Back home

I'm back in the U.S.

I had a really really long journey- over 40 hours traveling, but luckily I had no problems. I had no delayed planes (I went on 4) and all my bags made it through. I had 2 10+ hour layovers in Fiji and LA, but I managed to read a lot, walk around the airports, and look in every store. Back home I have done some shopping, eaten good food, and just relaxed. Well, I think that'll be all my updates on the blog, but if you think of anything else you want to know, email me at alyssathiel@gmail.com

leaving on a jet plane

Tomorrow at this time I'll be about to arrive in Fiji. Nothing much new. Now I'm officially no longer a Peace Corps Volunteer but I'm still using the Peace Corps computer. And then in a couple days I'll be home!

"Alyssa, don't pretend to die anymore, okay?"

So I've been in Vila for almost a week now. I've been completing a lot of final Peace Corps work. We have to write up a description of our service, have a language proficiency exam, some medical appointments, meet with the boss, close our bank accounts, all of those fun things. I've also had a chance to hang out with my Peace Corps friends and some of my Futuna family that lives in Vila. There's a new group of Peace Corps Volunteers that arrived in September and are now finishing their training so I've also been spending some time imparting some wisdom on them.

Anyway, the other day I decided to go meet up with some of my Futuna family. I walked just a few blocks over to where they were and I was standing by their truck just talking to them all. All of a sudden I felt really tired and my vision went all spotty and the next thing I knew I woke up to like 20 people around me and asking me if I wanted to go to the hospital. I had no idea why, but they said I had fainted. That had never happened to me, it was so weird. Anyway I felt really hot and sweaty but they said I was cold and my face had gone white. I went to the hospital but they didn't find anything wrong with me. I just rested the whole day and felt better. The next day I went to visit my family again and they told me in Bislama "Yu no mo kiaman ded." Which basically means "Don't pretend to die." I thought that was a funny way of putting it. I guess there's no word for faint in Bislama.

Now I'm just hanging out. We have our Peace Corps Last Kakae (final meal)for the 5 of us that are leaving within the next week. We're just going to get together with the Peace Corps staff and volunteers and anyone else who thinks we're pretty cool. It's sort of a cultural thing in Vanuatu that whenever someone leaves you have to make this last kakae, even if it's not technically their last meal, you still have to make some meal where it's dedicated to them. Tomorrow is the swearing-in ceremony for the new group of Volunteers. The President of Vanuatu will be giving a speech which is pretty special. Next week all of those new volunteers will be going out to their islands.

Oh and also yesterday morning I walked to the supermarket to get some breakfast. It literally took me like 30 minutes to decide, and you know what I wound up with? Cereal and milk. But there were like at least 20 different cereal options. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when i return to the states and there's a whole aisle worth of cereal.

A few more photos

I've posted some photos for you to see:

Me, my sister, and this kid from Australia who came with his family to visit Futuna
One of my classes at school
Peace Corps or Beach Corps?
Me hard at work
Lunch

But of course the plane would get a flat tire

Yesterday I came to Vila. I left Futuna for the last time (unless I go back to visit some day). The airport agents sent a message that we had to get to the airport early because the plane would come at 8 am. I left my village at 6 in the morning and waited at the airport for a long time. The agent finally got there and said he sent a message that the plane would come at 10, so I guess that got mixed up somewhere. Anyway, 10 o'clock came and went and there was no sign of a plane. But eventually around 12:30 it arrived. When it landed, one of the tires popped perhaps on a sharp stone. Then the plane had a flat tire. They said that we may have to go on it like that, but i did not think that was a good idea. They said "you don't need a wheel to fly a plane" but I reminded them that we would have to land again. Well luckily they called the airline and they sent another plane to Futuna with 2 mechanics and 2 spare tires. They changed both the broken tire and the other back tire because they said it looked like it was going to pop at any time. I'm not sure why they didn't check that when they left the capital, but at least they got it fixed. And then instead of going on the plane whose tires had broke, which would've stopped at 2 other destinations before mine, I got to fly directly to the capital on the mechanics' plane.

Now I'm in the capital until the 7th finishing up all my Peace Corps work. The above photos show the flat tire and them fixing it.

Mi kilem ded wan rat

Can you guess the meaning of that phrase written in Bislama? Try to read it phonetically. “Me killem dead one rat.” “I killed a rat”

Lately the rats have taken up residence in my house again. I’m not sure why they like it because I don’t have any food here. I guess they just want the shelter. A couple months ago a Mama rat and a bunch of her babies decided to make a nest inside one of my boxes of stuff. When I finally discovered them, I wasn’t sure what to do. The Mama ran away but the babies were so small they couldn’t run. But then I couldn’t make myself kill them. I just threw them outside and luckily they didn’t come back.

Then last week I awoke all of a sudden to the tell tale noise of a rat running across the floor. I got out of bed and shined my flashlight on it and it would run to another part of my house. It kept running circles around my house as I chased it so basically i was laying flashlight tag with a rat. I positioned myself by the door with the door open and got the rat to go outside. As I was about to go back to sleep, I heard it come inside again. I spent another 30 minutes chasing it and eventually it left and I went back to sleep.

Then a few nights later I heard the rat again. We played some more flashlight tag and it went outside. Even when the rat is frozen, I’m still not sure what to do and I’m scared to kill it. I was back in bed when i heard a crinkling noise right by my bed. It sounded like a rat walking over one of the bags that I store stuff in. I kicked the bag to get the rat to run away, but there was no sign of the rat. When I heard the noise again, I realized it was inside the bag. At this point I felt like I had no choice. I started hitting the bag with the blunt edge of my machete. Eventually I got the rat. It was still wriggling around but I didn’t want to chop it in half because I didn’t want rat guts in my bag. I just stood on it for awhile. Then I emptied all my stuff from the bag, took it outisde, and dumped the rat in the grass. After that I went back to sleep thinking pleasant thoughts of dead rats.

Reading Promotion Week

This week at school we are having Reading Promotion Week. The basic idea was that they were going to cancel all other subjects and just focus on reading. However, it didn’t turn out that way at all. I guess like everything in Vanuatu, it didn’t turn out as planned. My main job in this program was to read aloud to all the classes. They want the students to hear fluent English being read. This was actually really enjoyable as the kids would get really excited to hear me read. But for the rest of the day, there seemed to be very little reading involved. There were 10 minutes of silent reading in the morning, but other than that the teachers liked to focus on this section they call “experience with a topic”. Basically they’re supposed to do some hands on activity related to what they are reading. The teachers I think interpreted this time as, let’s let the kids run wild, time. Yesterday one of the classes decided they’d take this time which is supposed to be an hour long and do a traditional bunia or bake. The bunia includes various root crops and any meat available (chicken or bat preferable). Well, needless to say, this activity which began at 9 in the morning went until 2 pm. And the whole time, the students were definitely not speaking English. I wonder if it even related to what they were reading. Anyway, next Monday they’ll do their presentations of what they have learned during the week so it should be quite interesting.

Also next week will be my last week teaching my classes. In 2 weeks from today, I’ll be leaving Futuna and heading to the capital. It still hasn’t really hit me yet that I’m leaving and a lot of these people I may never see again. I think I’m most sad about my 3 year old sister. Like all of the other people I can keep in touch with through letters or email, but my sister who is like my best friend here probably won’t even remember me when she gets older. The good thing about leaving is that I’m trying my hardest to appreciate all these organic root crops that I’m eating. Like whenever we’re having manioc for the umpteenth time that week I just tell myself, that maybe, just maybe, I’ll be thinking about manioc when I go home but I won’t be able to eat it.