The weather here today is great...like I said we're in the cooler season. Today's probably around 80 degrees, sunny. It rained just as I went inside to eat lunch (a bacon cheeseburger and fries, yum!) and finished as we came outside. I usually eat at this place called Jill's American Cafe. Jill is great and has a good relationship with the PC volunteers. No discounts though, hehe. I've just been walking around, shopping, trying not to break my ankle in potholes. I bought a couple of long skirts. The ones I brought from home are nice, but hard to work in the garden with. I forgot that everything kindof shuts down here after noon on Saturdays until Monday mornings, so I won't get to buy some of the things I wanted to, but they can wait. I'm looking for a cheap guitar mostly. I hate shopping as it is and the crowds here on the weekends don't help that much. Plus every store around here is a "Chinese shop" which basically sell the same things. Luckily the grocery stores have a lot inside them and they're open late. Heidi, you'd really get a kick out of them :)

I'm going to post (hopefully) most, if not all of my pictures today on facebook. So once again, bug Ben to send them to you. Sorry I can't forward them here, but internet time is few and far between and I'd hate to upload them twice.

So much has happened in the last few months it's hard for me to pick just one or two things to describe. I'll just describe my day yesterday:

I wake up everyday around 3 am when the rooster decides to start screaming outside my window. His scream usually incorporates itself into my dreams for a bit before I wake up and realize that it's not someone yelling. I curse the rooster and try to go back to sleep before he crows again. Around 6 I wake up to the sounds of my little brothers and sisters playing in the yard and/or my papa playing the guitar and singing songs of "devotion." They're all very religious here. I try not to make a noise as I do yoga--if they hear me moving around they immediately demand that I eat breakfast, or, as they say here, "drink tea." Yoga is great, and almost a necessity, after sleeping on a 1-inch pad that's been thrown over some wooden slats, hehe. My back always feels completely better after some yoga. Around 6:30 I finish and wrap a sarong, known as a lava lava here, around my waist. Even around the house it's preferred that you wear a skirt or dress. But the way I see it, not to sound too cynical, my little brother and sister walk around in their undies. If the mamas are going to treat us like children (actually called pickaneenees here), which they do, then I feel like we can wear long shorts every once in a while and no one says anything about it. Anyway, I walk to the toilet, which is only about 10 meters from our house. I hover over a toilet (sans seat) and go about my business. There is toilet paper and I'm told I'm fortunate to have a tiled floor. My house is definitely nicer than everyone else's. When I finish, I fill up a bucket with hose water and dump it into the toilet. There are several kinds of toilets in Vanuatu. This one is a water seal, which is basically a long drop toilet with water. There is a huge hole underneath where it all goes. Bush toilets are just holes in the ground. I will have a long drop at my site, which is basically a bush toilet with a wooden bench built over it for me to sit on. I WILL be purchasing a toilet seat, hehe. At least then I can bleach the thing.

Anyway, enough about toilets. I go eat breakfast and tok tok smol wetem famli blong mi (talk a little with my family). I change my clothes. Usually I put on an island dress. If I'm going to be washing clothes around here with a brush and soap, I'd like to be getting the island dresses, and not my own clothes, dirty. Washing is rough on fabrics here. Then I'll straighten up my room. There are these little worms that come into the house at night. They like to crawl up my walls and fall down with a loud smacking noise when they hit the floor. They usually die and curl up into these spiral shapes, which I sweep daily out of my room with coconut fronds. I've stopped making my bed because pulling my mosquito net up and over the bed is annoying work. I wait for my closest volunteer neighbor to arrive at my house and then we set out for the mile walk to school and gossip about the weird things our family does and/or how we made fools of ourselves trying to cook lap lap.

When we get to school I usually brush my teeth. Drinking water is scarce at my house because we don't have a water catchment. My family drinks the river water, which is probably okay, but I still don't do it. We get there early, so I pull out a book or Newsweek or write a letter. School starts and I just try to be patient through what seem like endless pointless boring sessions. The trainers mean well, but I think it's hard for them to find constructive activities for us to do day in and day out. I get through the boring days by making instant coffee or going to the ocean after lunch for a bit.

School usually ends around 4:30. To get home before dark I have to leave by 5:00, so I just kindof hang out for a little while. Volleyball is huge here, thank God. We have a lot of fun volleying it back and forth. We have a lot of soccer fans here too, so we just stand in a circle and some of us bump the ball around while others head butt it, kick it, knee it, or whatever. Our ball went flat the other day so it's kindof sad to watch us desperately try to make it work, haha. I think we're gonna try to find another one today. We all get pretty excited to play sports around here. School is a lot of sitting around and watching the nice weather outside. The Ni-Vans don't exactly know the rules though, and oftentimes there will be wayyy too many ppl on the field or court to have a decent volleyball or soccer game. Oh well, it's fun anyway.

I love my walks home, especially if I'm alone. The sunsets are amazing and the whole world turns pink for about five minutes around 5:10 pm. I'm the only soul on the road except for a few cows here and there that blink at me. I put one side of my earphones on (in case a truck comes) and listen to my ipod. I get a lot of thinking done in those 20 minutes.

