1 Year, 2 Year

This Monday, September 2nd marks two important anniversaries for Abby and me.  Two years ago, we were married on September 2nd, 2011 at the fabulous Polk County Courthouse in Des Moines. If you can recall that far back, we pushed up our wedding date (we were planning on a Summer 2013 Wedding in Denver initially) and shotgunned the damn thing because we were tired of waiting to go into the Peace Corps, and married couples have to be wed for one year minimum before they are allowed to leave. That worked out pretty well, as one year ago, on September 2, 2012 we officially departed the good ol' USA en route to Peace Corps Tonga. Looking back on both of those dates, they both seem a little surreal.

In many ways Its hard to imagine we have lived abroad for an entire year, away from all of you. On the other hand, life in America seems so far removed from our worlds that its hard to believe it ever existed. There are just no words to explain what this experience has meant to us and how it has been.

In a word:                           hard

In another word:                 life-changing 

In a third word:                   tedious

And last but not least:         awe-inspiring
 
The good with the bad and the bad with the good. Such is the roller-coaster of Peace Corps. Thanks for sticking it out with us.

In other news:
It has been another slow week around these parts. The dog days of the school year have set in and we got to remember what debilitating humidity feels like with the return of the heat.

Mark and Alissa stayed one night with us and Mark, the incredible cook that he is, made a dead-on impression of tasty tacos. This elicited tears of joy on my behalf and even my wife admitted they were fantastic. For those keeping score at home Panchero's, Tasty Tacos and the Taco House in Boji (aka the Ted McCartan hat trick) are all on my first week eating itinerary upon our return to the states.

They slaughtered some cows in the village and Lucky got himself a steer's horn. (Did I mention its been a slow news week?)

Since I have done the lion's share of cooking lately (that's right folks, I can make hand rolled tortillas with my eyes closed now) I asked Abby if she could pickup the slack and take care of dinner Thursday night. She said absolutely and that she had a special surprise in mind. I hoped for more tasty tacos. What I got was Tongan rum and cokes with cereal and uncultured box milk for dinner. Yep. Two years of marital bliss...

That's all from here. Happy Labor Day!


....whoa, whoa whoa. Stop the train. I just realized that the Hawks are back in action this week. Wow, I feel so far removed. But have no fear Hawk fans, detailed schedule analysis, position-by-position breakdown and some reflective thoughts about the Ferentz era to come...

Some pictures:

Abby retro-fitted her infamous country reports to ocean animals. The kids loved them and the projects are setting the stage for some environmental projects I will be doing with the kids and our community in October.

See, no lies here, he really did get a steer's horn!

We went into our bathroom to find this little guy dead in our bath bucket. The rats are back. Maybe more depressing, we had to clean out our dead-rat infested bath bucket with my old e. coli bucket. Yikes.

P.S.~I asked Abby to contribute her words to sum up one year in Tonga. After viewing my blog she said: "kids, dog and rats, yup, that pretty much sums it up!"

Much ado about Nothin'

So, here are the happenings from this week.

We finally found the rat who has consumed about $20 worth of poison dead in the yard. Good stuff.

We baked a pizza with some kids.

Watched our students take their trial sivi's. These are the tests they must pass to be able to attend high school next year. Very few of them were successful in passing. Stressful times.

Ryan refused to do household chores because of his kingly meeting. He may have gotten locked out of the house in the rain due to my lack of ability to handle him. I think the men in the kava hall next door thought I was pretty funny though :)

And that folks was our whole week.

Random pics from a "hula hula" (dance) we went to in our village a few weeks ago. Kids here are the most amazing dancers ever! I stuck to zumba dances... at least I didn't make as much of a fool of myself as I could have. Mr. Too Cool for Life because I touched the hand of a king sat slumped on the sidelines all night. Party pooper extraordinare.

 

     

 

The little guy with the jacket in this pic is our neighbor, Loa. We dubbed him "best dressed" at the dance, no contest!

