First update as a Volunteer :)

Swearing In.....
On Thursday morning we headed to the Peace Corps office for one last closing session with Solo, our training manager. After the session we hung out for a bit and then headed back to the hotel to rest and shower before the buses picked us up at around 2:45. Spirits were high and we were all really excited! When we got to the Venue, The Tourism and Hospitality Leisure Training Center, all of our host families were waiting outside for us with new island shirts and dresses and various other gifts for us! Cole and I got a super fancy mat, a purse, and some jewelry! After a few minutes of chatting with our families, we all changed into our new matching dresses and shirts and headed inside. The power went out shortly before the ceremony began, no one knows why… It eventually came back on after the ceremony was over. The ceremony started around 3:30. There was an opening prayer, welcome and acknowledgements by Solo (training manager), a “Readiness to Serve” address from Keith Honda (Country Director), A speech from Nik Karr (acting director of programming and training and a former PCV in Vanuatu), a speech and the administration of the Oath of Service from HE Walter North (US Ambassador to Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and PNG), Vanuatu Acceptance of G27 from Mark Bebe (Director General, Ministry of Justice), presentation of certificates from Nik Karr, HE Walter North, Keith Honda and Mark Bebe, a speech on behalf of our training communities and host families given by our Nguna Host Papa, Luna Tasong, a speech on behalf of the new G27 volunteers given by our own Rusel King, presentation of gifts for the staff by myself and Laura Loveland, and finally the dedication of new volunteers and closing prayer!

After the ceremony there were refreshments and kava. We said goodbye to our host families after a while and then a bus took us to the hotel to drop off our new things and change, and then took us to a restaurant/bar called War Horse. There was live music there so we hung out for a long while, ate dinner, danced, some volunteers handed out superlatives written on paper plates, and then we headed to Voodoo club for more dancing and then ended the night at Electrorock (another Vila club). It was a really fun swearing in day/night! And now…WE ARE OFFICIAL PEACE CORPS VANUATU VOLUNTEERS!!! 

G27 Peace Corps Volunteers 

G27 married couples! 

Us with our host families from Lelepa and Nguna 

We are PC volunteers!!!

Superlatives and celebration after swearing in! 

Out celebrating after swearing in! 

On Friday we went to a pizza/pool party at Keith and his wife Aimee’s home here in Port Vila. It was a perfect afternoon. They have such an amazingly nice house with a beautiful view of the harbor and a pool. We ate pizza and other delicious snacks and swam in the harbor and in the pool from 10:30 until around 2:00. After the party, I had my first VAC meeting at 3:00 that lasted until about 5:00. It went well and I am really excited to be a part of the committee. We have another quick meeting on Sunday and then a meeting with the PC staff on Monday.

After the VAC meeting, a big group of us headed to Island Time, a restaurant here in Vila, to hang out with Hannah because she got back to Vanuatu around 4:00!!! She will finish training this week and swear in on Friday and then head to Santo! We are all SO happy she is back and her dad is doing well! We hung out and ate there and then Cole and I came back to the hotel. A group of people went out on the town, but we decided to stay in and watch a movie. Here are some photos from the pizza/pool party!  

Saturday we went and had breakfast in town at a place called Numbawan Café. It’s outside and right on the water. During breakfast we watched 3 men use a crane to pull pieces of a boat and other debris, which was there as a result of Pam, from the water. After breakfast we went and talked to a guy about getting scuba certified. We are going to start the process now and finish in June when we come back to Vila for “reconnect” (more training). After a quick trip to the PC office to use the fast(ish) internet and facetime a little, we came back here to pack some of our ridiculous amounts of stuff. Cole was packing up some clothes and picked up a pile of clothes that had been sitting on a table in our room only to discover that thousands…literally, thousands…of ants had decided to make a home of them. There were not only a ton of ants, but also what appeared to be ant eggs? He put the clothes in a bucket and filled the bucket with water in order to drown the little pests. Brilliant. We got most of our stuff packed which was quite an accomplishment! When it’s all said and done here is what we will be taking with us to our site: 2 big suitcase type bags, two big backpacks, 2 small backpacks, two buckets filled with stuff, one dry bag filled with stuff, one giant PC issued mattress, one mat, and one large tupperware container filled with stuff. RIDICULOUS.

