Quick Update!

Hello yufala!

First holiday (Thanksgiving) in Vanuatu was pretty strange, it sucked being away from family but we still had a good time here and made some makeshift desserts but had no turkey or any other delicacies unfortunately. Anyway I don't have much time but this Sunday (12/4) (Wow it's December already?) we are all going to Port Vila for the week and staying in a hotel there before we all leave for our sites. We all learn our sites TOMORROW (12/2) !!!! This is a huge ordeal because this is where we find out what island we'll all be on for the next two years of our life, we're all really getting anxious to find out what ones they could be. Also one last update I wanted to give was the mailing address I gave in a previous post is correct and always will be - all mail is sent here and then from there the PC sends it to the individual islands so you all send things to the Port Vila address and it will get to me, the one small change is rather than writing 'PCT' you can write 'PCV' which is Peace Corps Volunteer rather than a trainee, I don't officially swear in for a few days but for from now on you all can just write that to send me things!


Ale, will give a  better update later, ta!

HVV, Rats, and Dead Chickens oh my.

So I realize this may sound like some rat disease but really I just wanted to say that my room has a rat or three and they are very annoying at night. They have plenty of access points into the room all of which I think they created themselves. I believe the rats here think they are safe because there are plenty of wild puskats outside but none in my room so they think they have no predator in their safe house, luckily I am here to prove them wrong and will now be avidly hunting them after they chewed a small hole through one of my backpacks.

So papa Pascal gave me this medieval rat trap, needless to say night one was unsuccessful  and the trap went off at some point but there is still no rat and I’m quite sure they were munching away all night on something.

Update! It is now 11/9 and the rat has been dealt with. For a night or two I spelled something pretty nasty in my room and I couldn’t figure out what it was and my apuwoman said she would clean my room, now papa Pascal didn’t tell me he put down rat poison so they found one very large and very dead rat. Needless to say it smells much better in my room now and no more rats, woo!

Anyway on to the HVV – Host Volunteer Visit. Today is 11/6 and in a week on the 13^th is when we all leave our training village for about a week (I return Friday 10/18) to go stay with another volunteer. We get to see what it’s really like to be on our own for once and what life is really like for a volunteer. Everyone gets paired with a different volunteer and Tim Filipa and I are going to see Josh A. who lives on Malekula. I’m pretty pumped because this is one of the 5 IT sites that I could be going to so I’m excited to see what it looks like and where I could possibly be living for the next two years.

Now a few days ago our village had the volunteers prepare a big lunch for everyone. We made everything from banana simporo (sp?) to actually killing a chicken and eating it. It was a very eventful day with many pictures to prove it:

A banana

rasprasp the banana..

We had a hunting party and caught this unlucky fowl..

Looking for a chicken..

Got him!

I feel bad - he is a very beautiful bird

Also I’m just posting this one update today since we (volunteers) we’re invited to go to this government cocktail party with free cheese and booze, sounds good to me.

Here are some random pics for some further enjoyment:

At one of the café’s I went to you had to order something to get Internet so I wisely chose this blooming flower tea

At some other store I stumbled upon a cake with my name on it J

Mitrifala go lo wan wokabout nomo. 

Contact Info + Read Me

Ok so this will be my last post for the day so it could be the last post for a few weeks or so until I get Internet again. I just wanted to give you all a heads up on how to read the blog - if you click November on the right hand side it will give all of the November blog posts with the NEWEST ones on top so if you're reading all of these for the first time you're going to want to scroll down to the bottom and read them first because that's the oldest posts and you'll want to read them first.

My contact info:
My phone number: 5359505 but if you're in the US and want to call here I believe you have to add 001678 so the number would be something like this: 0016785359505 but I'm not too sure on how that works - talk to my parents or sister and all receiving calls/texts are free so don't hesitate to do so! You can also try using Skype International I believe it's only 56 cents per minute so call anytime. To give you an idea of the time right now here it's 11:00 AM on Thursday, and on the east coast it's 8:00 PM on Wednesday. Crazy huh?

My mailbox:
(Apparently we are not allowed to post our address on here so if you would like to send me anything feel free to email and I'd gladly give you my address!)

Currently we are close to Port Vila but in a month we will all leave for our two year sites. This mail address can still be used and I will get anything when I come into Vila but I will be getting a new address in a month so it's up to you. Things I would love: non perishable items, and stuff that kids like (stickers and stuff like that because I will be teaching)

Feel free to send me anything and call me anytime! Hope you enjoyed all the updates and now I'm going to enjoy the rest of the day in Port Villa later!

P.S. Here are some random pics that you might enjoy

 Soccer game!

 Just goin to class

Can you spot me?

 Clearing a garden...(before)

(after!)

