frisbee, friends, quiche and some newbies

25 January 2015

So I arrived in Vila on the 15th of January after some treacherous travels from Tanna. I was passing back through on my way to malekula but I took a week and a half pit stop to do some work and meet the new group of volunteers who arrived today! A big welcome party of volunteers and staff greeted the new volunteers at the airport with Salu salus and green coconuts to save them from collapsing in the heat thy haven't gotten used to yet.  Thirty one clean new peace corps trainees arrived today, I'm officially in the "old group." 

The first weekend I was in town I stayed with some Australian volunteer friends who live in a beautiful house overlooking the harbor. I've met them through various other volunteers and am so thankful for their hospitality whenever I'm in town and need somewhere to stay (rent free!). The house is beautiful, they have hot water AND a washing machine. Total luxury. 

It was nice being in town a little earlier than expected because Alison and I could relax and digest all our travels a bit. I was also able to play some ultimate frisbee with the Vila volunteers, play tennis with another volunteer, Rob, and hang out with people I don't have a chance to very often.  I was also able to watch the patriots game - live streamed in the resource room - so wahooooo going to the Super Bowl !!

My time in vila wouldn't be complete without some culinary adventures. My favorite was making a quiche at my friend Monica's house with some other friends. We used mushrooms, onion, bean sprouts, onion, goat cheese and tomato. Of course we also served chicken wings on the side.

On Monday I moved into pacific paradise motel as I was officially in town on peace corps business. The first half of the week I worked on a guide book for new education volunteers with quick reference information they might to know about education in Vanuatu. Luckily Jen had done a lot of work on it already so my man responsibility was putting it all together and filling in any gaps. I finished that on Wednesday and was able to work on printing our volunteer newsletter.

We have a newsletter that gets printed every quarter of articles by volunteers for volunteers called the VanAm. We share experiences, funny stories, advice, recipes and more to help each other stay sane throughout the sometimes lonely months at site. It's usually around 50 pages, this one is 44. I became the editor after the old group left so I'm responsible for printing. The second half of the week I spent doing final editing and formatting and finally printed today!

So as I said, we greeted the new group of volunteers at the airport today. They all came off the plane looking exhausted, excited, confused, and very, very hot. But also so clean! It's crazy thinking that a whole year ago I was that clean too!

Tomorrow night I'll be helping out with the session on Kava. Along with other volunteers I'll be talking about my experiences with Kava in Vanuatu and then we all drink together and storian until tudak ("too dark"). Then, bright and early Tuesday morning I'll head back to Matanvat, not to return until April!