Saturday night almost the entire G27 group, and some G26ers and extendees, went out in honor of our last Saturday all together in Vila until June! 

Bus selfie on the way out on the town! 

Now, for our last few says in Vila we are all just relaxing, hanging out, finishing up packing, some people are buying things for site here in Vila (we aren’t because it will be easier to buy things in Luganville), getting things we need from the PC office, and enjoying our last few days all together before we head to the islands!! 

On Tuesday night at 6:00 the Santo volunteers and the Malekula volunteers (14 of us I think) will board the Vanuatu Ferry and head to our sites! The Malekula peeps are scheduled to arrive at 11:00 am on Wednesday and we are scheduled to arrive in Luganville, Santo at 8:00 pm on Wednesday. It’s gonna be a loooong boat ride, but it should be fun with all of us there. It is also easier to carry ALL of our stuff on the ferry than on a plane! Should be quite a little adventure! We will stay the night in Luganville on Wednesday, purchase everything we need for our site on Thursday, stay the night Thursday and head to Narango, Santo…our new home…on Friday. We’ll get settled in over the weekend and get started on Monday!

Some random thoughts/observations:

There are no such thing as car seats here. I will never get used to the flies. Wild is a really good book (Thanks, Brittany!). I miss Murray so much. Seriously, SO much. I am looking forward to lots of things about our site…one thing I am NOT looking forward to is not having a bathroom inside of our house again. It’s no fun to wake up in the middle of the night and have to go outside of your house to use the bathroom! I will admit that I was too scared a few of the nights on our week at site and went in a bucket inside the house. A brilliant suggestion from a current volunteer. Don’t judge!!! I am so very thankful for our laptop and external hard drive. Watching movies and sitcoms feels like home and it’s really really nice to have. We are lucky enough to have some solar power in the school’s “office” and should be able to charge our laptop from time to time, so hopefully we will still have that luxury at site! We are also looking into purchasing a solar panel/set up for our house so that we will have a light and be able to charge more electronics. We’re going to hold off on that to see if we really need it though, or if we can survive with the PC issued solar lights and the one solar charger that’s already there! Tuesday is going to be such a weird day! I know I’ll be happy to finally be heading to Narango, but so sad to say goodbye to all of these awesome people who have become our really great friends.

THANK YOU for all of the emails, comments, likes, etc congratulating us on swearing in. They all mean a lot to us and we really appreciate it.

If you would like to send mail we found out that it really helps with customs to include “Peace Corps Volunteer” in our address. So, here is the final address update…If you sent something to Santo using the previous address given, it should stilt get to us so no worries! 

Cole and Caroline Smith

Peace Corps Volunteers

PO Box 203

Luganvile Post Office

Santo Island, Vanuatu

South Pacific 

We have heard that people have been trying to comment on the blog, but the comments aren't working or showing up, and that people are not getting emails letting them know that the blog has been updated. I don't have any answers for either of those problems...sorry :(. If you have comments or questions you can email them to us at the coleandcarooverseas@gmail.com address and we will email you back or answer the questions on the blog. I also always try to put a link to the blog on Facebook when I update it, so hopefully that suffices! Thanks for reading and giving me a reason to continue updating! :) Love you all! 

Cheers! 

Last post as a trainee!

Last week was our last full week of training.

On last Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings all of us Education trainees went to Sarakata School in Luganville and had teaching practice in grades 1-5. We were divided into groups of 3 and assigned a grade level. On each day 2 of us taught and 1 observed and then we switched the next day so that each of us taught twice and observed once. Myself, Cole and Nicole were a teaching team in class 2. It went really well and was nice to be in the classroom!

Nicole teaching 

Cole and I teaching

On Friday we had a fun little Bislama practice session where we were given two places in town with 10 or so questions for each place. We had to find our way to that place and then ask the questions in Bislama and have the person answer in Bislama. Cole and I worked together. We had to go to Wilco which is a hardware store here in Vanuatu, the handicraft market, the Police Station and Beach Front Resort. We had nearly 3 hours to complete our activity. Cole and I decided to go to the other 3 places first, finish at Beach Front Resort and then hang out there until it was time to go back and debrief with the trainers! Solid morning! Good Bislama practice and good fun!

