Thursday, July 30, 2009

Winding down

One week from today, I will be boarding the plane to go home. Crazy. Since Kirstin just left tonight (the first of us to depart), the end now seems closer for all of us.

On Tuesday, we began working with our fourth and final cohort of kids, all of whom attend Rive's church in Nu'uuli. They were a rambunctious group, most likely because they were a bit younger than our other groups (at our request, in order to balance out the overall distribution of ages). But we had a good time with them and successfully completed everything we needed to. For lunch, Rive even served us corned beef with spaghetti (both from cans), an island favorite that we had yet to try. On a side note, cornned beef in Samoan is "pisupo." The reason for this (supposedly) is because the first canned food to come to the island was pea soup. Cornned beef, being the second canned item to reach the island, also took on the samoan-ized name, pisupo.

After spending a good chunk of the day entering data and transfering urine (our new favorite activity) on Wednesday, we invited Sharon, Richard, Marie, and Rive out to dinner as a token of our appreciation. The four of them have been invaluable in our project's success this summer, having invited us into their villages and churches, recruited kids for us, and taught us endless amounts about Samoan culture. Furhtermore, they have been great friends to us here on the island. After dinner, we enjoyed some more Karayoke at Richard's dad's bar, jamming out to more of our favorite 90's pop tunes.

This afternoon (Thursday), we took advantage of the bits of sunshine and returned to Fagatele Bay. You may remember (if you are crazy enough to have read this entire blog) one of my early posts after our first visit, Fagatele Bay being one of the first places we explored on the island. Today's trip down memory lane was great, and we even got to explore around some natural streams since the weather was better and we had more time before sundown. I also had my camera with me this time, so there are a few pictures from the beach at Fagatele Bay now in my gallery.

As I delve into my last week on this tiny rock in the middle of the South Pacific, I'm hoping that the weather turns for the better so I get a chance to go back to some more of the awesome spots we have found (and maybe, if I'm lucky, find some new ones).

All six "Brownies" before Kirstin boards the plane home

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