The Man Comes Around

Saturday, August 10th marked the revival of a major event here in Vava'u. You see, every year the Kingdom has a Royal Agricultural and Fisheries Show that is pretty much like the Iowa State Fair for folks in Tonga. However, for a variety of reasons (both political and logistical) this event has not taken place on the island of Vava'u for 13 years. That streak came to an end this past Saturday as the show took place at Vava'u High, the one public middle school/high school on the island.

What's more? With great circumstance comes great pomp, and there is no greater pomp around these parts than the King. The show also marked the inaugural visit of King Tupou VI to Vava'u. That's right, the streets were cleaned and lined with flowers and flags, everyone put on their best tupenus, taovalas, puletahas and kiekias and the military showed up to provide security, all to welcome the big man to our tiny little island paradise.

The show itself was fantastic. Each village had its own display booth. The most prominent booths featured their village's largest root crops (I mean it is still Tonga, folks), woven mats, livestock, wood carvings, fish and flowers. We saw 6 foot tall taro plants, 6 foot long eels and enough ufie to eradicate the entire Irish potato famine of the 1860s (its hard to over-emphasize the amount of root crop at this thing). We don't mean to be biased, but it was clear our village's woven mats were the most beautiful of any booth. There were also demonstrations for Tongan wood carving, weaving, harvesting vanilla, andgrowing vegetables. Naturally, the two of us with our friends Mark & Alissa found the booth where they were using fresh grown ginger and yeast to make ginger beer and serving it with a side of root crops friend up like potato chips. So good.

The day also came with one HUGE surprise. To explain the surprise, you have to understand our relationship with Tuki.

In the vein of Nan Louise, Lisa Eileen and Grandma Cassie, Tuki is truly our Tongan mother. She lives in our village with her husband Lolohea and teaches kdg. in Neiafu at the Fijian school (she is half Fijian).  Since the day we moved here Tuki has taken us under her wing and looked out for us. She regularly stops by to chat and share village gossip with us so we know everything "important" happening. She tells us when big village events are happening, guides us on what we should wear and how we should act and usually comes by to actually take us to the event so we don't feel akward. A Godsend is what she really is. Tuki often has her husband gives us rides to town when we are in a pinch. 

The Saturday morning of the fair, Tuki came to tell us she was going to have Lolohea drive us into town for the fair. We thought we would be going with them, but we soon realized that Tuki had Lolohea come from the bush just to take us in early so we could experience the fair from start to finish. Later, when we were walking around the fair, Tuki came up to us and told us that Lolohea had won a prize that day for his root crops. This was incredibly exiting, because it meant Lolohea would be called up in front of the thousands of people to accept his award from the King himself! Then she dropped a huge bombshell on us.  She said that she and Lolohea decided one of us should accept the award because this would give one of us the opportunity to meet and shake hands with King Tupou VI. We were stunned speechless. Shake hands with the King? Really? We decided that Ryan would meet the King as I was not very dressed up and we all know Ryan has a pompous superiority complex to begin with :). So, an hour later, Ryan got to walk up the stage in front of the whole fair, remove his shoes, bow to his majesty (twice as tradition dictates) and shake hands with King Tupou VI. It was such an amazingly cool moment. But don't feel too bad for me, I got to join Ryan and Tuki in the Royal tent to watch the affair, where cakes and juice were served to us on platters by high school students!

At the end of the day, Tuki stopped by our house to chat with us about the fair. She wanted to know what it was like to shake hands witha King. Tuki then said she had to walk all the way to the store to get laundry soap. This is a woman who had been running ragged since about 4 a.m. and it was now 6p.m. I tried to give her some of our laundry soap to take home so she could just go home and rest, but she absolutely wouldn't take it. She said everything she had done was because she was our Tongan mother and that is just what Tongan mothers do. Ryan and I love this woman so much. We feel so lucky to have made a friend such as her on this journey. 

Here is a picture of Tuki and Abby at the fair:

Our village's booth:

    

Other booths at the fair. We LOVED the outer island's booths because they had the craziest display of ocean life we have ever seen. The sharks and octopus were our favorite.

King Tupou VI  taking a tour of the fair:

Ryan waiting to meet the king:

And finally, the big finale. Ryan meeting King Tupou VI.

