Friday, January 20, 2012

Life in Vila

Hey all,


So today's the 21st and I've been here (Port Vila) since the 2nd when they flew me in for the broken toe. I'm going back tomorrow to site which is good because I've been away so long. So what have I been doing here for so long you may ask? Well not much, in the beginning I couldn't walk too much and crutches really hinder your shopping abilities by needing two hands. Just enjoying the electricity, watching Mad Men (I'm almost done with season 3 and started when I got here.), a bunch of movies and really enjoying downloading new music for my ipod! Also I got my new kindle which is great news! One Peace Corps guy Nic was visiting the states and my parents sent the kindle to him so he brought it over for me, I just re-uploaded all my books so now I'm super happy to be able to read again. I've been hanging out with some of the volunteers from the other group and got to see some people from my group who are on Efate. Not too much has been going on but here are some photo updates since I've been here too:


A few of us spent the day at a nice resort (Le Legan - look it up if you want to stay here it's really nice!) And yes that's some serious sunburn haha


Another beautiful sunset in Vila



My hotel room for almost a month!

Hot plate - yes!!

Rockin' the crocs for toe defense!

Real shower and toilet...so amazing!

My "view"



Well that's about it for now, I'm going back to Ambae tomorrow for about 9 days and coming back to Vila on the 30th of January for Phase II Training with the rest of my group so it should be a great time, ale lukim yu fala afta!
Ta ta

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Kicken off the New Year hard..

So I literally kicked off the New Year pretty hard, so hard in fact:

Well that's not good
I broke it.
This was on 1/1/12 and then the next day I was on a flight to Vila and then on the 3rd I got x-rays and it's official it's fractured. The doc said because it's the last bone in the toe it's going to take about 6-8 weeks to fully heal because there's low blood circulation there. I think I'm going to be in Vila staying at a hotel for about 3-4 weeks so I'm literally here just hanging out in my hotel room not doing too much. I do have the best Internet I've ever had since being in Vanuatu so if you'd like to talk to me/call me add me on Skype (skype name: skirjames) I'm on a lot!

I don't have too much else to do except watch movies and TV shows because it's pretty hard to get around on crutches here, hope to see you on skype, ta!

Long Awaited Photo Update


So I haven't had too great of Internet until now which I'll explain in my next post but here is a whole bunch of photos which I've been meaning to get on here:

(The pics are divided into three sections for three different islands: Vila, Ambae and Santo)

Vila:
A map of Ambae in the PC Office

We're Group 24 - so why not?

Swearing in, becoming official Peace Corps Volunteers

Mine and Sam's amazing host family in Tanilou, Efate

Papa Pascal and Brota Brandon

Sunset in Vila

Some flying fox in the market (bat for you Americans)


Ambae:
Devil's Rock on Ambae
                                               

                                      
Rory and I with our 50 cal bullets we dug out

One spot during the hike to Zack's
Manaro with it's head up in the clouds


Up by Zack's Village - the view down

The start to East Ambae..

So many miles..


Keep going..


Had to trek across a couple of these


Zack

Friendly family of bulls right?

Wrong! Run away!

This was papa cow mid charge at us

So tired...

Kara's Xmas tree!

Mmmmm turkey spam

Kara's village Xmas celebration
They split up the white man..

We had fake snow!


Our Christmas ended in a paint war..



Santo:
Champagne Beach!

Jason & Ryan grappling

Meg and I

1st place fish!

AMBAE!

Santo people

Man Ambae! (Joel, me, Zack)

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed the pics!

AMBAEleavable Christmas

So I pronounce my island Ambae as: uhm-bye so you can see how clever ambaeleavable is ;]

Anyway..


Zack and I were planning on spending Christmas together and two days before I walked up to his village and he came down to mine to hang out. One volunteer Kara on East Ambae said we should hang out with her for Christmas so we thought that was a great idea and had it in our heads to walk from West to East (which is rarely done).

I timed it using the stop watch on my watch and when we ended it was 8 hours 23 minutes. That doesn’t include a 10 minute stop for lunch – it was all walking. Needless to say I physically couldn’t move after that – it was the most intense walk of my life. Because I knew we were eventually going to Santo for New Years, I packed my kindle, laptop, ipod, speakers and cell so I basically had all of my electronics with me. I did not know that it was going to downpour like crazy and have to ford three different raging rivers. I was so scared I was going to go down and lose all my stuff but we made it through. Afterwards we found a family of cows on the beach who then proceeded to charge down the beach towards us so we had to make a run for it up in the bush. It turns out there wasn’t much of a trail so we got lost for a few hours after completely running out of water so I was survivor man style and sipping the collected rain water from lily like leaves. Apparently we only got half way and had to charter a really expensive boat to take us the rest of the way, by the time we finally got to her house my legs just could not move anymore and I slept incredibly well. Later the next day I found out that during that crazy adventure my kindle got soaked and water got under the screen ruining it. It’s pretty sad because I use my kindle a LOT and now it’s gone :’[ all is not lost though because my parents already got one and sent it to a current volunteer who’s visiting the states and he agreed to bring it back to Vanuatu with him when he comes home from vacation! So my replacement is already on its way and until then it’s back to physical books..

Our Christmas was pretty great, another volunteer Megan from North Ambae joined us and we had a whole bunch of American food! Fried turkey spam, mashed potatoes, gravy, Mac & Cheese, sweet potato fries and a pumpkin pie (which turned out more to be pumpkin pudding, but still delicious!

It was definitely a different experience and didn’t really feel like Christmas being on a hot island with no snow anywhere in the future. It was definitely sad to be away from my family and friends for the holidays but everyone here is in the same boat so it was good to share it with people who are going through the same thing and we had a great time.
We just hung out for the next two days and then found out that the Efate Queen, which is a passenger ship, was heading for Ambae to go to Santo and that’s where we needed to go. Santo is the other main city in Vanuatu and has power and Internet and all that so we all went to go stay with Ryan. We left at 7:00AM to walk two hours to the north port and didn’t get to Santo until 2:30AM the next day! The distance is only a four hour boat ride but it had to stop a few times and let people on and off. The ship system is truly inefficient to say the least, a little boat that can hold 4-5 people per trip had to keep coming and going from the trip transporting hundreds of people, adding up to several hours of just waiting. There really must be a better way but no one has seen fit to adopt that way as of yet.

So we finally made it to Santo and hung out in town for a few days which was great – cheese burgers, beers and milkshakes. There’s really nothing better than that after living off of bread and rice for the past few weeks. A bunch of us got together for New Years, partied all night – just like the states. After New Years we went to this place called Champagne Beach (which if you Google real quick you’d see it’s one of the best beaches in the world) was absolutely gorgeous (pictures to follow in next post).

All in all my first Christmas and New Years away from home was a pretty good time.