Diving!!!!

So this post took longer than it was supposed to but i'm goin to blame that on an illness that pretty much took me out of commision for about 2 full week. it was really fun, full of fever and headache and neck/back ache, too!!! but now that has passed (as of yesterday) and i'm feeling well without the aid of drugs. excellent. so anyway, here are my pictures of my 1st dive trip ever. i did do my certification dives in a quarry in northern virginia, but that's not really the same because 1) certification means little fun stuff and checking off requirements and 2) quarries are murky and cold, even in the summer. so this was my 1st salt water, warm, and interesting dive. it was off the northern coast of savai'i, the larger island to the west of upolu, my home island. we did two dives, one around a wrecked london missionary company ship a little over a hundred years submerged and one around a large expanse of coral. Before the dive trip i spent one night on savai'i with my work who were taking a group of visiting tongans for a small tour of the big island. we stayed at really nice resort in beach fales that were half enclosed. Here are a coupld pictures.

One of the Beach Fales we stayed in. Nice view right?

This was my fale. It was tucked back so the view wasn't as nice but i'm not complaining. it was also cool because it was a paid business trip. nice!

The next day work left but I stayed behind to meet up with the Samoa Dive Club. We had volunteers from the US, Australia, England and Japan on the outing which was on a long, holiday weekend. I didn't take a pic of the fale i stayed in for the next few nights. It was more traditional/rustic being all open with just little mattress on the floor, but also more comfortable oddly enough. I can't decide where to take Mom and Dad. Maybe we'll try out both. They're only about a five minute walk from each other.

These are as close to nemo fish as we've seen. Yellow fin anemone fish. It's kind of cool because they pretty much just hang out around that giant anemone.

Some Coral.

My friend Jordan and me. She was the photographer.

Giant Coral Structures.

Pretty Fish.

Me trying to equalize.

Me trying to find neutral bouyancy. hehe, not my strong suit.

A green sea turtle. It was not this active during my dive. this was from the morning dive team.

The shipwreck. Cool because it's all open so you can dive it without special certification.

More wreck footage with the pretty fishes.

So the dives went off without a hitch I was a little worried that I would be slow or behind because it was a year and three months since my certification but no worries. my dive master was really cool and calming. i can't wait to dive again and i hope Dad can join me next year!
I'll have more stuff to post soon enough.
I hope everyone has a great christmas and a happy new year.

White Sunday

So i think it’s taking me an average of a month to actually get around to posting my news. That’s not so bad, is it? Anyway, on the 14th of October, Samoa’s children celebrated the biggest day of their year, White Sunday or Aso le Tamaiti (Day of the Children). This is a special day where the children get specially doted upon, receive gifts and get to perform almost all of the church services. I know that in our church, children’s masses were generally regular masses in which the children led the songs, prayers and did the readings, these kids put our efforts to shame.
I decided to visit one of my fellow PCVs, Donna, in her village of Poutasi for the weekend. It sits on the Southside of the island and was small and beautiful. Her house is right across the road from the ocean. I’ve included some pictures of her and her village.
At the beginning of the day, the children received gifts, such as new clothes, shoes and other things to look good for their day. After breakfast, they then led the way into church in a mini-parade. The services (there are two in most EFKS, or Congregational, churches) were packed with singing, dancing, and plays. These were performed by the different age groups, beginning with the preschool/kindergarten crowd and moving up through junior high ages. Overall, i attended five hours of church that day…that’s a lot of church, but it was worth it to see all the kids having a blast. Here are some pics. Don’t worry Dad, the diving pics will be on my next entry…probably in 2-3 weeks.

The kids of the house where i was staying before they went to church. The oldest is , then Fetu, the little boy and TiaMaria the little girl.

This is the march before it fell apart.

And this is it when all the kids got excited.

Dancing and Singing.

A Play.

A pretty sunset in Poutasi. This is the view from the Fale where Donna spends her down time.

My gracious hostess. Thanks Donna!

Class Presentation

Well, I promised a blog on the phenomenon of White Sunday but first I wanted to show off these pictures of me directing an activity during a presentation to a Year 12 class. The presentation was on the Community Based Fisheries Management Plan system, which is my office’s main focus. Because I had never dealt with a big class of Samoan Secondary students (actually, I don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a big class of seniors anywhere) I opted not to give the whole presentation, but I helped my counterpart with a small part of it. What I learned is that it is hard to get kids to talk in class. Classes in Year 9 and above are conducted in English, so that was not the barrier and next time maybe I’ll try my hand at the whole thing. I’ll post on White Sunday in the next few days. Haha, actually this presentation took place a little over a month ago so let’s hope i’m more prompt with the next one. Anyway, here are the pictures.

Me talking to the kids and trying really, really hard to get ANYONE to answer my question. Also note my killer farmers tan, I’ve been working hard on that.