A Big Moment

To help explain (and justify) our lack of posting, we wanted to share with you a big moment we recently had in our service here in Vava'u. While our village does an amazing job of celebrating the old customs of Tonga, it also wants to be present in the 21st century so the children have as many opportunities as possible with their lives. Throughout our service, they have constantly reinforced this vision.

To make this vision a reality, we scoured our Tongan contacts and finally got put in touch with a Tongan businessman who lives in Auckland, New Zealand by the name of Mosese Uele. For several months we worked with Mosese, telling him all about our amazing students and village. Mosese grew up in Tonga but used his skills in English and computers to start his own import/export business in Auckland. We all agreed that these are the types of skills the village must have if they are going to be able to have these same type of opportunities. In the end, Mosese told us he would like to visit our village and donate four computers to our school. He said he would only do this if we agreed to train the Tongans on how to use, maintain and maximize these computers.

On Wednesday, after a lot of stressful planning, Mosese came to our village with five computers. The people were so touched by this generosity they planned a massive town celebration in which they roasted pigs, setup a feast and a performance to honor the gift. It was an amazing day in which there were LOTS of prayers, speeches and thanksgivings. Ryan even got up and gave a speech in Tongan!

After all is said and done, now the hard part begins! We are working on re-wiring the Tessa library to accommodate the computers, scouring the world for cheap English Language Learning and math computer programs, and training our village on how to maximize these wonderful gifts. For us, the most important thing about this entire experience has been that it was a Tongan man who was giving back to a Tongan village, which made the day about Tongans empowering Tongans through education versus the white-man just giving things to a needy community.

Our next project with Mosese (oh we are not close to done with him) is setting up a second computer lab for the community which will be for general use. Mosese was so touched by the reception he received, the eagerness of our community and the plans we have made that he has asked us to facilitate another gift of computers at a later time. Already we have had several young men in the village volunteer to work with us and take on the task of creating a community computer lab. Our goal is that within one year, both of these projects will be completely run, maintained and administered by the people of our village, which is the only true way to create sustainable change in this community.

Here are some pictures from this wonderful day, enjoy!

 

 The new computer lab in the Tessa Library:

    

          

The community enjoying the feast:

     

 

      

Here is Mosese joining in the traditional Tongan feast dancing. A little rain never stops the Tongans!

 

   

   

 

 

I was so proud of how great Ryan was with our community. At first, the men and women were a little hesitant to go into the library and check the computers out. But, Ryan was so encouraging and tried to have everyone come see "their" new computers that by the end of the day, even the women came in to have their picture taken! This is a huge deal because the women were SO shy and uncertain about going into the library where all day only the important village men had been. I was so happy to walk into the library and see two really involved moms chatting with Ryan and asking to be shown some things on the new computers! YEAH!!!

 

P.S. There are many pictures of me on this blog because I let kids loose with our camera, which Ryan is firmly against. So, when it came time for me to take pictures of him giving his speech and leading the big reveal of the computers, I realized the camera was in a 5th grader's hands at the other end of the feast table and he was taking pictures of roast pig. Oops!

Knee Deep

First and foremost, we wanted to wish Dr. OCD a very, very happy 65th Birthday today! We know Big Nan and 'Team One Day' will make it a great one for him!

We are sorry for the brief hiatus in posts. The truth is we've been knee deep in work and with our community and have simply forgotten about it lately! Overall, both of us are starting to feel incredibly positive about our work and our experience in Tonga as we approach our 1 year mark (September 4). We truly love our community, our school and (most of all) our kids. These things continue to keep us going when things get difficult. 

As for some highlights.

From Ryan

When I was growing up, my mother taught me that I was to never 'hate' anything in this world as 'hate' is ugly and negative and has no place in our hearts. However, my father corrected this and actively taught me to hate the source of all evil in our universe, which of course is the University of Nebraska Cornhusker Football Team. Therefore, it was incredibly heartwarming and even more infuriating when my Aunt Debbie had the 4th grade Student Council at her school, Harney Elementary in South Sioux City, Nebraska, send our students a box of school supplies, an amazing handmade book about school life in America and a boatload of University of Nebraska Cornhusker merchandise for our students to enjoy. While I watch our students enjoy these things on a daily basis, I can't help but hear the laughter of the Gunsolleys, the Fields and the Urkoskis (all the Cornchuckers in my life) in my head. Its very tough.