When I get home my little brother, Anjem, usually runs towards me shouting my name...Leitonga!!! That's always a nice feeling. In a country where physical touch is so taboo, it's nice when children sit on your lap or hug you from time to time. My mama usually says "Ah, yu kam bak lo skul naoia," which means, "you've come back from school now." At first I didn't know how to take these statements of the obvious. At first I just smiled and nodded, thankful that I could even understand what she and others were saying to me. Once my Bislama got better I began to see if I could joke around with them and say something like, "no, I'm still at school." Sarcasm is completely lost in translation here. The man I'm replacing, Josh, told me a funny story about how he invented his own alter-ego by the name of "Captain Obvious." Whenever he converses with someone here, he invokes Captain Obvious. I started doing it the other day and it works like a charm. When I walk down the road and see a woman with a ton of yams on top of her head I say "Oh, you're coming back from the garden now." They're always so happy and nod their heads. I then say, "I'm going home now, good night!" and they say "good night" back. It's great. That's a whole conversation here. That's all they want...Just to know what you're doing and where you came from. They're very nosy here. It's quite common to ask people if they're married, how old they are, etc. So I just tell her about my day and ask her if she needs help with anything.

We "story on" for a while and eat dinner around 6 pm. Afterwards we story on some more and I go to my room around 7 or 8. I usually read or do homework or watch a movie on my ipod. I love technology. I've been eating my vitamin c chewables as candy, is that bad? Haha. It's a nice life, I have to admit.

So I swear in on the 26th. The president of Vanuatu is coming, which sounds like a big deal but he's kindof just a figurehead around here. The guy with the real power is the prime minister. Yes, they have both a president and a prime minister. Anyway we'll show a slideshow of pictures of us and our families, which I know the families will absolutely love. We're going to perform a song in Bislama and exchange gifts. Then we'll, of course, drink kava. I miss out on a lot of kava drinking because I live so far away, but I see that as a good thing because I feel like I'm closer with my family than the others are with theirs. My mama and I get along really well.

The next day we're all moving back to Vila. Me and a few other volunteers will run around like crazy for two days buying stuff and making arrangements because they're gonna fly us northern volunteers out on Sunday morning to go to Santo, the largest island in Vanuatu, where we'll be expected to stay for a couple of days and finish shopping. When I get to my actual site we'll have that 4th of July party and then I'll follow Josh for a few days to get his take on the village and what not. Then I'll be on my own and I'll have to learn the dynamic of yet another village and learn yet another language. It'll be like coming to Vanuatu all over again. At least I'll have plenty to write home about.

As for packages, I will be able to receive packages and mail on Ambae. My new address will be:

Justine Beaulieu

Peace Corps Volunteer

P.O. Box 33

Lolowai, Ambae

Vanuatu

No computers or internet, sorry, but I will give my cell # out when I get one. I don't get service, but if you leave me a message and tell me when to call you back (at least a day in advance) I can walk to the top of a hill and call. There is also a landline that works maybe four months out of the year, hehe. They may also give me a satellite phone, which I could use to text you guys anytime and vice versa. Those almost always get service too, but calling is expensive.

Sorry plane tickets and sending packages are so expensive...They really do mean the world to me, even if it's just a pack of jerky, hehe. I would love to see any of your smiling faces out here too, but life is rough here and it is expensive. You would be treated like family and royalty and would have a great time though!!!

Love you guys!

Justine

hey all thanks for joining :) Here's my first post...pics to follow later...

Sitting here in the PCV lounge with A/C yeah! Very hot and humid here but I'm drinking liters and liters of water

The next day, we found out that we were being charged the equivalent of $50/night to stay in this dirty guesthouse and receive meals we didn't ask for. When we said we were gonna camp instead of pay that rate for another night, the owner quickly revised the price to $25. Oh Vanuatu.

Our first day there, we walked up to the kastom village where Steve's parents had spent some time during their Peace Corps service. The walk was short, but took us up several steep climbs through gardens. We ran into a family working in the garden who was happy to tell us about what they were growing, then offered us a green coconut to drink. It was so hot, we were very grateful for the hydration.

The village was probably the most kastom village I've ever seen. Men were making carvings, and we were taken on a walking tour and got to see the taboo nakamal (for men only), the chief's burial grounds, and a nasara, or sacred ground. We also saw the chief's house, which was built high up on stilts so no one could come into his house at night to kill him or put nakaimas (a curse) on him while he slept. I'm not sure how the village believes that the chief died, but it was his death that had brought us to Ambrym to pay our respects. We heard some interesting stories about how a man becomes a chief, including one where he must stand on a balcony-type of structure, while people throw stones at him. We also heard about how, if something bad happens in the village, it usually means that someone has stolen bones from the chief's burial grounds, and that a team must be assembled to investigate and recover the missing bones. Crazy.

We realized that because the ship had taken so long to deposit us on Ambrym, we had missed the boat that would've taken us to the West. So we decided, in our infinite wisdom, that we would just walk. But first we wanted to see another village called Ranvetlam. At this point, Steve was feeling pretty ill, so instead of walking, we took a 10 minute speed boat ride and climbed up to the village. People stared a lot, but once they realized who Steve was, welcomed us with open arms. Isaiah has a guest house and let us camp there for the night. It was a beautiful setting looking out over the ocean and sunset. Although he and his wife were busy caring for Isaiah's ailing brother, they still found time to bring us food.