Friday afternoon a big group decided to head back to Beach Front for a while. Cole, Jeffery, Lucas and I walked there together. There is a bridge, called Sarakata Bridge, on the way to the resort that people jump off of for fun. We had heard about it and decided we were interested in doing it! We got to the bridge and were all a bit nervous and unsure. A Ni van guy came along, saw our interest, took off his shirt and jumped off like it was no big deal. So, after seeing someone else do it and come up fine we decided we HAD to do it! Also, by this time a group of about 20 to 30 locals had formed to watch our jump. The four of us climbed over the rail and got in position. We counted to three and only Cole jumped! Jeffery counted and jumped next and then Lucas and I counted and jumped together! The jump was about 20 feet. Lots of fun! After our jump and then a few relaxing hours at Beach Front we headed to a local kava bar where Cole and some other folks had kava and I had a cheeseburgerJ Here are some pics of us jumping off the Sarakata Bridge...

We left Luganville on Saturday, but our flight wasn’t scheduled to leave until 7:30 p.m. so a group of us took the 45 minute bus ride to Champagne Beach for the day. Champagne Beach has been called one of the top 10 most beautiful beaches in the world, so we thought we should check it out. It was in fact a very very beautiful beach. We swam, at lunch, swam more, applied sand masks, and then headed back. We took showers and finished packing when we got back and then headed to the airport around 5:30. As I said, our flight was supposed to leave at 7:30. It left around 9. Again, island time J Here are some of our Champagne Beach pics. I will add more to facebook eventually...

When we got to Vila we went to the hotel, dropped off our things and then went to dinner at one of the only places in town still open. By the time we finished dinner it was close to midnight. We went to a club called Voodoo and hung out and danced until around 1:30! The latest we have stayed up since we've been in Vanuatu!

We mostly had a lazy day on Sunday. Some cool things did happen though….Our papa from Nguna came into Vila to see us and to pick up the food we had brought to him from Luganville. The market here in Vila still isn’t open and island food is hard to come by. We brought them island cabbage and avocados and we brought our Lelepa family peanuts and reef sandals (Rex is known for breaking sandals and needed a new pair!)!! Papa Luna hung out and chatted with us for about 30 minutes and showed us pictures of the damage, which sucked to see, but he had the best positive attitude about it all the whole time! We will see him, mama Christina and our Lelepa family on Thursday at our swearing in ceremony! After our chat with Papa Luna, we ate breakfast which was provided by our hotel staff in honor of our arrival! So sweet! That afternoon our luggage that had been in storage since week one, and our things that were left in Nguna/Lelepa pre cyclone evacuation were brought to us in truckloads. It took 6 full truckloads to deliver it all! We hadn’t seen some of the stuff in 11 weeks and some in 4 weeks. We went through it to see what all we had and realized that WE BROUGHT SOOOOOOO MUCH STUFF! Our room is packed FULL! It is truly ridiculous. In order to get it all to our site we are going to have to put a large amount of it on a ship to be delivered to us a few days after we arrive at site. We thought we had done a good job at packing light, clearly we were wrong! After living off of what we did for 11 weeks, I must admit that we should have listened more carefully and packed far less. Oh well, live and learn!

The people whose sites were destroyed by Pam found out on Monday where there new sites will be. They were all given envelopes right before our lunch break and read their new sites aloud to the group! It was a long awaited, exciting time for them and I was very happy for them to finally know where they will be serving for the next two years!

Hannah, the one whose dad was very sick and went home to be with him and her family, is coming back on Friday! Her dad has started chemo and is doing much better! We are so happy for her and her family and can’t wait for her to get back!!!

This week we have had our medical posttest and our final Bislama oral assessment. We have to pass them both in order to swear in. We both did well on the Bislama assessment (we are both consider "Advanced!) We aren’t sure yet about the medical posttest, but we think we did fine. We have also had sessions on First Aid, Finances (when we get paid, how we get paid, how much we get paid, etc.), Peace Corps policies, satellite phones, receiving mail and shipping things to our islands, and monitoring and evaluating our projects in order to make sure they are successful and sustainable.

