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  Apia, Samoa Western
Wednesday, June 14, 2006

We have finally reached our objective-Apia, Samoa. We arrived at about 5:30 in the morning just as the sun was coming up. We were met by a party of Peace Corps volunteers with flowers, along with a traditional Samoan band, then we were packed off in vans with our mountain of luggage to a small hotel in Apia which the Peace Corps has taken over to house the 16 of us during the first two weeks of our training.

The training regime is pretty stiff, and takes up most of our time-Samoan language (4 hours a day, six days a week) culture, and the technical aspects of our future duties. One of the first things we learned is that we have been pronouncing the name of the country incorrectly all these years-it is called SAHmoa, with the accent on the first syllable.

In the evenings--homework finished, of course--we get out and about and find Apia to be small, lively, and very friendly to palangis (foreigners). There is a large range of services available; shops, internet cafes, restaurants, etc. We have been dining happily on pizza, Chinese food, fish & chips, as well as more traditional Samoan food (more about that later) and the excellent local beer. There is even a Mickey D's. A sense of honor has kept me out of that establishment, although I cannot say the same of many of my colleagues nor our Samoan instructors. There are, as well, several large, interesting open-air markets, notably a fish market and a fresh produce market. There is also a three screen movie theater playing the newest releases.

Sunday we took the day off and crossed to the other side of the island in a chartered bus to go to the beach, a beach which would make Hawaiians cry with jealousy and which we had largely to ourselves. The trip also gave us our first glimpse of the interior of the island and the villages with their fine gardens and groves of bananas, coconuts, papaya, mango, the villages which will be our homes for the next two years.

On Saturday we will quit this hotel and move with our instructors to such a village, where the people are prepared to take us into their homes and help teach us the fa'a Samoa-the Samoan way of life.

I want to apologize to everyone about the pictures. I haven't figured out how to post them to the blog properly. I will see if I can stick some in with the text.

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