Steve shivered and sweat all night long, but the next morning was ready to go. We packed up our stuff, collected our supplies, and set off to meet our guide. The chief had put a taboo on going to the summit of the volcano because it was time to plant the yams, a very important crop on Ambrym. Sometimes, they have kastom yams up to ten feet long! Maybe even longer! So we decided that we would climb over the volcano, then go back on top from the west, where the taboo wasn't in place.

Chief Louie was our guide, and man, was he fit. Because Steve was still a little weak, the chief carried our heaviest pack (about 60 pounds). Steve carried one that was about 30-40 pounds, and mine was only 10-20. We climbed and descended, walked, and rested for about six hours, covering about 10 miles. Steve and I each went through at least a couple of liters of water and Powerade, but Chief Louie had barely touched the liter that he had brought. He charged ahead, stopping every now and again to light a cigarette and wait for us to catch up.

It was my first day of backpacking, and it kicked my ass. I was starting to hear ringing in my ears. We were running out of water and the afternoon was quickly running away from us. When we got to the Western side of the volcanos, we convinced the chief that we would be fine from here on out. We wanted to camp and walk around a bit. He was reluctant to leave us, but eventually did, and we set up camp. It was deafeningly quiet. I never understood that expression before that day. I'm talking about total silence. We were on the ash plain. No birds, no nothing. Here and there were tiny flying insects and small shrubs growing in the cracks of rocks where water had collected, but for the most part this place looked like Mars. We were the only people around for miles...

To Be Continued...

Hey All-

So I've been pretty quiet about what's been going on the last week because I wasn't exactly sure what actually was going on. But I guess I'll go ahead and throw another post out here.

Peace Corps decided to remove me from my site for safety and security issues. If anybody wants the gritty details, I'll be happy to email you, but it's just a lot of drama and craziness so I won't bore you all here.

The point is, I'm back in Port Vila just kinda twiddling my thumbs. They're actually trying to find me a new site, which is really cool because I didn't think that would be a possibility. Right now they're talking about this island called Maewo, and it's supposedly one of the most beautiful islands in Vanuatu, with waterfalls and nice roads and even a lazy river! I would be teaching at a Rural Training Center RTC, which would be great because I would have something constructive to do with my time. There have been a lot of volunteers there before me, including Gwen, a volunteer who completed her service there and had a great time. She was replaced by a new volunteer last month, who quickly decided that it wasn't for her and is already Stateside again. That worries me slightly, but not enough to deter me. But alas, it is only a possibility at this point. The phones on Maewo are down, and PC can't seem to get a hold of the village. So I'm here waiting. It's not so bad. I have a hotel room and a modest allowance and plenty of people to hang out with. My birthday is coming up and it looks like I'll be here for that too.

So things are a little sketchy right now but it looks like PC is doing all they can to help me work it all out. I'll keep you all posted.

Miss you!

Hey Guys

It's the eve of my departure back to post. I hope. The plane ticket is very expensive back and I can't afford it until we get paid. That was supposed to happen today, but so far no money yet. So I'm finally getting my "broke, sleeping on others' couches, living on bread" experience haha. The last few days have been okay. My friend Hillary's parents came and visited her. They took us out for dinner a couple of times and were hilarious. They even let me crash in their fancy suite for a few nights. We had a great time together and they were really encouraging about my problems at site.

I just had a meeting with the Assistant Peace Corps Country Director for Vanuatu (my boss' boss). It was good in the sense that I was able to tell her about my site visit so she can do a better performance evaluation on my boss, but not so good at the same time because I gathered from her that I don't actually have that many options. I got more information from her about what my village thinks of me. Apparently my boss left out a few details when talking to me about his meeting with the village. It was good to hear the real story. Unfortunately Linda, my boss' boss, let on that it probably wouldn't be possible for me to get a site change, unless there was some sort of security issue. I feel it's a bit unfortunate because there are lots of volunteers here who get site changes for frivolous reasons. Some even lie about security issues so they can get a new site. But two girls from my group are getting site changes so I think there just isn't a place I could go to. I think one of the hardest things for me to do is just look at my situation by itself and not compare it to others'. Either way, my final decision is to go back to post and stick it out for a while. This could just be a low in my rollercoaster experience. I feel that if I just break down my service into bite sized chunks where I take short trips at the end of every month I'll be okay. Nobody can go too crazy in a month, right? Haha. I want to find a project that I can completely throw myself into. I'll have to think on that one, but I might have found something with a census-type of project. Once I complete this basic survey, I think the demographic information will help me find areas in which my village needs some help. We'll see.

On the other hand, I realized that if I'm going to stick it out I may as well make myself more comfortable. I went ahead and bought a solar panel (which is why I'm broke now haha). It was about $250 with all the cords for a 22.5 Watt panel. A friend loaned me a truck battery and inverter. I think I still need to find a regulator and then I'll be in business! The lack of sun could present a small problem, but I think I'll have enough power for a small light every night, charging my ipod and mobile phone, and maybe even charging a laptop. A friend is going back to the States and might be able to bring a relatively cheap one back for me. Having a laptop with excel and word would be a lot easier to organize project documents and whatnot (not to mention being able to show movies and play freecell hehe). I've gone without amenities for about eight months now and I feel like it's time for some luxury :) Hopefully I can figure out how to set it all up.