This morning we had voting for one of the two main committees we have, VAC (volunteer advisory council). The other committee is called GAD (gender and development). In order to be a part of GAD you fill out a lengthy application and the current members of the committee choose the new members. In order to be a member of VAC people are nominated and then voted in by the members of our group. Nominations were yesterday and voting was today. I was nominated and voted in this morning! 8 of us were nominated and 4 voted in. We will be flown into Vila 4 times each year to meet with the committee and advocate for volunteers, work on improving PC policies, plan and implement staff development and work on improving the volunteer resource room. I am excited to be a part of it! There are 8 of us all together on the committee. Cole is going to try to be a part of a committee that is a work in progress now dealing with disaster relief, or on the volunteer newsletter called the VanAm.  

Tomorrow we will no longer be trainees. After 12 weeks, one evacuation, one cyclone, a new lesson learned, a new culture learned, and lots of great friendships made, we will finally swear in and become official Peace Corps volunteers. We can’t wait. It is bound to be a fun filled day packed full of good times and lots of emotions! We are excited to see our families, to celebrate afterwards and to finally start the next chapter of this adventure! :) :) 

What we've been up to since we've been BACK IN VANUATU!

HAPPY EASTER! One day late for us, as Easter here in the South Pacific was yesterday.

Welp…We have been back in Vanuatu for almost two weeks now. We have been going through training and enjoying our time all together in Santo! Training is quite annoying at this point, as much of it is just time filler sessions and it is a bit repetitive and not very helpful. The Bislama classes are helpful as we speak only Bislama in them and it is good practice. Our trainers and staff here have been through a lot and all of this was…obviously…very unexpected and not something that they were prepared for. The trainers and the staff are great and they are trying their best and I know that, but it’s still hard to sit through sessions that are not useful when I know that if we were already finished and at our site we could be doing something much more useful. BUT it has been nice being with our whole group. It is unusual for us to be together for this long and we have become pretty close. It’s been a lot like summer camp. We are at two different hotels (Community Health at one and Education at the other). There are communal kitchen/hangout areas at each hotel. After training each day, which happens at either one of the hotels or at USP (the university here), some of us gather in the common areas and chat and hang. Our education group often has dinner all together in our common area, which has a t.v. that we have been hooking up to someone’s computer and watching movies or t.v. shows from our hard drives. One night we all got together at the Comm Health hotel and had a big dinner. It’s been fun and I really am going to miss everyone once we are all at our sites and will not see each other for long periods of time.

That being said, we are ready to be back at our site. I am enjoying the American food, the internet, the fans, the electricity and the running water…but it also reminds me of home and makes me miss home. It is weird, but it’s easier and makes me less homesick when we are away from all the reminders of home. It is nice knowing that the town we are in now, Luganville, is close enough to our permanent site, about an hour in a half truck ride, that we will be able to come here every few weeks or once a month and get a quick taste of those reminders and talk to friends and family and what not…but I am ready to be back in our village and start making it our home for the next few years. I’m also ready to get started. We have be preparing for and talking about service for a long time now, and I am ready to get going! It’ going to take some adjusting once we get back, getting used to bucket baths, no running water or electricity and no fans again, but we have done it before and we can do it again!

 Since we have been in Santo and Santo was not effected much by Cyclone Pam, it’s like we have been in a little bubble shielded from all of the destruction. We haven’t really been exposed to it all, except for what we saw at the airport when we flew into Vila, and it is easy to forget that much of the country is still suffering. We have talked to our families from our training villages –Lelepa and Nguna—which were both effected very badly, and they are always very positive and say that they are rebuilding and replanting. We will see them at our swearing in ceremony on April 16^th, which I know will be very emotional since we haven’t seen them since before the cyclone. We will be in Vila on Sunday the 12^th and will see some of the destruction for the first time. I know some things have been rebuilt and it will not be nearly as bad as it was, and I’m glad for that. I am not looking forward to it, but it will be a good reminder for all of us that this happened and that it is real and that we can help, especially after being in this bubble for the last few weeks. Most of us will not be doing relief work. Many of the people who were at sites that were badly effected have been told that the destruction is too bad for them to go back and that they will be placed at new sites where they will be teaching or working at an aid post or dispensary as originally planned. Most people were very sad to hear that they would not be going back to their original sites, especially because it means that their families went through a lot and that the damage is bad enough that it is unsafe (according to PC) for them to be there. Bonds are made very quickly here. You are considered a part of the family almost immediately and treated as such. The people here are easy to love. Everyone has been dealing with the news about their sites differently, but I think we are all beginning to realize that even if we are not helping directly with relief efforts, our service will, hopefully, trickle throughout the country somehow.

