"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.