The kids enjoying the book:

 

Abby writing herself out of the Kloberdanz family will:

Abby's way of torturing me, making me stand for a picture with some of my favorite boys amid this ugliness:

(wipe that grin off your face Urkoski)

But don't worry Hawk fans, every single student in the village knows how to say 'Go Hawks' and 'On Iowa', while the advanced kids are working on things like 'Hawks day today' and 'I sure do love Kirk, but does he have to be so stubborn all of the time?'  

We also had the pleasure of hosting our friends Mark and Alissa at school one day this past week. The kids were besides themselves and couldn't stop bragging how important our village was to have four 'Pisikoas' (Peace Corps) there. Mark & Alissa are fantastic teachers so they loved watching Abby work and made the day super fun for our kids and our staff. My favorite part of the day was watching the kids greet the four of us. At the end of conversations in Tonga, its customary to to shout the person's name and then 'eh' and for that person to reply with 'yo'. This is considered a sign of respect. For our students, every single time they walk past our house they shout "Epi mo Laieni, eh" and we are required to drop everything and answer them with "Yo". When Mark and Alissa were here, it was truly hilarious to hear our young kids take a huge deep breath and bellow "Ma'ake mo Lisi mo Epi mo Laieni, eh!' every time they saw us and get back for 'yo's' right on cue.  

*Sidenote: When and how the Canadian "eh" made its way into Tonga I'll never know, but its well entrenched now.

From Abby

I, too, spent the week just feeling so happy and blessed to be surrounded daily by our students. They exude life.... EVERYDAY. They are just so full of energy and enthusiasm it is hard not to feel like the luckiest people in the world for getting to work with them. It was also wonderful having Mark and Alissa to our home. Friends make this experience so much easier to handle. It is especially wonderful to have another married couple to confide in as we work through the many feelings and situations that constantly bombard us here. 

One big highlight for me is doing zumba everyday at 3:00. Right when Ryan and I finish our last class, we join the entire school to zumba. Our class 1/2 teacher, Viola, is incredible. She is a Tongan teacher who is really pushing innovation in the classroom and healthy lifestyles outside of it.. She went to a training for Tongan teachers and learned lots of different ways to incorporate physical education into the school day. She recently taught the kids badminton, which they now play daily at lunch. Then, this week, she taught us zumba. It is awesome because we come together as a whole school. Our principal, Tevita, even joins in. Here are some pictures of our students, principal, and parents exercising in the rain!

     

Sadly, I did have to take the broom and hit the dog with it this week. Truly it was for his own good. My softie of a husband confuses the poor creature by actively trying to lure him in the house. He now plays dead when I try to push him out the door. So, a little whack with a broom and he has learned he needs to stay right outside the door. The broom whacking also applied to my husband anytime he instigated the situation. Someone has to bring the tough love. But, I was forgiven and all is well.

Its also been great to find a bunch of kids who love to play uno as much as I do. Some of them even started to win without by using "Tongan rules" a.k.a cheat as much as possible. We have the students write their names on our blackboard once they get a LEGIT win. This week Laea, a student who is Ryan's best friend because they have a similar sense of humor, beat me. He was so proud to see his name go on the board. I was actually pretty excited too.

 The rain finally stopped! We all love the return of the sun. Lucky and I are sunbathing while out solar shower heats up for a warm evening bucket bath.

 

                                                                                                                                             

Cooking classes continue! This week was chocolate cookies. Word has gotten around the village about my cooking classes. This has, well, exploded. Let's just say I will be leading so many pizza, cookie, and muffin sessions that I will be able to make these things blindfolded. But it is so worth it. The kids just love doing something they have never done before. My husband will eventually forgive me for spending our hard-saved alcohol money on baking goods. :)

 

That's all from us for now! Stay tuned next week!