Archive for June, 2006

Here are some pictures. I can’t quite see what I ended up actually getting online, but these are all pictures of Lelepa my training island.
Back again soon!

Hello everyone!! Sorry it has been so long. Things have been hectic – or as hectic as they can get when your living on “island time”. Two weeks ago we finished up the first part of training – our intensive language course. I feel okay with the Bislama. If you heard it, it may not sound that hard but trust you me hemi wan hard samting. As a close to the final week all trainers gave a three minute toktok in bislama.
This past week they sent all of us out on walkabout. This is where we go visit our sites for the first time. Get to look at the area we will be spending the next two years and meet the people of our future homes. My site is a small island just off the coast of the biggest island – Espiritu Santo. The name of my island is Tangoa. It is a breeding ground for tiger sharks – which makes the coastal aspect of my job seem a bit difficult. But I am fulap other ideas or tingting for the community. It is definately different than Lelepa (my training village) in that snorkeling prospects not so good, everyone talks in their native tongue – which is one of the amazing things about Vanuatu – it has more languages per capita than any other place in the world — about 100 languages for 200,000+ people -These are languagues too, not dialects, (back to Lelepa) and people just don’t laugh as much. On Lelepa it is joke after joke and I absoluetly love it. I know that I did not feel this way right away though, so I am going to give it a go and see what happens. Some up sides of Tangoa/Santo is that it is super tropical and full of beautiful coconut plantations which have mainly been converted to cattle farms and crystal clear streams.
Well again I don’t have time to go on because we are running around the city for the day visiting all the different ministries we may be working with.
I miss you all!!! Continue to write!
I did get a new name