Anyway…here are some highlights of our time in Santo since we have been back.

•   The first night we got here, last Thursday, we went to the mama’s market for dinner, which was cheap and delicious, and then came back to the hotel to unpack and get settled. I came back to find quite the shampoo explosion all over the inside of my bag. It was annoying and a bitch to clean up. I pitched a little fit which I now realize was pointless and dramatic as things could be way worse.
•   Our hotel is called Unity Park Motel. It’s nice enough and reminds me of a hostel. There are two sets of bunk beds in most of the rooms downstairs. We are in a room upstairs that has one double bed and one single bed. We share one bathroom and one shower with all 6 rooms upstair, which are mostly occupied by our trainers. Downstairs has a male and female bathroom with 3 showers and 3 toilets each. The common sitting/kitchen area is downstairs. There is a nice covered sitting area outside where we have some of our sessions.
•  There is a big park right across the street from our hotel. On Friday they were having a Cyclone Pam fundraiser in the park. They had butchered a cow and were selling food for 150 vatu ($1.50) We hung out there for a while with a group of peeps and then Cole and I went and walked all the way down the one main street in the town of Luganville. We stopped in several of the Chinese shops, went into lots of restaurants to look at their menus and bought a few things (a bracelet, a power strip so we could plug in the fan AND charge something at the same time, and some bottled waters as we were told the water may not be safe to drink as a result of stupid Pam). That afternoon we went back to the park where the fundraiser was still going on, but now they were selling kava instead of food. My fellow kava hater, Lea, and I gave in to our hatred and partook in the kava drinking. I had three shells, the most I have ever had, Lea had four. We are now kava champions. I still hate it. There was a band playing reggae music, which reminded me of my dad, and we all sat in the grass and hung out and danced a little. After we went and got Chinese food and then called it a night.
• On Saturday we all went to a super nice resort here in Luganville called Beach Front. Non guests are welcome there as long as you buy something. We all bought entirely too much booze (not me, I only had a few!) and stayed the entire day! The view there is beautiful, the pool was nice and cool and it was a really fun day!
•   On Sunday a much smaller group of us went back to Beach Front for a bit. It was quieter, not nearly as much alcohol was had and it was more of a relaxing day than a party day. Still fun! While we were there Cole was throwing me in the pool and my nose ring came out. Cole found it in the pool after like an hour of searching. I tried to get it back in, like 5 other people tried, I watched youtube videos on how to get it back in and nothing worked :( So, it closed up. Sad day. Maybe I will get it done again someday! That night we projected 50 shades of grey on the wall in the common area using Gabrielle’s projecter and computer. It was late, but the Ni Van manager of our hotel (Bandi, who lives here at the hotel, is pretty funny and who I think loves having us here.), was still up and kept walking in and out of the common area room during very non culturally appropriate scenes! This is a very conservative country and it was too awkward for me to handle. I left and came up to our room about halfway through the movie. I’m pretty sure he was watching from outside and coming in during the awkward scenes on purpose because he knew it embarrassed us!
•  Many of the guys in our group have been taking turns reading scenes from 50 Shades of Grey out loud. It is quite entertaining! They have all been great sports and it has been an excellent passer of time. Yes, Cole read a scene. Yes, it was hilarious!
•  We went to a school here in Luganville, Sarakata School, twice this week. Once just to observe and check things out and once to do literacy assessments on the kids. Cole, Nicole and myself will be doing some teaching in class 2 this week, so we were in charge of assessing the kids in class 2. The assessment was the same for all grade levels, 1-6. It was letter identification, sound identification and site word identification. I was totally in my element. I have done assessments like this 100’s of times and it is not much different here than in the states, except for the fact that I am speaking a different language here! Most of the children I assessed did very well and knew most letters, sounds and some words. It is a good school, most of the teachers have gone to university in Vila and there seems to be more of an emphasis on the importance of education here in town than there is in the villages. They also have a but more resources here in town. We will be doing the same kind of assessment on all of the children in our school at our site once we get there and I am anxious to see how they do. They seem to be a bit lower than the kids at Sarakata, which just means more of a challenge and more room for growth, right teacher friends!?  
•  On Monday one of the girls in our group found out that her father, who she just found out has cancer, is not doing well. She got the call from her mom around 8:30 and was on the way to the airport by 9:00. She flew from Santo to Vila shortly after that, but then had to wait until Vila until Monday evening to fly to Brisbane where she had an overnight layover followed by another 8 hour layover in Sydney. It was the best flight pattern they could get on such short notice, and must have felt like an eternity to her. She was hysterical, obviously, and it was very sad to see her go. Hopefully she will be back, depending on her father’s health. Hopefully he will get better soon because we all miss her very much!
• Another guy from our group told us this week he is going to be leaving the group and going back home. He has a girlfriend back in the states who he misses a lot and he wants to go to med school and do Doctors without Borders. He is hilarious and we will all miss him very much. That said, I wish him all the best and know that he will do great things! It is a tough decision to leave, I get it and I respect everyone who makes that decision.
• A package arrived from Brittany earlier this week. It was unexpected (as we thought it had been a victim of Pam) and amazing! Magazines, chocolate, candy, a book, face masks, pictures and more! It made our day! Thank you, Brittany! You are awesome! Many people have been asking about our new address and what to send...that information is at the end of this post.
