Vanilla Cub Wants Honey Too

Group 77 Peace Corps Tonga.

Hi team, sorry we haven’t been posting much as Internet access is few and far between here in the Friendly Islands. Since arriving in LA for our staging things have really been a whirlwind. The most important things are that Abby and I both love our fellow Peace Corps Trainees (PCTs) and we are having tons of fun with them.

When we arrived in Tonga many of the Peace Corps staff and volunteers came to greet us. It was nice to see the stars and stripes after 20 hours of traveling. However, if you absolutely have to fly coach internationally, Air New Zealand is the way to go.

For the first four days in Tonga we lived similarly to tourists. We stayed in a comfortable guest house, walked around the markets and enjoyed all the sites and sounds of Tonga’s capital city Nuku’alofa. One highlight was Friday, the 7^th where we got to attend a party with international volunteers from Australia and New Zealand.

The next morning all 15 PCTs went to ocean survival training at the Tongan Naval base. We got to dive off their battleship and learned survival-training exercises in the water along with current Tongan soldiers. 

Things in the village have been great so far. The food is far different from anything I have experienced, but there is always plenty of coffee and ice cream to go along with the root crops and crazy looking meats. Our language lessons have just started but Abby has already far outpaced me in learning Tongan. Our biggest fight to date was when she had the audacity to speak to me in her “teacher voice” as I had to sternly explain that I was not a sixth grader at West Denver Prep but her husband. That did not end well.

Anyway, that is all for now but we will continue to update when we can get to the city. If you need something to read you can always check out my first blog www.brownbearwantshoney.blogspot.com. Okay, its not really “my” blog but I have pretty much kept it afloat these last couple of years while some Greek dude gets all the credit.