Family Time

Coming from a close-knit family in America was always something that I loved.  We would always spend our holidays together even to the point of preferring to spending Christmas at home with our immediate family rather than driving up to visit Aunts and Uncles.  Just over two years ago my mom and dad moved apart.  I’m proud though of the close relationships that I maintain with my parents.  When something goes wrong, my mom and dad are the first people that I call and I don’t mind (as long as it’s not long-term), living at home.  In the past, I’ve lived with host families in Japan and have enjoyed the similarly close relationship that you get from living with a family versus on your own in an apartment.  Housing in the Peace Corps is incredibly varied depending on what country you’re in.  You can go anywhere from a room with a host family (which is what I have), to an apartment, to a shared room with another Volunteer.  Check out an amazing video on Youtube called Peace Corps Cribs to see some examples.

Coming to Samoa, there are three options for volunteers.  One, if you work in Apia (the Capitol), you get an apartment!  This is just 3rd year volunteers that work here.  Two, a small house on your school compound.  Allyson and Josh, our married Volunteers, have this option and it certainly has its ups and downs.  Due to decreased security, this is usually not a viable option especially for women.  The third option is most common, host families!  In Samoa, families are very close knit and you often have extended family either in the same house or on the same compound.  In my training village everyone in the village was related.  70 years ago, their ancestor had started the village and given a plot to each of his sons and daughters who in turn raised their families there.  As I walk down the street in my permanent village, my host sister will often wave to people passing and note that they are her cousins.  Half my village is related some how!  And I have one of the larger villages consisting of approximately 600 people.

Family is everything here.  Things that you do affect the family honor either positively or negatively and everything is done as a family unit.  The weekly mowing has the entire 8 person household out sweeping up the grass cuttings, families sleep together in a communal open air house, and cooking each meal involves every member of the family.  On the flip side, if some offense is committed, the whole household is held responsible.  In my training village, a young man punched the pastor in the face and the next morning, him and his entire family were on their knees in front of the pastor’s house asking for forgiveness.  One of our teachers in training told the story of her uncle who had committed some crime and was subsequently banished from the village along with his family.  When he refused to move and went away to New Zealand on holiday, he returned to Samoa to find that his house had been burned down.  This is of course an extreme and unusual case, but it does illustrate the family togetherness and strength of the village.

I enjoy living with a family here in Samoa.  They are here to support me.  My father helps me with my Samoan by refusing to speak if I use English (my Samoan has improved in leaps and bounds!), my brother sits for hours in my room playing my iPod, and my sisters help me stave away homesickness.  I wouldn’t trade the situation for anything.

My cousin Jay, Me, and my brother Caleb

My sister Laititi and her baby Dadrian

My brother Caleb, host dad So'afa, and Me!

Christmas/New Years

Christmas this year had many firsts for me.  First one away from home, first one celebrated in a church, and first one without a tree.  It was suggested by a very wise PCV friend of mine to stop comparing and to simply embrace it as a separate event.  The Sunday before Christmas I had the wonderful opportunity to be included in a Christmas concert with all the EFKS churches in the Falealili region.  As I was walking up to the stage, I heard my name being called.  There were all the kids from the EFKS church who went to the school I had trained to teach at!  It was just as surprising for both of us – I was so happy to see them so happy to see me.

The family all dressed up for Christmas Mass

Christmas Eve, I got the first experience of watching a cow be slaughtered and cut up.  I actually wasn’t as grossed out as I thought I would be, and even laughed along with my brothers as they put the hose in one nostril and water shot out of the other.  That night I got to enjoy fresh cow tail soup.  Yum.  Later that night at midnight, I gathered with the youth choir at the beginning of the village then walked through it, singining Christmas carols and Church songs throughout the village.  Whenever we stopped outside of a house, the leader would read out how much that family had donated to the church that year then we would all clap and sing.  This lasted until around 3am.  My village is only a single street, but it’s fairly long at about 2km.  Christmas morning we all dressed up in our Sunday best white puletasis and went to mass.  Not much different than normal, but grades were read for the kids and the top ones in each grade received toys from a pile.

 My two brother playing with the cow head.

I think overall I handled Christmas away from home fairly well.  Until my family called that is and I talked to all 3 of them on speaker phone.  It really brought it home hearing them all 3 at once and I started to choke up.  It’ll never really feel like Christmas for me unless I’m with my family.

For New Years this year, I called up my family from the training village and they picked me up for a few days.  All the PCVs reunioned in the training village.  We haven’t really been apart long enough for it to feel odd seeing them, but I was still thrilled.  My friends Allyson and Josh couldn’t make it which dampened the mood slightly but still it was overall good.  For New Years night, we went to church for 3 hours where there were skits and songs.  At midnight, Madi and I had a private countdown on her phone then hugged at New Years.  Not much but it felt good.  When else can you celebrate literally the first second of the new year on all of Earth?  The next morning the village put on a Toonai (party) for us and once again we all danced and laughed.  At one point my Aunt Tusi brought out a creepy giant baby doll and started to dance with it.  So funny!  It was hard saying goodbye again, but I know I’ll be back.

