Hello Home!

Hello Home!                                                                                                 December 14, 2011

My village. Wow, that's really a surreal thing to say. Training is finally officially over, swearing- in is complete, and now I am left to start my 2 year service in my village. Even though I can't officially tell you the name of my village, I can report that it is AWESOME!!! I guess you all will have to come and visit me to find out exactly where I am.

The official day everyone left to go to their sites was on December 12, but my village couldn't wait to meet me so they contacted my boss and arranded for me to go and visit a day early. On Sunday, December 11th, my headmaster came and picked me up from the hotel, and he took me to my new village. Before the big welcome church service started, I met a few people and my headmasters family. Then promptly at 9:30am, which is something that doesn't happen here in Vanuatu often, everyone met in the Presbyterian church. The Presbyterian church is very flas; it's completly tiled, has electricity, and a keyboard- I'm just in heaven.

For a Welcome Ceremony, since I have never been to one before, I think it went very well. My first service lasted 3 hours, and it consisted of me sitting in the front of the church, for 45 minutes, while different community elders came and talked about me to everyone. Also, I not only had an island dress on, which in itself is unimagionably HOT, but I also had 2 layers of polyster calico draped over me with 2 real flower lays; I'm still amazed how I didn't faint.

Then I was introduced to my new host family and given a new custom name: Lei Zal (meaning: one who floats). Finally, I was able to go sit down with the rest of the congregation. The rest of the day consisted of storian with some elders, being stared and pointed at by all community members, and having my host sister show me some of the community closap. Then the headmaster brought me back in the afternoon. End of Day 1