This is Ferron, one of my counterparts, and the person who actually gave the presentation.

This is Tala, my other counterpart, giving a different presentation to the mass of kids. It was so hot in that room!!

Scanning

Hello Folks!
So life is pretty calm here these days. For everyone's information, although the test came back negative, i still probably had the mumps. luckily, for those of you too young to have ever come in contact with the disease, it only lasts a week so i was up and running by the time work started.
i have no real news to report except we are expected a new group of trainees next wed which is kind of exciting for those of us here that are new. Soon we won't be the greenest Americans in country. except that we are still relatively clueless as regards many aspects of living in Samoa. Give us time though. i'm sure we'll learn.
in a week and a half is white sunday. a day devoted to the children of samoa. i'm going to be visiting one of my friends in her village so i'll update you on that soon. Fa!

OK, so I’m back. I’ve been at work for 3 weeks now, and it’s weird because in many ways, it’s a lot like working at Quantico. For example, I’m currently just waiting for things to happen. Well, to be more specific, I’m scanning a lot of documents while I wait for things to happen.
For those of you who don’t know, I am now working for the Fisheries Division in the Government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. I am working in the Extension Office which is in charge of community programs and outreach. This means that I will hopefully get to go out to the villages that we work with and see them. Actually next week, we are slated to give a presentation to one of the other Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) volunteer’s schools. That should be pretty interesting.
Well, life here has been pretty interesting. The first two weeks of our service were completely tied up with the Samoan hosting of the South Pacific Games. These are a 4th yearly set of athletic competitions, much like the Olympics but on a smaller scale that enables the smaller countries to compete with one another. Many of the other Peace Corps people (PCVs) volunteered at the games, timing things like swimming and setting up races and sailing and various other tasks. They seemed to have a blast. I, however, had to concentrate on my new job, so I remained a mere spectator. I saw some tennis and soccer, the two sports I most like to watch. Also I attended the opening and closing ceremonies. These were pretty amazing with hundreds of Samoan high school students dancing in unison on the fields. That was very impressive. Sometimes I’m a little envious of this amazingly old culture that all of the island nations represented at the games manages to uphold. i guess it’s the equivalent to Native American tribal dances. One thing is for sure, though, I’m not sure Europe is that old now. I mean they seem relatively young compared to the traditions of Samoa.
But now the games are done and life will return to normal. Well, the new normal for those of us that just swore in a couple of weeks ago. My new 9-5 office job existance. Weird.
Anyway, talk to you later.

So I have the "mumps"

yeah, so the left side of my face is all swollen at the moment. 2 doctors have identified it as the mumps. even though i've had at least 2 mmr's. but anyway. it's fun i couldn't eat solids or anything with really any flavour for about 5 days. but now i've moved on to real foods, yay!!! it's still swollen but it doesn't hurt nearly as much.
so we swore in this past wednesday and now the group is scattered to all different corners of the two main islands of samoa. it's a strange feeling to leave everyone so abruptly after living so highly intensely with all of them for 12 weeks. i have a new home that i'm sharing with one of the other integrated coastal management volunteers, ana. it's quite nice and big. but very very dirty. so far we've managed to scrub down our bedrooms and move our stuff into those respective rooms but the others have been, thusfar, neglected. we start again soon.
tomorrow i will start my new job. i will be working in the Fisheries office for the samoan government. i'm quite excited really but nervous too. just like any new job, i'm feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment but it will pass eventually. i will be working in the section that is responsible for working with villages to make the most of, and conserve when needed, their marine resources. should be very eye-opening. because of the way land is owned and overseen forever by the same families and villages, there is a unique system of enabling villages the right to oversee their own coastal areas. So i guess over the next couple of years, i'll be learning all about it.

I have finally gotten the pictures off my camera so I thought I'd share some. I picked them pretty much at random so hopefully they show a little of my life here in Samoa.

This is my group in the airport on arrival. We are the 78th in Samoa. Aren't we awake looking considering that it was taken at 0530 after a 10 hour flight?

Our host families in Manunu started giving dinner parties for the various peace corps (pisikoa). This was my family's. I call is Cafe Kalolo. My sister served.

more pics later, i'm running out of internet time.

So i have been really not posting anything so i thought i'd try to throw up a couple of pics as filler.

This is me at a dance in our host village. My very pretty puletasi (outfit) was made by my host mother.

This is me and my host family.

We have officially sworn in as Peace Corps volunteers and moved to our respective villages. WE are busy cleaning but once we get that i will write up a full update for everyone to read. bye!!

