Sai Ange

In Tongan, Sai Ange means "feeling better" which we certainly are. Abby has gotten medicine and we are both on the mend. You would have thought my dear wife learned her lesson during the great e. Coli scare of 2012. But nope, she still managed to eat a Tongan meal containing a parasite (I abstained) and paid the price. Did she ever pay the price.

This week featured our first tropical storm and it was a doozy. Without fail, Abby has told some of you how excited she was to live through her first storm in the tropics. As we found out this week, things are a smidgen more aggressive than she anticipated. The winds are crazy, the rain blows sideways, there is no school, no power, no running water and nothing to do but pray your meager house does not blow away. It was quite an episode!

Of course, most PCVs spent their time during the storm reading, watching movies on their computer and relaxing. Unfortunately, my time was spent with this person lesson planning. If you are thinking to yourself, there is no way Abby would force Ryan to look through every single one of those books for teaching ideas, then like me, you would be sorely mistaken.

 

One benefit of the storm was we had the chance to repay some community members who have helped us setup our lives here. Simi, the villager who oversees our house recently helped us re-build our tattered pig fence. So my little Betty Crocker made him two delicious-looking loaves of bread to enjoy with his family during the storm. The Tongans go nuts for fresh baked bread and Simi's family is of meager means and has no oven. So when I came hurdling through the rain with two fresh baked baked loaves, he was literally speechless with joy.

One big highlight for me was overhearing a comment from one of the high school girls who Abby tutors at night, named Mele. She is a good student who is always at our house seeing what is what.  I repeat, ALWAYS at our house. However, one of the most touching things I have heard is Mele talking about Abby. She told her father, a migrant farm worker in Australia who is returning to Tonga for the first time in 7 months next week, that the only thing she wanted him to bring her from Australia was candy she could give to her new friend Abby.

We are in right in the midst of school and have a lot of great things to look forward to. Our school will start competing in "Sports Days" against other schools in the western district every Friday. When its not raining, I have been using my exercise clubs to prepare our students for this. (You should see my homemade hurdles...pictures to come!) In addition, we have the Easter Holiday (never underestimate how big church holidays are in Tonga) and our first school break. After that we have a Peace Corps conference in Tonga* and in June we have our big trip to Fiji. We could not be more excited to spend a week on Fiji's Coral Coast relaxing and away from our Peace Corps duties.

That's all from here. If you happen to see the sun in America, please tell it to drop by Vava'u, as we sure do miss it! 

 *Fun fact, we never refer to Vava'u as "Tonga" (its a pride thing, folks). Tongatapou, the main island where we did our pre-service training is the only place called "Tonga" here in the Kingdom of Tonga. So when we refer to visiting Tonga, we mean going to the main island. Confusing, I know.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I just had to add this picture of my husband to his post.  He did not notice me with the camera but I happen to think I captured a priceless moment. We have both been talking about how much we miss running water and showers more specifically. The good thing about a rain storm is that we have a beautiful working outdoor shower. The Tongans call this "kaukau uha" (bathe in the rain). Along with our neighbors we take our soap and take care of buisness. It is funny to look across the way and see our neighbors taking their turns using the natural runoff for showers as well. Gotta love all that rain. P.S... our fancy new pig fence is in the background. Take that you fat oinkers :)