Group 80 Welcoming Party!

No those are not mighty Samoan warriors, they are me and my fellow peace corps gents showing off what we've learned in the past year. the new group just arrived june 4th and we had a welcoming party with men and women's samoan dance. new volunteers start to get an idea what life is like here, and of course meet the veterans (us). current volunteers (we) look at it as a chance to get drunk and eat great food. the one where we are in a line is called the slap dance, we basically just jump around and hit ourselves, and each other. the other is the war dance of the national rugby team (Manu Samoa) that they do before every match. i think after that night we owe a few apologies to Samoa. but it was fun!

More Fire Dancing

Here are some pics to go along with the video on Laura's blog. It's f-in awesome.

Fire Dancing

everybody! click on "Laura's Blog" (link to the right under "other blogs") and watch some video footage of the samoan siva afi. words cant describe how cool it is. definately something you have to see in person at least once in your life.

random pics

shipwrecked. two of them men decided against their better judgement to go out the other night in head high waves. they didnt make it out. this boat had the back cover ripped off and the outrigger badly damaged. as always though, the men were ok.

samoan head massage "fofo." the headache reliever of choice. 60% of the time, it works everytime.

one of the proudest days of my life. seriously. 16 coconuts, carried barefoot down a slippery, rocky hillside about a half-mile long. i was later told that that was a girls load. the young men in the family do this everyday, sometimes twice a day. ive seen guys carrying 35-40 coconuts before.

tearing apart a coconut with his bear hands! u can either shuck them open with a stick or mash them on the rocks until the husk loosens up, like this guy did.

a welcome sign into the village for special occaisons. sooner or later it is taken back down by the villagers or a nice storm. whichever comes first. there was no welcome sign for when i came.

this is the preschool graduation last year. kids in white are moving on to the primary school. notice the candy necklaces, a big thing for special occaisons.

samoan guy grating coconuts. "valu popo" this is a task done by either gender of most any age. the flakes will then be squeezed into coconut cream or fed, as is, the the chickens.

comments

by all means, send me comments on here. i love to hear from people. one thing though... if u are from back home let me know who u are in the comment. i dont really have any way of figuring it out, and the username doesnt always give it away. and if u want me to reply, its probably best to shoot me an email. but keep em coming. thanks...

the committee

this is my peace corps committee and the carpenter for the tank project, and a few other people helping to build this particular tank. these are some Neiafu "matai" (samoan chiefs) that i work with on a regular basis to do projects in their village. those tarps go up when it starts raining, which we had to deal a lot with in the past two weeks, but we still managed to crank out 15 tanks in 18 working days. (thats a good pace)

tanks part 2

this is making the concrete, and a view of the finished product. we are done with the first 15 tanks and i dont think ive ever been in better shape. i dont think ive ever come this close to 6 pack abs and high blood pressure at the same time.