So all in all I'm feeling better. I'm glad I took this time to put things into perspective and start fresh again. Thank you all for your emails and advice. It's very comforting to know that I've got friends and family who care about me.

Love you guys!

Hey Guys

Back in Vila for a week to take a break. I figured my lows are just as interesting to talk about as my highs so I'll include a (brief) summary of what's going on these days...

Things could be going better, but I'm trying to keep an optimistic outlook. Some of you already know about the problems I'm facing at site. They basically all revolve around the fact that my community has some socio-political issues such as land disputes and jealousy along with the fact that I'm a woman. My host mama and counterpart, Doris, is very controlling and tells me that certain people won't work with me in the village if I associate with other people. I was actually taken to the garden a couple times, but it was by a family with a questionable reputation. The way I see it, I'm an agricultural volunteer. Their village disputes have nothing to do with me. I'm an equal opportunity garden-goer haha. But I got into a lot of "trouble" with my host family for hanging out with that family. They chastized me for not telling them where I had gone even though I never tell them where I'm going if I ever go somewhere. They falsely claimed that they went to my house to see if I wanted to go to the garden with them (yea right!) and I wasn't there and they were so worried about me! Please. If I hadn't gone off with that one family, which they knew I had done all along, I would not have received a lecture about telling them where I was going. Several key community members have long since stopped coming to village meetings, market nights, and church due to land disputes and other petty disagreements. As a result, the cultural center committee has stopped functioning, cancelling an arts festival that I had promoted shamelessly in the province, in turn making me look like a complete idiot. The women's group has seen fewer and fewer participants. Last time we got together to work on the chicken coop we built two women showed up and one of them was Doris. She's the chairman of the women's group. I can't help but feel that she looks at me as her volunteer and that she's using me to alienate other women who don't like her so that she alone will benefit from the restaurant that we eventually will build with money we raise from the fowl project. In one sense, if she's the only one motivated enough to come and work then I don't mind that she's the only one to reap the benefits. But I can't help but feel that it's her actions and not others' lack of interest that is isolating my women's group. Every month we have a cooking group. At the first meeting about 30 women showed up. At the second, more like 10. A sign-up sheet has been up at the meeting house for two weeks now and nobody has signed their names to it. Not even Doris. So I told them all we'd wait to do another one until next year, as things "shut down" during the holiday season, as if things could actually move at a slower pace! So I'm just really bored and unhappy. I feel like my village doesn't like me or care about me. I feel ignored and tolerated.

I brought all of this up to Peace Corps and they sent my boss out to visit. He's notoriously absent-minded and careless. Sure enough, I feel completely unsatisfied by his visit. I practically had to chase him down in the provincial capital to discuss the site visit with him. I wanted him to understand my concerns before we went up there. He was so lax about finding a truck to take us up there that we didn't get there until 3 pm, at which point my village (understandably) got tired of waiting and most of them left. We got there and the village was practically deserted. They banged the tamtam to get people to come back but very few did. Luckily my host parents came back. I wasn't supposed to be there for the meeting so I sat in my house. Occasionally I'd look out at the meeting house and see a very informal affair going on. Fine. Ni-Vans are informal. The meeting ended and my boss went and drank kava with my host papa. Guess who wasn't invited. I felt like he had some alliance with my village that he valued more than his responsibility to me as a volunteer. We finally went back to the provincial capital. Once again I had to hunt Mark down at a nakamal to talk to me. He basically told me, between getting up repeatedly and playing with his cell phone, that he asked them about the community disputes and that they said there weren't really any. He told them they should work with me. They claimed that they're afraid to work with me because I'm never there. Unless they want me to stay in my house all day every day and never go anywhere that statement is ridiculous. That made me feel very discouraged. That was it. He told me to give it a few more months because now everything would revolve around Christmas.

So I came to Vila to use the phone, internet, and eat comfort foods. It was worth the expensive plane ticket to get my head straight. I'm still on the fence about what I want to do. I'm considering every option between just trying to get through the rest of my service, quitting Peace Corps but staying in Vanuatu as a volunteer with another organization, or going to New Zealand for a while to work. We'll see. This is definitely the toughest decision I've ever had to make. If you guys have any thoughts let me know.

Sorry for the buzz kill!

♥ Justine

On a lighter note...I went to a small island called Ambrym last month. Ambrym is hat-shaped and is infamous for its black magic. I went with a friend of mine named Steve. His parents were peace corps volunteers before and lived on Ambrym. A high chief on Ambrym died and we planned to go pay our respects and possibly see one of the island's two volcanoes.

Steve caught the ship at Lolowai, on north Ambae. They rushed him and told him the ship was waiting for him, but then broke down and he ended up waiting a few hours before they headed out. Typical Vanuatu...hurry up and wait.