• On Friday we had to give a cultural presentation entirely in Bislama. Cole did his on Black Magic and did an awesome job! Mine was on the Significance of Pigs in Vanuatu.
•  Friday was also the day that our country director, Keith, was here with Nik, who was a volunteer in G23 I believe (?) and is now a PC employee and kind of Keith’s right hand man. I don’t know of his exact job title, but I do know that he is AMAZING at his job! He is very knowledgeable about PC, about Vanuatu, and about everyone is every group. They had a one on one meeting with everyone and that is when everyone found out whether or not they were going back to their site. Our meeting with them went fine. We knew we were going back and mostly just discussed the repairs they are making at my current site and the possibility of Cole’s current site being turned into someone else’s site (whose previous site was effected) and both of being at my current site, which would be fine with us. It would mean another volunteer only a 45 min or an hour walk from us which would be nice. Gabrielle is the closest to us right now, about a 2 hour walk from us.
• After a bit of a stressful/emotional day for many people on Friday, we decided to hit up a few Blue Holes on Saturday. A current volunteer, Sam, who lives here in Luganville (she is an extendee so she has been in Vanuatu for 3 years now) set up one truck for us and I set up a bus. Our whole group went, which was awesome! We had planned on leaving at 9. We left around 10:45 or so…Island time. 13 people crammed in the bed of the truck and 15 in the bus. We went to the first blue hole, Riri, which Cole and I went to with some other trainees and volunteers last time we were in Santo, and stayed for about an hour or so. Due to some confusion with the trucks and price and what not, not worth going into details, only 15 of us could go to the other blue hole that all of us had planned on going to that morning. It worked out though because some people were having lots of fun at Riri and were fine staying there. Cole and I went with the group of 15 to the other blue hole, Matevulu. The rope swing there is much higher and scarier. I will do the ones at Riri until I am blue in the face, no pun intended, but I could only do the one at Matevulu once! After about 45 min or so at Matevulu we decided to join the rest of the group back at Riri. We stayed there for another hour and a half or so. Everyone got very creative with rope swing activities….how many people can fit on the swing at once, who can swing into the tiny round float that Kathleen brought with her, who can catch a ball from the swing that someone is throwing to them from the water, etc. The guys also started something where one person swings, a guy jumps on with them, the first guy jumps off, another guy jumps on, the second guy jumps off, a third guy jumps on, the second guy jumps off and so on. I think they made it through like 5 guys. One of the buses had stayed with is all day, a chartered bus, and 15 people left with him at 3 which was when the other truck was supposed to come back. Around 3:15, the other truck wasn’t there yet so we decided to walk to the head of the road and wait for him there. He got there a little a 4…Island time! It was a fun filled, much needed day!
• After we all got back from the blue holes some people went for kava. I opted to stay in with some of the other girls and have a FRIENDS watching marathon. Solid choice, I think.
• I almost didn’t go on the big blue hole adventure because I threw up 3 times on Saturday morning. I am almost positive it is because I took my anti-malarial medicine without eating, something I have not done yet as we were advised strongly to take it with food. I had intentions of doing so, as usual, but as soon as I took it and sat down to eat the bus driver arrived at our hotel and I went outside to arrange details for the day with him. By the time I came back to my food, about 15 min later, it was too late. I was so nauseous and ended up coming upstairs, throwing up and then laying down until it was time to go. It’s funny, in the US when I would throw up once I was done for the day, but here it’s like you throw up, you rest for a second, have some water and you keep going! It was the first time I have gotten sick like that since being here in Vanuatu, but in general, it’s a pretty normal/regular occurrence throughout the group.
• Yesterday, Easter Sunday here, we slept in a little and then Cole and I headed to a nearby hotel that has breakfast and good wifi. Our hotel has wifi, but it is super slow and only one device can be connected to it at a time. Our hotel does not have breakfast. We have eaten breakfast crackers with peanut butter and jam every other morning. We facetimed some people, browsed facebook and what not, and Cole downloaded some kindle books (nerd alert!) In the afternoon we went to Beach Front Resort and swam and hung out for a while. It rained on and off, so we swam in the rain which is always fun. We came back and rested and changed and then headed to HQ, which is a kava bar here in Luganville. We went there with a group of people the other night and the owner, a nice Irish guy, was there and started to chat with Cole. He found out we were PC volunteers and said that we could all come there on Sunday for Easter and that he would have a BBQ for us because he appreciated us! Like I said, nice guy! We had already planned on having a group potluck dinner at one of our hotels and several people had already bought their ingredients, so we decided to take what we were going to make to HQ. We all met there around 6:00. Our trainers and some PC staff came, some of the volunteers from other groups who live in Luganville came, some New Zealand volunteers came, and some Ni van friends of current volunteers came. One of the PC staff led us in a prayer and we all ate and chatted and hung out. I missed our families and friends in the US today, as it is the first holiday that we have been away from home (I don’t count Valentine’s Day), but it was nice to be with our PC family.
• Today we start our last full week of training! Yay! We head to Vila on Sunday for a few more sessions, swearing in, and then we have a few days allotted for purchasing materials and getting ready for site. I will probably update again after swearing in.

