We’ve been back in Vanuatu for nearly 2 months now and here
is a what we’ve been up to!
First, here are a few links to some videos we have made recently...
Laundry Part 1
Laundry Part 2
Truck ride back to site
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE
And now, a work and life update...
- School started back on February 8th. The first week was slow with students and teachers still trickling in from vacation. But now it’s back in full swing! I have been assessing students in classes 1-6 in order to determine who needs some extra help in literacy and will therefore be in my small groups. I have also been taking 2 classes a day to the library where I read them a book, we talk about it and then they get some time to read books on their reading level. They seem to love it and will get to start checking books out in term two! Cole has been working with classes 7 and 8 on some basic literacy skills in order to improve their reading and on conversational English. He is having the class 7 and 8 students answer questions about a topic and do a presentation on their findings in English. In addition to our every day school schedules-- which I assure you are not all that rigorous so don’t start thinking we are working ourselves to death over here! We have a lot of free time!-- we have been working on our secondary projects. I have started up Bottle Bricks again and Cole has been working on getting a community center at our school built that will serve as a dining hall, a place for meetings/devotions/workshops/assemblies and a disaster safe house. The Bottle Brick project is going well so far. We are in the competition/collection phase right now and will have a bench building day on May 1st! The community center project is a lot of work and is slow going right now. It is going to take a lot of money and a lot of help and support from surrounding communities who will benefit from it. Right now we are in the fundraising/beginning construction phase. Our goal is to have it built by the end of the school year (early December) so that we can have our end of the year award ceremony in it. Fingers crossed! Thank you again for your help and support with these two projects! More updates and pictures to come!
- Before school started back we took a trip to West Santo with
our friends Jeffery and Hannah. In order to get to West Santo you have to take
a truck to the last village on the road, Tasariki, and then take a boat from
there. You cannot drive the west coast of Santo because there are no truck
roads. You can only travel by foot or by
boat. We took a two hour boat ride to a village called Wusi where we spent two
nights. While there, we bought some locally made clay pots, walked 2 hours to another
village called Kerepua, swam in the ocean and in the river and met a bunch of
new people! We had a milipod incident the first night, where a milipod crawled
onto Cole’s mattress and he jumped up and killed it with a bush knife. I didn’t
sleep much the rest of that night! West Santo is very remote and very different
from East Santo, which is not at all remote and full of tourist attractions and
resorts. It is also very dry right now due to El Nino. Most of the rivers are
dry or nearly dry, their gardens are ruined so they are having to eat mostly
rice and tin tuna, and where grass fields used to be there is now only dirt. It
was sad and eye opening. We have had some issues with water at our site due to
El Nino, but nothing like what they are facing and what many people all over
Vanuatu are facing.
Truck ride to Tasariki
Tasariki Village 
Boat Ride to Wusi
Boat Ride to Wusi
Wusi from the water
The coast of West Santo
This mama walks into the bush to collect clay, brings it back to her village by the beach, mixes the clay with sand, puts the mixture on her knee and molds it into a pot, and then burns it in the fire for 1-3 months. Her husbands grandmother taught her how to make the pots. These are two of the three that we bought! 
Some of her clay pot collection. The fire in the background is where she burns them. She does this in her sister's bush kitchen
Swimming in the ocean in Wusi
Some kids playing futbol...this used to be a grass field
Eating manioc out made in bamboo on a fire in Kerepua Village
Kerepua Village. All used to be covered in grass
A pretty view on our walk from Wusi to Kerepua
My Sweet Charlie visits West Santo!
- We spent all the time we could with our friends Bryan and
Kate who left the country in late February and who we miss very much!
Right before saying our goodbyes:( :(
A day at Oyster Island with the whole Santo Crew before these Kate and Bryan move onto their next adventures!
- We booked tickets to New Zealand! There is a two week school break in May, which also happens to be the month I turn 30, SO we are going on a little vacay and we are so excited about it! We have been reading a New Zealand travel guide and counting down the days since we booked it
- We spent a week battling a bad rash/allergic reaction (Cole) and a badly infected leg wound (me). But we are all good now! Cole may or may not be allergic to a certain type of kava and has had 5 rashes/allergic reactions since we got to Vanuatu last January. They are trying to figure out now if it is indeed the kava and if not, what is causing the reactions. BUT, like I said, we are currently healthy as a horses!
- One night I turned the corner to go into our bathroom and take a nice cold refreshing shower that I was looking oh so forward to, and saw a giant rat scurry across the floor and down the shower drain. I screamed, Cole same running and dumped a 5 gallon bucket of water down the drain in an attempt to get the rat out. Instead the rat drowned somewhere in the pipe and blocked the drain. We swam in the river for a week or so until our school handy man successfully removed the dead rat from the drain.
- The new couple that will be
serving in Santo after their swearing in this April came to Santo for the week, so we met up with them and went to a blue hole called Natawa!
- We are currently in Vila for a long weekend. Yesterday we
went out to the two training villages and met the new G28 volunteers! We talked
to them about the Volunteer Advisory Committee that both Cole and I are on,
along with two other vols from our group. Four of them will join the committee
when they swear in. They seem like such a great group of people and we were
excited to meet them! Last night we went to a fire dancing show at a
restaurant/bar here in Vila. It was super touristy but really cool and fun! We
are spending the weekend enjoying the fast internet and air condition! We both
have dermatologist appointments on Monday and will head back to our site on
Tuesday!
- Cat Update: We have not seen our Cat, Pepper, that we got last February since we got back from the US. A few kids have told us that they saw him in the bush and that he is a bush cat now L I’m really sad about it, but hope he’s enjoying lots of yummy rats in the bush now. We still have Black Tiger and two of her three kittens. A dog attacked one of the kittens and Cole buried him behind our bush kitchen. His name was Sirr Purr. The other two are named Cam Newton and Ron Rivera and are super cute and basically hate us! They come in the house and hang out with their mom, but when we try to pet them or pick them up they run away. We’ve been trying to butter them up with food. Hopefully they will warm up to us soon!
- We’ve also been doing a lot of reading, watching a lot of
The Big Bang Theory on the computer, sweating a lot, swimming in the river,
walking to the beach (which we are not currently swimming in because there was
recently a shark attack and I am not all about getting eaten by a shark), and
hanging out with our family and the other teachers!
The beach near our site in South Santo...COME VISIT!