Food & Kava

So let me tell you a little about some local dishes. This certainly isn’t America – if you can’t tell otherwise you can tell from the food. I’ve yet to see a single obese Ni-Vanuatu man or woman which means they must be doing something right. Since there are no fast food places (not even in major cities) people are for the most part self-sustainable and live off the land. There is a big garden which is about 5 miles away which some people walk every day too where everyone in the village has crops that they grow. Mostly these consist of root crops such as mantioc and taro (two staples of usually every meal which I have grown very tired of, they taste extremely bland and people don’t seem to care too much about flavor over here) also island cabbage which isn’t bad and fruits galore. I used to think papaya (popo here) was an exotic fruit treat but now getting it every day I usually skip it. Every morning for breakfast I have tea and biscuits which are good and usually bread. I’m on a total anti-Atkins diet because this is the most carbs I think I’ve ever consumed but luckily I work out/run at 5:30am usually every day so hopefully it balances out. There’s really no way sleeping any later because of all the roosters or maybe my rat Rosa wakes me up gnawing at something in my room or it could be the 4:00am bell that the village rings for church every morning. Anyway back to food for lunch and dinner there’s usually always white rice and some sort of stew which isn’t bad. Every volunteer gets different food and I’m usually pretty lucky and we even have soda sometimes for dinner (without ice of course). Don’t forget – there is no refrigeration here. Everything is boiled or heated over the fire so everything is usually very hot. Sometimes for breakfast we even get apples and I had an orange the other day, also I tried a fruit called sour sop? No idea if that’s how you spell it but it was probably the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted and if I had to describe it I would say a mix between a strawberry, pineapple and orange it was crazy. My one friend Meg and her family usually make local bread quite often which is a huge ordeal because there are no stoves so you have to make this ‘island oven’ every time. That bread is so good and last time they even made coconut bread and I helped. You take coconut shavings and mix it with sugar and then put it in little dough balls (like dumplings) and then bake and voila – coconut bread.


Kava should most likely have its own post but oh well. Kava is really gross. There is no way I can describe it any other way. For those of you who don’t know it’s a root of a pepper plant and is a huge part of Vanuatu culture. Males usually drink kava every night and some of the female volunteers are allowed too as well. Kava is different every time you drink it because it’s always prepared differently. I’ll post up some pics but it looks like muddy water and tastes even worse. The first few times I had it I didn’t feel anything and then the last time I had two shells and I guess it worked. It’s like someone put out their hand and said – ‘sit, stay’ you just feel like sitting and not moving and totally relaxed. It made me kind of sleepy but for the most part it’s a way of people getting together to storian (gossip/chat). It made my stomach feel crazy the whole next day and then the next time I tried it I had only two shells and I couldn’t walk straight. It was the strangest feeling because it doesn’t cloud your mind like liquor so you’re in total control of your thoughts I just couldn’t walk straight and then it made me sick. I also felt like crap the whole next day so needless to say kava looks like one thing that I’m not going to do much partaking in. I’ll stick to Tusker (The beer with the Grunt and official beer of Vanuatu) thank you very much. Speaking of beer – I really miss bud light limes..

How to make Kava:
This is the kava plant

This is the roots of the plant

This is after you ground up the roots in a meat grinder and strain them through a shirt with water..it makes this lovely mixture!

And that's what you drink.



Ale lukim yu
P.S. As a footnote I also want to just say that it’s funny how all the volunteers keep talking about American food and how much we miss it I even showed some people Mama P’s apple pie I got to eat before I left and boy did that make everyone’s mouth water. Mama P if you’re reading this feel free to send some non-perishable baked goods! (Unfortunately mail here could take up to 5 months!)

Spiders are big here

Remember when I said that spiders aren’t so bad? I take back everything I said.

Anyway besides that everything is going great, today is 10/25 and we are well underway with our IT training with a bunch of seminars and hands on presentations and things it definitely keeps me busy. Something that we’re all starting to miss – food. There is NO fast food anywhere in Vanuatu, everyone including myself are really craving some fries but hopefully that will pass. Every day I usually go on a wakabout wetem Leikoro and we have already had our fair share of adventure such as a large herd of bullock which came close to stampeding us.

The rest of this update will be more of picture updates because, well they’re worth a thousand words each and that’s a lot less typing I have to do.

This is Mangoleliu (totally spelled wrong) where the other volunteers are staying with their host village

 they make a lot of these boats

Totally a rough life for the dogs..(not)

Well actually if you really want to know they don’t have domesticated pets here so there’s an abundance of ‘wild’ dogs but they all live in the village and are so timid because people constantly stone them and sometimes even kick them, sad I know but all I can do is be nice to them I won’t even get to the subject of gender roles in this post I’ll save that for later but man I can say I’m glad to be a dude.

Me and my buddy Joel

This road was actually built by Americans during World War II and goes all around the island of Efate.

Apuwoman blong mi (my grandma, who’s the sweetest, most kind and caring lady) preparing some mantioc for dinner

This little video is showing some local wildlife and how annoying they are and my house for a brief second.

(I'll have to upload this later when I have longer time, it's too slow to upload)

This is my papa and little brother Brandon!

Brandon again

Me scratching coconuts (making coconut shavings)

Meg the huntress on the prowl with my bush knife (she originally asked for scissors but I handed her that instead)

Successful kill of a millipede

Me just exploring

Also I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet but everyone gets an custom island name only used within the village. Mine is Kaltava which means ‘mountain warrior’ – there are no hills or mountains that I can’t climb so I told my papa that I’d climb all the volcanoes of Vanuatu to live up to my name and he liked that.

Hope you enjoyed! Tata for now