My new home

Last week, my time at Emua was winding down, and I still hadn't found a snake. The villagers told me that they really didn't have too many of them. Well, I can't say that I hadn't found a snake. I've swam with and held atleast 4 or 5 sea snakes, which are striped black and white, and a bite will kill you before you can get help. But once again Mom, don't worry, they're nice. Anyways, I told the villagers I wanted to find a snake in the bush because I knew South Pacific boas lived in the area. I took off after dark one night into the bush, and a short time later, came back with a snake in one hand, a frog in the other, and leaves in my hair from climbing the trees to get them. It was a proud moment, and I'm sure those who know me can easily picture myself in that situation. So I came back to the village to see that everyone was terrified of the snake. These people grow up with lizards, rats, and everthing else living in their houses, yet somehow they still are afraid of snakes. It must be a universal thing. Needless to say though, they couldn't believe that some white boy walked into the bush at night, didn't get lost, and actually was holding a snake. It made for a good environmental education lesson though. A few kids mustered the courage to touch it, although my papa made sure to keep his distance. Made my day.
But now, my time at Emua is finished. Last thursday (21st), I swore in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. The ceremony was really nice, I even showered and washed my hair for it, making it the first time in 6 weeks that my hair had felt the wonderfulness of soap. Plenty toktoks were given, and it was followed by a kava ceremony, and a string band. The music went until 6 in the morning, until it was time for us to gather our bags together and return to Vila. I was sad to leave, it was pretty close to paradise there (besides the rats, boils, flies in your wounds, and the hair that is still on the pig you're eating, but that's to be expected anywhere in Vanuatu). Now I'm spending a week in Vila, and if all goes as planned, I will be getting down to Tanna just before the 4th of July. Things rarely go as planned though. Suppose I make it down there by the 4th though, I will be going to the volcanoe there on the the island at night, giving me the best fireworks I could ask for. If not, I think I will have to find some extremely cheap and poorly made imitation sparklers made in China.
Ok, I will do my best to contact as many people I can this week while I'm in the city. Thanks for the emails and letters, and to those of you who are slacking, pick it up, I might go crazy in Tanna without them.

Back to training

The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful. After going to visit my home in Tanna I came back to 3 more weeks of class everyday. I spent all of last week learning Reef Check, a world wide coral reef monitoring program. Even though I'm not going to be living on the coast I might be helping other people out with Reef Check. We spent everyday out on the reef. I can't complain, it makes a pretty nice classroom. We learned all about reef health, fish and other animals of the reef. I was able to see schools of eagle rays, sea turtles, and I'm finally getting to see some sharks (don't worry mom the nice kind). The other night we went out on the reef at night to catch sea turtles as part of a sea turtle monitoring program. We got two green sea turtles and two hawksbill turtles, which we tagged and released. I also got to see my first shark at night, which was really cool, and I also saw a lot of flourescent jelly fish and other little glowing animals. I'm not going to lie though, it was a little eerie swimming over open ocean when all you could see is the narrow band of light ahead of you from the underwater light. So yeah, that's all I've been doing for the last week in class. Now I'm starting to work on things like setting up a bank account, and figuring out how to get my stuff sent out to the Tanna bush. Not an easy task. Besides that I do have an interesting story to share that proves how strange Vanuatu is. Last week, 49 prisoners escaped from the Vila prison. First of all, 49 prisoners escaping at once is somewhat odd. Then they all went out, drank kava, and promptly returned to the prison afterwards to turn themselves back in. Men here really like their kava. In Tanna the "prison" has a program where the good prisoners take the bad ones out for kava each night as long as they promise to come back. You can't make this kind of stuff up.