Our Homestay House

Here is the house we are living in here in Lavengatonga. We just wanted to give you a visual of where we are staying!

Peace Corps Training

First and foremost, a huge malo e leilei to future Hawkeye Nolan Jefferey Williams! We are so happy to hear mom, dad, brother and baby are doing well. We know your grandparents and aunt Nonnie are already spoiling you!

As for us, Ryan and I have just finished our second week of training here in Tonga.  We still have about seven weeks left as a PCTs before we are sworn in as full Peace Corps Volunteers.  We will continue to post as much as we can however, we have no Internet (or computers!) in our village and have to travel to the capitol city to blog. That is why we are uploading so many posts at one time!

Training is going really well. Ryan and I are working hard on getting to know our host family and learning the Tongan language. Every day, we wake up at about 6a.m., go for a quick run and come home for an ice cold shower. Breakfast is usually fruit, cookies, and coffee. But sometimes there is a special surprise like spaghetti-o sandwiches and hot dogs. Yep... spaghettio- o sandwiches. That's right folks.. when Tongans think of Americans, they think of spaghettios on bread with a hot dog. You haven’t lived until you have had a side of hot dogs with your coffee.This is just Tia’s way of trying to make us American food so we always greet it with a smile.

After breakfast, our Tongan language instructor and two other volunteers from our village come to our house. We spend most of the morning working on language. Tongan is such a fun language to learn. It is SO different from English, but Ryan and I have enjoyed helping each other work on our fluency. Although, Ryan may not enjoy nightly drill sessions where we can’t go to sleep until we master the lesson/ objective I have created for us.  Well, it’s his own fault for marrying a teacher! After lunch at home, we walk about 15 minutes to the next village where all 15 Peace Corps trainees meet everyday to continue our instruction in teaching, safety, and cross cultural training.  Finally, Ryan and I come home for dinner, which is usually eaten with us staring at our plates and playing a friendly game of “guess-that-meat”! Much of the time these meals are delicious and other times we categorize them as “interesting”. 

On Thursday our group went the local village elementary school to get a feel for how Tongan schools operate. We met some amazing Tongan teachers and some super excited kids. They sang to us, and asked us a million questions in Tongan. They taught us some phrases and showed us all around their classroom. It was so incredible.

We have been amazed at the partnership Peace Corps has with the Tongan Ministry of Education. The Ministry has a very clear idea of what they want us to do to help them strengthen rural primary schools. It is very humbling to be a part of everything happening here in Tonga. We are fortunate to be getting such intensive training in preparation to teach when the new school year begins in January!

We miss you all very much. We hope you are doing well and can’t wait to hear some updates so please email or write us whenever you feel like it!

Random Tonga

I’m not quite sure how to properly file this next post, but I wanted to share some of the random moments that make Peace Corps Tonga a truly surreal experience.

The pleasant ones take your breath away. Eating the most amazing ota eka (raw fish cubed in a fresh coconut herb sauce) I could ever imagine. Studying Tongan on a beach resort with your friends while the Pacific Ocean wails on the shore. Looking out the window at church to see a tropical paradise of blue sky and palm trees. Drinking out of a coconut for most meals. Ice cream and canned peaches for lunch on a hot day. Attending an authentic Polynesian fire dance held in an ancient Tongan cave.

Of course there is the downside of these moments too and Tonga is full of quirks. One night in our pitch-black house I was scared shitless by a full size wild pig who  made its way inside and was wreaking havoc on Tia’s kitchen. Unfortunately I was blocking its escape route and when we finally came face-to-snout, the charge came accompanied by an ear-piercing squeal (okay two squeals—one from the pig and one from me). And NO, it is not true that they are more scared of you than you are of them. This was followed by an immediate retreat to the bathroom for safety, where I was grazed by a lizard who apparently lost his grip of the ceiling and felt my head would make a suitable replacement.  All in all, it may have been the most traumatic 60 seconds of my life.

--Ryan

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.