28 Days and Counting

Only 28 days to go until I leave!  So much has happened in this last month since I've updated.  I've connected with 7 out of 14 people in my group and they're all really sweet people.  One of them started a Facebook group for Samoa group 84 so we are slowly but surely congregating.  It's been wonderful to begin talking with the people that I'll be serving the next 27 months with and to share our fears and questions with each other.

I also received my introductory CD in the mail.  Included in this is my first language lesson, my teaching homework, pamphlets on grammer and teaching, and an introductory slideshow on Samoa.  It was funny looking through the slideshow because some of the pictures had people in them from blogs that I'd remembered reading.  The language is definitely different from what I've learned in the past.  It was a whole bunch of vowels and repeating sounds in the words.  For instance, fa'amolemole is please and "O ai lou igoa?" is "what is your name?" Love it!  It's definitely fun learning something new like this.  Though I have to admit, I'm slightly worried about living with the first host family with a limited vocabulary.

My flight to LA is all booked.  I'm leaving on October 4th, at 11am.  All the Samoan Peace Corps volunteers'll be meeting in LA for two introductory days then straight onto Samoa.  It's so hard to believe that the time is coming up, and yet it also seems so far away.  I'm ready to begin this next part of my life but I'm also sad that I'll be away from my family for so long.  The Peace Corps is something that I've wanted to do for a very long time, but that doesn't mean that I won't miss my family and friends.

This next month will involve me trying to memorize as many introductory words as possible, finish buying items to bring with me, and spending as much time with my family and friends as possible.  I have a feeling that this time will fly.

28 days until I depart!

Family Backing

My family is incredibly supportive of me entering the Peace Corps.  My parents, while sad that I will be  leaving, are aware of the huge opportunity that I am being offered.  They have offered to to visit throughout my two years and to ensure I'm always supported.  I'm incredibly lucky.

At my recent family reunion, my relatives showed amazing support for me as well, though through one certain, odd way.  They had all the relatives take pictures of their best "Samoan" pose.  And by this I mean they all had no idea what a Samoan pose was and decided to make things up to amusing and great results.  I LOVE MY FAMILY!  If nothing else, they certainly know how to have a great time and how to be incredibly supportive to us all.

My sister and I 

1 month and 28 days until I depart!

Beginning of the Adventure

It seems that time has absolutely flown these past few weeks.  After almost a year and a half since I first began my Peace Corps application, I have finally received my assignment!  I am officially going Samoa, leaving on October 5th, 2012 and returning December 15th, 2014.  I will be teaching English to kids somewhere in the range of 5th and 7th graders.  So after many months of not knowing anything, I can't believe I finally know.

There were lots of obstacles on the journey to date.  Many many months ago, I had originally asked for a start date of May 2012.  However, my back had begun to have serious problems and because of that, I had to go see a chiropractor, which unfortunately pushed my start date back to October.  To think back at that now however, I'm really happy that I moved the date.  Not only did it allow me time to heal my back, but in the interim I got to visit my sister in Italy, take a camel ride in Morocco, see all my relatives at a family reunion, and earn extra money at a part-time job.  So it all definitely worked out in the end.  Another obstacle that I ran into was a health scare on my urinalysis.  Results came back that I was positive for ketones and the Peace Corps asked me to run another test.  I happened to look ketones up online and they show up either when you are diabetic or starving.  So the worst thoughts flashed through my mind that I was becoming diabetic!!  I had a long talk with my doctor however and he believes that it was just because I hadn't eaten that morning.  So I ate, took another test, and voila!  No ketones.  So lesson here is: always eat breakfast kids!

The way that I learned my assignment was rather interesting.  I was on vacation in San Francisco with my dad and uncle Scott and we were meeting my uncle Dirk and aunt Lisa for breakfast.  I got a call on my phone and suddenly there was a Peace Corps nurse!  She said something along the lines of, "Because of your assignment in Samoa, I just wanted to double-check that you're okay with the strong possibility of earthquakes" and I was standing there going "wait, WHAT?  Samoa?  Hold on, is this my assignment?"  Apparently they had thought that I'd gotten the assignment announcement already.  Anyways, after I hung up the phone with her, my assignment contact called and told me my assignment.  At this point I was THRILLED to be hearing news about where I'd be going.  Unfortunately we had already made plans to tour around all day so by the time we got back home, I was DYING to know about Samoa and researched for several hours.  I'm beyond thrilled about my placement and can't wait to arrive at my new home for the next 27 months.

2 months and 2 days until I depart!