My host mama banged on my door at midnight. We walked down the road to the ocean and waited a few hours for the ship to come. There's no actual wharf so the ship has to send out a motorboat to drop off and pick up cargo and passengers. Because it was raining they let me go on the first trip. Steve came out on the motorboat and met me. We had to stand on top of kava on the bumpy, rainy, dark ride back to the ship. The smell of the kava was setting off my gag reflex.

I somehow got onto the ship and waded my way through sleeping Ni-Vans to my seat. Tried to sleep for a few hours. I woke up a few hours later and realized that we had only moved about six miles down the coast. Apparently one of the engines was dead again. The plan was to bypass any other stop and go straight to Vila on just the one engine. They were gonna send me and Steve out on the small boat to get to Ambrym. Our day on the ship was very interesting. Steve stayed strong but I was pretty nauseous. Going out on the deck wasn't much help as all you could smell was diesel from the engines. The ship was out of water so the bathroom was a precarious place. I'm talking can't keep your eyes open cause the ammonia smell was so strong kinda thing. A mystery liquid had collected about an inch deep on the floor but I think it was mostly seawater. It was disturbing to see a footprint in the brown ooze. Needless to say, I "held it" for the rest of the trip and drank as little water as possible.

After a few hours of spinning we learned that the engine was working again. We moved on to Pentecost and on the way saw dozens of dolphins (how's that for alliteration mwahaha) Later that evening we reached Ambrym. We were asked over and over again where we were getting off and told repeatedly that ours was the next stop. We went out on deck to wait and fell asleep shivering on top of a crate. Around 11 pm we arrived to Ranon, our stop, and were taken to shore in the motorboat. Crowds of people met us on shore, waiting for the ship themselves. We eventually found the owner of the guesthouse and stumbled off to go sleep...

TO BE CONTINUED AHAHAHAHAHA

Hello All-

So I just finished my first three months at site. There's so much to tell I don't know where to begin (again). I'll try to give a brief rundown...Hopefully it won't repeat too much of what I've written home about.

After leaving Vila, I took a plane to Luganville, Santo. Espiritu Santo is the largest island in Vanuatu. Luganville is a decent sized town with lots of Chinese shops. I made a friend in training, Hillary, who came with me. We spent a couple of nights in a hotel there and just tried to relax before going to site. When we first got to Luganville we had to wait so long for a taxi that the airport closed and turned off all of its lights. We just stood there in the dark amongst all of Hillary's luggage for a while. We felt it was a very Peace Corps experience. Hillary's host family was nice enough to come meet us at the airport though, so we weren't alone. I helped Hillary take all of her luggage and new puppy to her site. It was about an hour truck ride to the dock where we took about a half hour motor boat ride to her island. It's a teeny tiny island called Araki. We hiked up the side of her island and then to her house with all of her stuff. Thank goodness we had lots of strong Ni-Van men to help us, hehe. We wanted to sit and chat for a while, but they quickly shooed us back to the shore where the boat was waiting to take us back. The chief of Hillary's village is very old and senile. He decided to come with us and repeatedly asked us for money. He actually fell backwards in the boat and hit his head pretty hard. Crazy times.

Back in Luganville Hillary and I went to a kava bar and enjoyed our last beers and steak dinner, haha. It was so delicious. We caught a plane to Ambae (my island). We stayed at this UN Volunteer Steve's house in the provencial capital, Saratamata. Vanuatu is separated into six provinces. Penama province encompasses Ambae, Pentecost, and Maewo. Luckily, the capital of the province is only a three hour walk from my site, one hour by truck. It's only about 8 miles, but the roads are so bad it takes a while to get around. We met a bunch of other volunteers there and prepared to go down to Sakao, a volunteer's village in South Ambae past my own, for a July 4th party. We were rained out the first day, but left the second. There are a lot of creeks in South Ambae, which contributes to the stark contrast in development between South and East Ambae. The creeks make for difficult crossing, especially when there is a lot of rain. Anyway we all crammed into a truck for the two hour ride to Sakao. I brought my puppy, Stuey, who got car sick and threw up all over Jackie, our 70-year old PC Volunteer. I felt pretty bad. He was known as "That Damn Stuey" for the rest of the trip, haha.

Sakao was a bit rough. I got pink eye for the first time. It rained almost every day but I got to brush up on my Spades playing. We had a party on the fourth. No fireworks, but there was a lot of alcohol :) I considered it my last party before going to site and thoroughly enjoyed myself. A couple days later we headed out. I made it to my site with pink eye in both eyes. The villagers were like, what's wrong with your face?? It was pretty embarassing. Afterwards, I got really sick. My jaw and neck swelled up and I had a high fever and sore throat/body. I called into the PC Office and they told me to take some penicillin. After about three days I was right as rain again. But for a while there people were just coming into my house to stare at the sick white lady. That was awful. I just wanted to be alone. I think a lot of people thought that I wasn't really sick, but unhappy to be there. I was happy to get better and go out into the village to talk to people.

