Finally Home!

Wow, I have so much news! hopfully I won't leave too much out. This is going to be a long one, so strap yourself in!

So home is Point Cross, South Pentecost and the only way to get there is by boat or walking. For example, when I arrived to my village from the capital I took a plane to Pentecost, a truck to Pangi (another village), and a speed boat to Point Cross. It was fun. But you can actually take the speed boat directly to the airport and that takes about 2 hours with decently calm waters. If you don't want to take a boat then you're walking at least to Pangi because the 'road' does not come to Point Cross.

Village/House/Family
But my village is absolutly beautiful!! I've got a nice sand beach down at the cove and awesome cliffs on the east. The one draw back is that my village is all mountianous hills. It's such a work out to walk around and I don't leave my house when it rains. I take comfort in knowing that I'm going to have an awesome butt by the time I get back to the U.S.! My house is amazing too. I have a flush toilet and a shower INSIDE my house!! It's so nice. I do not have electricity, which is not a big deal, I would much rather have running water! I have an indoor and outdoor kitchen. My house has a cement floor with bamboo walls and thatched roof. It's pretty awesome! My neighbors are my headmaster and his family and the other male teacher and his family. But all of the teachers have left to go to their home villages for the vacation. My host family is really great and I stayed with them my first month because the volunteer I was taking up after (who was amazing!) was still living at the house. I have 5 sisters, mostly around my age, 2 younger ones, and 2 brothers both in their teens, one is my stret (straight) brother and one is adopted. My mom is very strong, she is the head Mama of the Mama's organization and my dad is really quiet but a good guy. They are a lot of fun to hang out with.

Pets
So far I have a dog named Jabu that I inherited from the volunteer before me. She is really cute and the greatest dog. Hopfully soon I will be getting a cat to keep the rats away... but more on that later.

School/Work
I have a fairly small school. The school is years 1-6, though it changes, like last year it was only 1-5. There are about 80 students and 5 teachers (not including me). I will be working in the Library primarly. Doing library classes and reading and writing activities. But I will also be doing workshops for the teachers probably on classroom management. I'm also playing around with the idea of English classes for the community. But I'm not sure yet. I'm also going to do a camp GLOW (Girls Leading Our World) to help empower the girls in my village.

First Day
Ok so first of all getting to Pentecost was such an ordeal. We all get checked-in at the airport and they tell us that we have to down size our bags cause we were over weight so a few of us start pulling off bags. We finally get on-board when the piolet tells us over the intercom (though we could see him and the cockpit is not separated from the rest of the plane and he could have just turned around and talked to us) that we have to get off because there are electrical problems. So we all get off the plane and sit in the airport. About an hour and a half goes by we finally get on the plane and leave. When I get to my village I hang out with my family until dark and then for our dinner we have a small wlecoming dinner for me. Including me drinking a COFFEE MUG of kava infront of everyone! and I say COFFEE MUG because usually you only drink about a coconut shell's amount and they aren't very big. The next day I slept the entire day and only got up for food. But thankfully I didn't feel sick at all. And even though the taste and smell are AWFUL the effects are pretty nice to expierence every once in a while.

Christmas
So Christmas was interesting. We go to church in the morning (Anglican) and after have a big community lunch. Then all of the mamas did a gift exchange which was so cute! Unfortunately as the mamas are getting finished I look over to where a lot of young guys are sitting and I see bottles and cans of alcohol coming out of bags. The problem with this is, in this culture the men get drunk. They don't just drink the get hammered. And after they get hammered they act like idiots. So after the mamas get finished I go to my family's house to eat dinner. While we're sitting there in the kitchen a drunk guy comes in and steals one of our pineapples. Rude! After he left we proceeded to hide everything we didn't want the drunks to mess with...like our axe. We eat dinner and eventually I decided that it's time to sleep so my mama and one of my sisters walks me home. On the way one of the drunks KICKS my dog. I was so PISSED!!!! The next day my mama yelled at him and he did apologize so that was good. And I got a beautiful bag from my family for Christmas, though I'm not sure if my mom wove it or what, I think she did. She's a very talented basket weaver.

Moving in to My House/Pests
So moving in went well however, I had bought a gas table-top stove to use so that I didn't have to worry about building fires. Well at first I thought I had all the wrong parts and I couldn't hook it up at all. I eventually figured it out (took the whole day) and I realize that I just don't have the right hose for my stove, so everything is hooked up but I can't connect my hose to my stove, a crucial step. So for the past month and a half I've been cooking with fire. Because of this I haven't been cooking much and have still been eating dinner with my family. So I've brought the stove back to Vila to hopefully return and buy a new one from a more reliable source. Now, you may be thinking 'Megan do you ever get lonely at your house all by your self?' and my answer would be: no. You see I not only have my dog but I also have huge spiders, cockroaches, geckos, chickens, cows, centipedes (that fall from the ceiling), and rats. I don't mind the spiders or geckos (who I've been naming) because they eat the bugs, like the malaria spreading mosquito's, but I try to kill all of the others. For example, on more than one occasion I have chased rats around my house with my bush knife (machete). Successfully killing one who trapped himself in one of my space saver bags. I bashed in his head, surprisingly resulting in very little blood. But I'm really looking forward to getting a cat so that I don't have to deal with that at all.

But I love my village, my house, my family, and I foresee great things happening at my school! I'm very happy to be in Point Cross and cannot wait until the school year starts so that I can start working!