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!

Here in the big V!!

So I'm here in Vanuatu and things have been going good so far. I'm staying at a campsite with my fellow volunteers. We have running water and electricity until 9:30pm. So we're living the high life right now.  And the beach and the most beautiful clear blue water I've ever seen is only about a 30 second walk from our camp! I got a cell phone with is really weird. I didn't expect to get one but we are all on a plan where we can call or text other volunteers and staff for free so it sounded like a good idea. On Friday we move out to our training villages and we get host families that are like real families, our Mama's and Papa's will refer to us as daughter or son. which I think is really great and SO cute!

This week we've been doing a lot of training and we've started our language classes. Bislama seems like a really easy language to learn to speak not so much to write and luckily we'll probably only be speaking it! Monday night we went to the Country Director's house for dinner and tried kava. Kava is a local cultural drink made from a plant. It makes you feel kind of drunk. It kinda taste's like dirt and it numbed my mouth right away. I didn't start to feel drunk until about 10mins later and then it was intense! I felt completely gone. The bad thing is the next day I felt horrible. Nauseous all day long. Not a happy day yesterday. But kava here is sometimes only a man's drink so I'm hoping I'll be in an area where is not a common drink for women. But sometimes when you meet the chief of your village he'll welcome you with kava in a ceremonial setting, if women are allowed to have it there. If that's the case I will drink it again but that will probably be it!!! What's weird with Kava is that the more you drink it the more it affects you. It's not like drugs or alcohol. You don't build up a tolerance.

But anyways, I'm in the city today meeting with the medical staff. I got 4 shots and started my anti-malarial pills. After this I'm going to go shopping for some essentials.


I don't know if I'll be back near Internet service for a while. I'll have some funny stories (I'm sure) once I live with my host family for a while. Language barriers are always funny!!

Ok, ale tata!

It's Time

So I'm in my room (freezing!!) trying to finish up packing everything and stressing out about weight limits. I leave for my staging event in about 6 hours and it still really hasn't hit me that I'm leaving soon. I think it's because I haven't seen my plan ticket so I'm not that excited...... yet. I just want to give a few shout outs:

To my family: I love you all so much and I want to thank you for all of your support!

To my EDEL-Oers: ooo-OOO!!! I will miss you crazy kids so much and I love you all!! Get it!!!

To my Ashley: I love you, I love you, I love you!!!!! I'm going to miss you so much and you have to keep me posted on you life!

I'll try to keep ya'll as updated as possible and I promise that all of my particularly ridiculous stories will end up here! To be continued......

It's Becoming Real

For the past week I've been volunteering at the Central Regional Little League tournament for the Little League World Series and due to early mornings and late nights I have only been able to check my email today. And in my inbox surprise surprise, there are emails from Peace Corps. reps telling me about my staging event coming up in September.

Things like itinerary for the event ( in L.A.!!!)  and for leaving for Vanuatu. And everything just became so real! I got to thinking about everything I still need to get for the trip and do before I leave! Like learning a bit of Bislama before I leave (thought I do have a 12 hour flight to occupy).

I'm getting so excited about it all and cannot wait to go!

So right now I'm trying to get everything put together to go, saying goodbye to friends and family, and hoping I don't forget anything!

The Very First

I've been thinking about the best way to share all of my crazy stories that are bound to happen while I am living in a new country, a new culture, and with a new language. And it hit me: blog. So this is where I will be posting my crazy experiences as the two years unfold (unless I'm not allowed to have a blog!).

First up I would like to address the question: Aren't you scared?
Apparently Vanuatu has 7 active volcanoes, sharks in the waters, cyclones, high chance of malaria (especially living there for two years), rats, and lesser living conditions (obviously). So I have gotten the 'aren't you scared' question a few times now. To be truthful, I am more scared about traveling on a plane on Sept. 11 than anything that country can throw at me right now. However, once I get safely to Vanuatu I'm sure the other fears will pick up!

As a side note I will only be able to get an internet connection in the larger cities so this blog might turn into a once a month thing once I get to my placement village. But more on that later!