The first three months have been good and bad. I have had amazing days but also really terrible days. I definitely have to learn to calm my American multi-tasking self. A few things backfired on me just because I wasn't culturally sensitive enough to appreciate the differences in how things are done in Vanuatu. So I've kindof switched gears and decided to slow down a bit. It's hard because I'm really bored most of the time and it would be a lot easier if I had work to do. But that's one of the challenges of Peace Corps. At the same time, I've gotten a lot done for a new volunteer. The women in the village practically seized me and demanded that we form a women's group. We held elections and formed a committee. Now we have monthly meetings, cooking groups, and fundraisers. Their eventual goal is to build a small restaurant in the village. People in Lolovoli (that's the name of my village) have money, but little time so I feel like a restaurant might be a good idea. We'll see how it goes. Ambae women are known for being strong and intelligent. They definitely play a bigger role in the community than do women on most other islands. In the long run, I feel like the women's group could help the community with bigger projects like water sanitation, road building, etc.

The women's group built a chicken coop the other day with all local materials. It was maybe my favorite day in Vanuatu so far. It was nice to get out and get some exercise. We used bamboo and wood for the frame, then natangura leaves for the roof and woven bamboo for the walls. I plan to buy a couple chickens and a rooster and eventually start selling eggs and meat. My village doesn't eat nearly enough protein, and it really shows in the kids. They are all very small for their ages. I think it was my bringing up the fact that it was the women's responsibility in the village to look out for the kids' nutrition that got them so motivated. I was truly amazed with how much we got built in one day. The money would go towards the women's group to build their restaurant and whatever other project they'd like to do.

There's a cultural center in the village that the previous volunteer built. There's also a committee for that cultural center. We meet roughly every month. Right now we're planning the second annual mini-arts festival for november 3. Not sure if that will actually happen either, hehe. I've had to separate myself a bit from the cultural center lately though. We charge cell phones there for about $1 each with a solar panel to raise money for the center. EVERYBODY has a cell phone here now. This company called Digicel hit Vanuatu hard with its marketing and advertising. I was charging somewhere around 10 phones a day, going back and forth between my house and the center to plug in, unplug, and/or check on phones. It started to make me feel like the village saw me only as a cell phone charger. They also started coming to my house to get change or buy things from me. At first I got excited because I thought people were coming to my house to talk, but they'd always just be asking for something. It started to put me on edge. With everyone that came to my house I became more and more frustrated. So a couple of Sundays ago I got up at the meeting house after church where everybody makes announcements and made one of my own. I announced that I was not a bank, a store, or a phone charger, and to please stop coming to my house unless you wished to talk to ME. I think they respected that. Tim, my closest volunteer neighbor, told me that Ni-Vans will take advantage of you as long as you let them. So I stopped letting them. At first I wanted so badly to help them and fit in and be liked that I did anything and everything I could for them, but now I see that it doesn't work like that. Now I feel much happier.

Now I'm trying to start a kids' group. Every Wednesday night I invite the kids to the cultural center to play. I'm trying to get them to use the cultural center. When I first got to Lolovoli, the center would stay locked all day long. People were afraid to go in, let alone touch anything inside. So I'm trying to do some easy lesson plan for an hour about their culture, and then another hour of play. So far the biggest challenge is just getting them to show up, haha. We'll see, it's still very new.

Later I'm thinking about starting a girls' group. Just a sleepover at the cultural center once a month where we can do girly things and maybe watch a movie. Maybe it will help those who might want to talk to someone about their concerns. Or just have fun. The kids are great here. There was a water project that I was trying to get started in the village, but I can't seem to find anyone to help do a survey of the water pipes in the village. So that's on hold until somebody steps up to the plate for that one.

As Lolovoli is surrounded by creeks and sits on a volcano, there are natural disaster risks. So I am beginning to work with the Vanuatu and French Red Cross to develop disaster preparedness plans for the village. One of the reasons I'm in the capital is actually to go to a couple trainings with the Red Cross. The more I see here in Vanuatu, the more interested I become with Food Security. My village relies mostly on their kava crops for income. As a result they don't plant much food and rely a lot upon rice. As everyone knows, the price of rice has greatly increased and when it gets scarce, people run low on food. They live on a lush tropical island where you can grown things even accidentally and they don't have food! It's insane.

Anyway, as you can see I'm keeping myself busy. I have a lot of little things going on, but for the most part it's the days between that are difficult. Every day I wake up around 7 am. I make the bed faithfully. My village is so humid and damp that my sheets are clammy every night when I get into bed. Making the bed helps. I sweep my house with a broom made of coconut fronds. I go fill up two buckets with water and carry them back to my house to wash dishes. Breakfast is usually oatmeal or crackers and peanut butter. I just got a coffee press and real coffee so no more instant!!!! Now I just have to figure out how to get real milk, hehe. There are cows and goats here, but nobody has an interest in dairy products. It's appalling...how can people live without cheese?!!! Maybe I'll buy my own cow, hehe. They're only about $300 here. I'll usually go wash my clothes, work, or go story on with people until lunch. I read a lot and do crossword puzzles. Write letters. Lunch is usually whatever I have lying around. People have just started bringing by the first round of veggies for me, which rocks! I just got a bunch of tomatoes and mangoes. I made a kickass tomato and onion salad the other day. The mangoes were to die for. A good thing about living without a grocery store is that you get really creative with your cooking. I love to cook now and hope that will continue after my stay in Vanuatu. After lunch I get to take a nap. Then I'll play with my dog, maybe go for a walk, or go story on a bit more. By then the kids come home from school and a few of them play in my house. Lately I've been going over to my host family's house for a few hours before dinner to help. They almost never let me help, but a couple times I get lucky and grate some lap lap or coconuts. Doing that has really helped me feel more a part of the community. Tuesday and Saturday nights are market nights, where a selected group of women bring food to the nakamal for sale. I love market nights. Lately they've been baking bread too! That means not only do I not have to cook, but I don't have to wash dishes either! It's a nice break in the monotony. I used to drink kava on market nights as well, but right now I'm taking a break from it. I go back to my house and play games with the kids or read or just chill. Around 9 pm I close my doors and go to bed. I do get a little scared at night, but most of the time I'm really tired and fall asleep quickly. Stuey is a great guard dog and I'm used to the spiders and cockroaches for the most part. The rats don't bother me as much anymore either, but it's hard to sleep when they're chewing on my walls, haha. I'm waiting for one of the village kitties to have her kittens so I can have one. Stuey loves cats and plays with them. I miss him a lot now that I'm in Vila.

