Leaving the Nest

So our group had one last week together at a hotel in Port Vila where we all had a lot of fun and enjoyed things we know we won’t get on the island (ice cream and beer for example). It was a great week and everyone is pretty bummed about going off on our own now but we must move on. 

Today is the first day I’m at site. It is currently 12/12/11 and I flew into Santo and then took a much smaller plane to Walaha Airport which is only about a 15 minute flight. At this point it was only Zack and I because we’re the only ones on West Ambae but he’s a bit more north. The headmaster of the college came along with my new host family for the next two years everyone was really glad and excited to see me and I felt the same. I got a tour of the area and I am pretty close (one hour walk) from a nice market which sells basically anything I would need. There are a bunch of smaller markets as well that are closer. Not only are there a bunch of soccer fields here, there happens to be one right next door to my house which is pretty cool.

My House:

So my house is pretty awesome. It’s made of woven bamboo and a thatched roof. It’s got two bedrooms and a living room (I’ll upload a pic). I’ve got my own bush kitchen (which means you have to make a fire anytime you want to cook something), my own toilet and bucket shower area. Probably the best feature of the house is the location – I’m directly above the ocean, now there is no beach here it’s all volcanic rock but just so you know I’ll have the rhythmic pounding of the ocean waves lulling me into sleep every nigh which sure beats any  white noise machine, ever. I’m pretty pleased with it but because this site was so last notice for the people here it is not fully completed. They are constructing a fence around my house right now which is pretty cool too. So where am I staying you might ask? Well I’m at this GAP house for Australian volunteers which is inside the school and is a bungalow for about 10-15 people and I’m by myself. So yes it’s pretty big and a bit lonely but there’s a generator that comes on every night usually but because school isn’t in session (It’s December now and school doesn’t come back until February) the generator only comes on Monday and Thursday for two hours but I’m pretty sure there’s somewhere else on campus that has solar power so I can charge things there if needed.

I realized I told everyone this place had Internet and I was led to believe that but apparently the modem broke so we are waiting for AUZ AID to come to the rescue and get a new one but until then (headmaster thinks February) I won’t have Internet so I guess this post won’t even go out until Phase II training (which I’ll get to later) so sorry for waiting so long to get this out! There’s no other Internet on West Ambae but there is Internet on East Ambae but it’s pretty hard/expensive to travel to the other side so until it gets fixed I don’t have too many options.

Anyway the school is pretty great and right now it only seems to be the headmaster and I but I think I’m just going to walk every day to the other more populated sections.