After church luncheon

I wish I could lighten up this photo a little bit, but no gat. On my right is my mama Esther--she looks kind of stern in every photo but she's honestly the best. Same with a lot of mamas on Tongariki--you'll notice if you look at the picture.

This photo was taken after church services in Lewaema village. I go to church--in language--every week. Another volunteer cued me in to the idea of reading the Bible during service (since I don't understand anything that's going on, at least I'm doing something church-y while everything happens.) I found a New Testament in the office, but since that's kind of small, I went out to this Bible store last time I was in town and got myself a full one. Since I've never read the Bible start to end, why not now?

Going back to site

Tomorrow morning I'm going to fly out to Epi Island to visit the girls out there, and then hopefully I'll take the boat down to Tongariki sometime next week. This means no internet, spotty phone service, no cheese/beer/bread/sweets/et cetera for another three months until the end of August, but I've set my blog to upload pictures and blog posts. I'm pretty excited to go back, since I've got a good idea of the projects that I want to do this next term. I'll still be teaching English lessons every day, but I want to get started on moving the library over into a bigger, more usable space; introducing dialogue journals with the older students; working with teachers for health and science lessons; vamping up our PE program; hopefully laying the foundation to do part or all of the gender-based violence workshop... And then I have other smaller goals, like learning how to weave a mat, learning how to cook gato (like a donut) and bread, getting more into yoga, and finally learning some of the language hymns at church.

Excited and ready to go!

(Half of how I spend my life -- please note the beautiful island hair and the ever present tank top.)

Internet Access on Tongariki...

Tongariki doesn't have internet access. I write all of my blog posts when I'm in town, in between binging on all sorts of things--Indian food, beer, the ability to purchase things that aren't breakfast crackers or tin meat. It's really funny, though, that life without internet access has made the internet so much more boring than I ever remember it being. Like in college I spent basically all day, every day, on the internet in some form or another, whether it was listening to music while I did my homework, watching hyper-educational shows like Teen Mom, or just clicking through TMZ while I was waiting for my coffee somewhere. But now I'm like--how did that even happen? Maybe since I've missed out on months of internet news at a time, nothing seems important to me.

At site, my parents told me about local news ... a little bit. Since February, I've heard about what happened at the Boston Marathon as well as about the election of the new pope. So when I came back from site, and everything on the internet was talking about Benghazi, and some IRS scandal (that frankly doesn't sound all that scandalous) it's just hard to be interested.

Facebook is basically the same. I feel like my life has changed so dramatically--and rapidly--that I can't really explain it in any way. There's just so much stuff up there that it's a little overwhelming.

It's probably good for me that I live so far out from everything. When will I ever be able to live like this ever again? I'll never be this far away from everything. I'll never be in another situation where it doesn't matter what I look like--where, in fact, I can look as incredibly homeless as I want. It'll just never happen. And here I have the opportunity to live a normal life--read lots of books, socialize a lot, and just have time to kick back, relax, and just let things happen as they happen. Even when that means watching paint dry. 

My little bro @ Jesus, Palm Sunday 2013

Morris as Jesus for Palm Sunday. He's riding in on a donkey (Jaylene) to Jerusalem, whereupon the other children will sing Hosanna. It was pretty adorable, can't lie to you. He's a great kid.

Langwij, langwij, oooooo langwij

Frustrating reality: Trying to look as though I'm quietly amusing myself while everyone else is talking in language all the time. In church, I have a good excuse now--I read the Bible, and I'm considering downloading some Bible Study so I can slow this process down a few months--but at meals? I know that some mamas who don't know me too well in the village think that I speak fluent language (lolz wut) but those who know me know I can talk about food, where I came from, and what children should run off and do. SIGH.

"Power" Dance, Easter Sunday, Buninga

Erakor Island Resort

I went out to Erakor Island Resort yesterday with my friend Ken and his counterpart, Ben--what a blast! We didn't know where the ferry was to take us across, so we swam/waded across from Erakor School over to the island. Before (bifo means anything from yesterday to centuries ago, and in this case, let's go with centuries ago) the ancestors of everyone from Erakor village lived on Erakor island. There was endemic warfare on all the islands, but Efate's pretty famous for it--comparatively speaking, it was much safer to live on an island and keep your garden on the mainland, so you could see all war parties and their canoes before they came.

There are an estimated trillion star fish on your way over there, but it's a pretty short trip. Over on the other side, there's a nice restaurant with the world's most expensive Tuskers (500 vt? Massive rip off), bungalows, beach chairs, and remnants from the Canadian missionaries who lived there -- the original dispensary, a few graves, and the foundation of the church they built around 1870.

Nice place! Worked on my tan, read all the way through "The Closers" by Michael Connelly, and got distracted by an elaborate fantasy in which I was building a shade screen by my hut so I could tan on Tongariki. This is not very likely to work (cough cough never cough) but definitely, definitely needed that break.