I make it down to the provincial capital every two or three weeks. I like to walk, but it's not really that cool to go alone. I hate asking people to walk with me, but what can I do? Staying in Saratamata means cold drinks and meat. It also means seeing Steve, a guy that I have started to see. He has a motorcycle and is able to make it up to my village now and again with eggs and other supplies for me.

So now I'm in Port Vila for two weeks, assessing the first three months and marveling that I've now been here for six. It's a bit hard being a woman in Vanuatu. I'm told repeatedly that I can't do many things because I'm a woman, but then I'm that I shouldn't walk around alone. During the day when everyone goes to their gardens (which I'm not permitted to go to yet) I sit around. It's very boring. The longer I'm here though the more aggressive and assertive I become with the garden issue. I tell them once in a while..."you know, I am an AGRICULTURE volunteer...maybe I should go to the gardens?" But no. There is a community garden that I might get to work in eventually, but again I can't walk their alone. It's definitely going to be a challenging next 21 months for me, but I knew that going into the Peace Corps.

I got to meet the new training group. I'm not one of the newbies anymore, which is a relief! Seeing their anxious faces and answering their worried questions helped me to put my experience into perspective and feel better. Talking to them I realized that I have really learned a lot so far and that after another six months I'll feel even more comfortable here. Now I'm just doing a little work each day, then relaxing. It's nice to have the internet and air conditioning. I love the hotel room...the bed is soft, the bathroom is attached to my room, and there's running (hot) water!!! The best is ice cubes, ice cream, pizza, and CHEESE!!! I went dancing the other night but had a hard time keeping my eyes off of the tv screens haha. All the new music videos from kanye, timbaland, rihanna, etc were playing. I love the new stuff that's out and it really seems like there's more racial integration in teh music videos. Not sure if I would've noticed the changes there or in fashion if I were still in the US. I went kayaking around Iririki island the other day and got a pretty killer sunburn. It is turning into a tan though and I'm looking forward getting back out in the sun (with sunblock). We've had pretty good weather. Just kindof doing the tourist thing for the first time. It's nice to be able to be in the capital and know my way around and speak the language.

Peace Corps Vanuatu just got a new Country Director, who really seems to have his shit together. I just got done with a two-hour meeting with him and feel very confident in his ability to clean up a lot of the problems we're having here. I didn't feel too comfortable with the former CD, but Eddie puts me completely at ease. It was nice to talk to him to introduce myself and let him know what I'm up to. This weekend Steve and I are gonna rent a car and drive around the island. I wanna see my host family from my training village. My host mama had her baby and named her Justine! Should be a good time.

Anyhoo hope this LONG LONG LONG (SORRY SORRY SORRY) email finds you all well. I miss you all very much! Please send your addresses if I don't already have them...i'd love to send postcards or letters.

If anybody feels like sending goodies...

Cereal

Granola

Trail Mix

Jerkey

Tea

Kraft Mac n Cheese

Add Waters

Thank you so much for the packages. I now have a year's supply of crystal light, haha. Love you guys!

Justine xoxo Reply to Your PostDelete Post

Hey Guys,

So...I'm officially a Peace Corps Volunteer! Training is now over and we swore in last Thursday. It was long and rainy, but overall fun. The last two weeks of training were really hard. It was just as all the other current volunteers told us it would be...when you get back from your week visit to your future site, it's hard to sit through Bislama sessions and whatnot. We were all tired and ready to go to site and get to work. A lot of grumpiness.

I gave the speech at our swearing in on behalf of the 16 of us...in Bislama...in front of 100 people...including the president of Vanuatu and the U.S. ambassador to the South Pacific. It went well, and I was only slightly nervous...maybe my stage fright is going away, hehe. The president took the opportunity of his coming to Epau to award several community members with medals and, because this was the Peace Corps Country Director's last swearing in ceremony, a lot of the ceremony was about him. I felt bad for the invited guests, because the whole thing was about three hours long. Afterwards we drank kava, ate, and danced to string band music.