So,
I know it’s been a month but here I am finally updating my blog. They keeps us very busy here. I guess if they’re going to do the majority of your training for two years in 11 weeks, it better be packed. The language is very interesting, 5 vowels and only 11 consonants. No two consonants can ever be paired. Every vowel is pronounced. And every word must end in a vowel. Those are the basic rules. There are also two markers of emphasis which go on the vowels, so although there are the usual 5, there are actually 20 different sounds. All said, however, I definitely don’t think it is the hardest of the languages to learn, and we are all progressing well. I actually am doing much better than I thought, considering my German experience – 12 years, few words.
The first two weeks here were spent in the capital city, Apia. We live in a small hotel that lets us use the little eating space to hold our lessons. Haha, they’re also very accommodating about letting us practice our bad Samoan on them when we have to do homework. They let us ask things like:
Hello. What is your name? My name is Lini. (That’s my Samoan name, lee-nee) Where are you from? What is your father’s name? What is your mother’s name?
It’s lots of fun really.
After two weeks of initial learning, we moved operations to our host training village, Manunu. It’s an inland village and really very beautiful. It sits at the base of the Mountains and has a river running near it. All the water is taken from the river passed around the village through a circuitous pipe system. This river also provides a couple of beautiful swimming spots. One is a waterfall that can be climbed up part way and the walls around it can be climbed to jump off. Very cool. I will include pictures of the the village and waterfall next time.
We arrived in village on a Saturday and immediately had an ava ceremony. This a meeting between the chiefs of the village and the visiting chiefs (or in this case a bunch of peace corps (aka pisikoa) and their trainers, some of whom are chiefs in their own villages). It’s very interesting but I am not sure of the details, so I won’t try to explain much. The ava is a drink made from the root of the ava plant and it has an effect kind of like alcohol, I’m not sure what is really is chemically speaking. Throughout the ceremony all the chiefs are give the bowl to drink from.
After this, we were taken by our respective families to our homes to try to figure out our families with our incredibly limited language skills. My family has 2 boys (22, 12) and 4 girls(20, 18, 15, and 2) but there is a general stream of relatives in an out too. They are very nice. Samoan generosity is actually quite a thing to experience. There is so much that’s its overwhelming at times. Our whole village is incredibly excited to have us and we have already been thrown 2 dances. These are very funny. The first was actually full of Samoan Siva (dance) and we each danced with our respective families. It was actually a surprise. If I had known we would each be dancing individually, I might have practiced harder with my sisters. But I had fun so I guess it was better not to worry about it.
The two weeks were kind of long due mostly to the sheer amount of work piled on us during it. Nightly homework, two presentations and one oral assessment. There is also the amazing mental workout working on a new language day and night. There is also the crazy amount of isolation. There is nowhere else to go and no real way of finding out American news. It’s a lot to get to used to. It’s not as much like that when we’re in the city. Actually I have been to the movies twice. I’ve seen Fantastic Four and Die Hard 4.0 (my first of the series) Hmm, 2 movies I would never have watched in the states. It’s amazing what you’ll go see when there is no tv and 2 movie screens.
Well, I have to wrap up this phenomenally long post as class is starting soon. I will be out for the next couple days visiting another volunteer at her site. We each got paired with someone different and have to get there by ourselves by bus tomorrow morning. Haha, that should be a fun experience – they gave us a list of contacts in case something happens. I’m pretty excited because I think the village is near a mangrove rehabilitation project set up by a volunteer that is ending his service next month, so I might get to check that out. My volunteer has also informed me that we will be attending the American Consulate’s 4th of July shindig. All the volunteers are invited but most will be too far away to attend. Anyway, maybe I’ll update on my trip when I get back Friday…or maybe not. Haha, this might be enough for everyone for a while!!
Talk to you all later!!

so now it's friday but i haven't had time to write anything and i'll be in the village for the next 3 weeks so i'll update then. bye!!

I'm leaving

so i'm leaving and i've already discovered that i'm missing many things. oops. i'm sure i'll get buy. anyway, thanks to everyone for the parties and the gifts. people here are nice and we leave tonight. bye!!

Fortunes

Although fortune cookies rarely hold actual fortunes these days, i got one two days ago that read:



"You will move to a wonderful new home within the year."



Hmm, good sign, i think.

I'm going to try.

Despite the fact that I've NEVER been able to keep a journal and I'm not even good at remembering to take pictures when doing something exciting, I'm going to try to keep this blog. This is generally for the family, because it's such a huge one that writing all those letters seems daunting right now. Not that I won't write....and not that I don't want mail. (and pics, especially of my fav niece, and important events I might miss)

For those so inclined, my mailing address is:

Erin Jenkins, PCT
Private Mail Bag
Peace Corps
Apia, Western Samoa
South Pacific
(It's international mail; not domestic like American Samoa)

Also, thanks to Dad for the title of the blog. Hehe, I am aware that I stole it without asking and that I'm not technically flying. But I'm still doing my best not to stay in one spot for too long, so I figured it was ok.