Below is our new address and our phone numbers in case anyone is interested in sending mail or calling! Thank you, again, for the mail that has already come! We appreciate all of it! Letter, package, card, whatever! It’s all amazing! I hear that some people have tried calling and haven’t been able to get through. I THINK that you have to put in 1-country code-phone number and it should work. We can also text, if we have credit on our boost mobile type phones. As I said, I don’t think we will be doing much relief work so please donate to one of the organizations on my previous post if you would like to help. We will probably ask for school/site related donations once we are there and know better what is needed. We don’t NEED anything, but if you are dying to send us a super expensive package…magazines are great, books are nice, we love candy and snacks, travel size shampoo/conditioner would be cool, ziploc bags are clutch, duck tape would be helpful, buff’s and hankies make nice sweat rags, and finger nail polish might make me feel better about my constantly muddy feet once we are at site. Just ideas... I promise we will love anything you throw in there!

Address:

Cole and Caroline Smith 

P.O. Box 203 

Luganville, Santo

Republic of Vanuatu

South Pacific

Cole’s phone number: Country Code (678)542-1666

Caroline’s phone number: Country Code (678) 542-1687

Number to call in case of an emergency: 1-855-855-1961

Photos are not loading on here for some very frustrating reason...I'll try to put some on facebook! 

Thanks for reading! Mitufala i luvem yufala tumas (We love you all a lot!)