The next morning was dreary. Me and Rachel (the girl who lives out in the boonies with me) walked the mile and a half in the rain to the nakamal where everybody gathered to say goodbye. We all stood facing the villagers and they lined up to shake our hands and hug us goodbye. Everyone was crying and it was just really sad and depressing. It was kinda funny at the same time because crying is such a "thing to do" around here. There are certain events where you're required to cry, just as natural as it is to shake hands. So they just cover their faces and pretend like they're crying. A lot of them can cry on command, it's very impressive. My papa is a very religious guy and makes a point to cry whenever he prays in front of the congregation. He "cried" when he said goodbye to me, which made me feel sad, but then I saw him five minutes later cracking up with his buddies so it wasn't so bad.

I was sad to leave Epau, but very ready to move on. I've been in the capital for three days now and it's been raining in Vanuatu since Monday. Today is the first time I've seen the sun in almost a week. But I guess I'd better get used to that. It's nice to be able to chill out and take my time doing things for a change. There's a lot to do and unfortunately, now that we're not trainees anymore, PC has pretty much left us to fend for ourselves. There have been so many mistakes with flight plans and money and bank accounts. It's really frustrating. To top it all off, we got here Friday morning and no one works on weekends so there's no one to help us out until Monday. Which is when we're leaving. Long story.

Anyway I've developed a pretty good friendship with a girl named Hillary. She's from Texas but moved to California for college. She's traveled all over the world, plays rugby, and is a diving master. All around cool girl...I'm going to try to get SCUBA certified so we can go diving together. Her and I are flying out tomorrow to Santo, where we'll stay the night and then go visit her site. Then she's coming to Ambae with me for about a week. Should be fun. It was her birthday yesterday so we had lots of fun. She got me to shotgun my very first beer, hehe. I bought a guitar yesterday for $40. It's a piece of crap, but it sounds pretty good. I learned how to tune it relatively well and I borrowed a songbook from the resource center. Hopefully I'll be somewhat decent by the time I get back to the states, hehe. There's also a puppy waiting for me at site. I bought him a collar so ppl will know he has an owner. I named him Lenny, but while I was gone apparently he got himself trapped in a toilet so ppl call him Stu...short for Stupid. Great. Haha, he's really cute and all white and he's a good guard dog.

My group elected me and this other guy, Travis, to be the representatives for the Volunteer Advisory Committee. It was very flattering to know that my fellow volunteers think that I'm up for the challenge, and even better that VAC members get flown into Vila (for free) at least twice a year for meetings. That's more money I can put towards a vacation in New Zealand!!!

So this is where it gets hard. Training is over, and we're on our own now. When I get out to site, it'll just be me and my village. Wish me luck!

Justine Beaulieu

Peace Corps Volunteer

P.O. Box 33

Lolowai, Ambae

Vanuatu

Mobile: 011 678 5445706

Land: 011 678 38015

Love ya,

Justine

ps- You can all still send emails to volunteer@vu.peacecorps.gov...our resource center lady prints them out and mails them to us...it'll get to me within two weeks and is much faster than letter writing from the states : ) Reply to Your PostDelete Post

Peace Corps wants volunteers who to put this into our blogs:

These are not the views of Peace Corps, but my own.

There. Enjoy.

Welcome to my blog. This is my very first blog entry EVER, but I'll try to make it interesting. This is mostly for family and friends, so I wont do the whole introductory sort of thing, because hopefully you guys already know all that stuff :)

Before, I was just emailing my Peace Corps updates to my family, then posting them on Facebook, but I'd like to just have one space that everybody can access both my updates and pictures. Thus, my blog spot.

I'm going to add all of my old updates first. The computers here are notoriously slow, so I have no idea how long all that will take, especially with the pictures and everything. Hopefully I'll get it all done before I leave Port Vila, just bare with me.

One thing I don't think I wrote about in my Facebook updates is the reasoning behind my joining Peace Corps. There were really a multitude of reasons, and I had to write about them in excess while applying. My sophomore year of college, I was sitting in a chemistry lecture when a PC recruiter came in and talked about serving. I had heard about PC before, but never given it much thought. Around that time, I was becoming more interested in international development and sustainable agriculture, but that's pretty general and I needed to find a path that would help me define my interests. I had never traveled outside of the country before; I had barely even been away from home for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I saw the PC as a stepping stone between undergraduate life and a possible career.

That was the main reason. Of course I wanted to share whatever useful skills I had in order to help whatever place I'd be sent to. I wanted to immerse myself in another culture, travel, learn more about development, and take a break from the hectic pace of things in the States.

It took me two years from the time I first opened the PC online application until the time I left for my service. It was a long, frustrating process that I felt like giving up on many, many times. When the recruiter called and offered me a spot in Vanuatu, I accepted. In hindsight, I might've waited for a more suitable option, but after two years of waiting, I was ready for just about anything, or so I thought. As a person interested in sustainable agriculture, a fertile volcanic island where almost anything can grow with relative ease and no fertilizer, I find that much of my knowledge and skills are unecessary. Still, Vanuatu is absolutely gorgeous and the people are generally very friendly. I've been "broadening my horizons" by working with a women's group. Just interacting with the people has been an incredible experience. In short, I don't regret my decision to come to Vanuatu, and currently am trying to make the best of my remaining 18 months. Hope you enjoy my blog!