Homestay Village Life

Right now, Ryan and I are living in the village of Lavengatonga, a rural village on the southeastern side of the main island Tongutapu. Our host mother, Tia, is a wonderful woman who works very hard to make sure Ryan and I are happy here. Regardless of some tough situations that have happened to her, she makes it a point to rely on her faith in God to always choose to be happy. Many people in the village come to her to talk, especially young men. Every night at dinner, she helps us work on our Tongan.

This is our host mom Tia. We are standing in front of our home.

This is how women dress for church on Sunday. Someone else was too shy to let me post a picture of him in his Sunday best... but it is coming, I promise.

People in this village all live very simply. Most of them have a 2-3 room house with electricity. Many have indoor bathrooms with plumbing. The word ‘community’ does not really show the depth of how the people in this village work together. In every home, the front door is wide open. If you need something, you walk into a house to get it. If you are hungry, you go ask someone to feed you.

Religion is a large part of village life. In our village, there is a Mormon, Catholic, Wesleyan, and Methodist church. Our village is about the size of one city block. Full services happen every morning and night. On Sunday, there are three full services. Some families go to every service, some only a few. Tongan church singing is an experience all it’s own. I have never heard such beautiful, melodious acapelo singing in all my life.

The people in the village have been very courteous and kind to Ryan and I. They wave at us and respond when we greet them. Many have expressed how important it is to them that we learn their language since we are living in their village.  They are so very proud of their culture, and they invite us to share in it. All they ask in return is that we respect their culture enough to take the time to try to learn Tongan. When we speak to them, they are gentle and helpful in correcting us. Many who speak English here help us by repeating phrases in English and then asking us to say it in Tongan again. Ryan and I are so blessed to be in this community learning as much as we can about the people we are going to be serving for the next two years.

Fist Days in Tonga

Today Ryan and I awoke to the raucous crowing of roosters. These wonderful birds begin to call to the sun around 4 a.m.... hours before the sun actually graces us with our presence.  Our first few days in Tonga have been surreal and amazing. We are here in Tonga with 13 other amazing people. Already we feel so connected to them.

Our first day here, we were greeted by many current Volunteers serving here in Nuku 'alofa. They are a wonderful and inspiring group of people. Many of them complete their service here in December, and I know the island will feel empty when they go.  We were also greeted by the Tongan Peace Corps Staff. They are such a generous, intelligent, and supportive group of people. They have made us feel so safe and welcome here.

Ryan and I in the Peace Corps headquarters volunteer lounge.

Our day schedule right now is wake up around 6 a.m.... take a cold shower and get dressed for the day. We eat breakfast at our guest house and all walk to the Peace Corps office for our day of training. We have 2 tea breaks, which are a wonderful way to talk, refresh, and connect. For lunch, we walk to local places to grab food.

On Saturday, Ryan and I will be moving to the village of Lavengatonga with two other people from our group and our language trainer.  We will move into our host families home and continue our training. We learned today that our host family is a mother and her 19 year old son and 17 year old daughter. We are soooo excited to meet them and have an opportunity to experience and learn more about life here in Tonga.

At Sela's guest house for welcome refreshments. 

In town for lunch.

Ryan and I officially received our translated names. Ryan will be called Laieni (Lie-en-ee) and I will be called 'Epi (ep-ee). We are so excited to continue to work on the language and prepare to live with our new family soon.

While riding on a train goin’ west
I fell asleep for to take my rest
I dreamed a dream that made me sad
Concerning myself and the first few friends I had

With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
Where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
Where we together weathered many a storm
Laughin’ and singin’ till the early hours of the morn

By the old wooden stove where our hats was hung
Our words were told, our songs were sung
Where we longed for nothin’ and were quite satisfied
Talkin’ and a-jokin’ about the world outside

With haunted hearts through the heat and cold
We never thought we could ever get old
We thought we could sit forever in fun
But our chances really was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
It was all that easy to tell wrong from right
And our choices were few and the thought never hit
That the one road we traveled would ever shatter and split

How many a year has passed and gone
And many a gamble has been lost and won
And many a road taken by many a friend
And each one I’ve never seen again

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
That we could sit simply in that room again
Ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I’d give it all gladly if our lives could be like that