Thanksgiving III

Wednesday marked the third year in a row I missed my family’s annual Martha Stewart viewing. The night before Thanksgiving every year, we invite friends over to watch the same Martha Stewart Thanksgiving Special, circa 1987. For most major holidays our family would go to someone else’s house to celebrate, but we always hosted Thanksgiving, so it’s always strange to spend the holiday without home-field advantage. But I must admit, part of the benefit of staying in Samoa for my school’s Prizegiving was it meant I’d get to spend one last Thanksgiving with the Peace Corps.

As I’ve said a thousand times before on the blog, we go all out for American holidays here—Thanksgiving, Halloween, and the Fourth of July tend to be big, jolly affairs. And yesterday was no exception.

Our monthly stipend provides more than enough for food, and certainly none of us is hungry, but it’s still a rare occasion to have a large American-style meal served. Sitting with a bunch of trainees from group 83 who are still used to either American-sized portions or the luxury of training itself, many of them filled their plates with small, sparse piles of mashed potatoes and turkey. You eat like a bird, group 83.

At the other end of the spectrum were those of us who’ve been out in the cold for 2+ years. Looking around at the other picnic tables, I saw a bunch of group 81s gorging themselves on plates of food piled to the point of absurdity.

After last year’s failed garlic mashed potatoes, I went in on a bowl of Poor Man’s Macaroni and Cheese—i.e. macaroni shells with parmesan cheese—with garlic-infused olive oil. It was not the most appetizing side dish on the table, but it at least it was served this year.

There was college football on TV, but few volunteers sat inside to watch. After dessert was served a bunch of us threw on our trunks or two-pieces and took a dip in the pool. A rather intense game of Three Flies Up ensued—the kind that ends in tears and broken fingers. It was a good time though. At one point I decided I was done and began to climb out of the pool, only to have my third fly land directly in my arms. It was cool.

Though the party was set to end around 7:00, the 83s were scuttled away at 5:30, which was sad.

The rest of us sat around chewing the fat until it was time to go.

Yeah. Third Thanksgiving is in the books. Bring on the Christmas music.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Admin Officer Denise dines with Supy, Paul, Otis (her husband), and Phil.

Lindsey, Jenny 83, and me.

Kyle and me. Kyle went to Notre Dame. Congratulations, Kyle.

Me and Jenny S. 82.

Joey and Mika dive for one of my Three Flies passes.

Halloween 2010

I’ve done it once before. Between college and Samoa I cut my own hair, and on one occasion in early 2007 the guard on the clippers came off while I was trimming the hair on the back of my head, and I had no other choice. But yesterday’s session was a conscious decision from start to finish. I recruited Dan to help me in the matter, set out the objectives beforehand, and then stood on the steps behind myself while Dan went to work.

People have since asked when and how I came up with the idea, and to be honest, I don’t have a straight answer. Halloween snuck up on me, as it always does, and I’d been talking to a bunch of volunteers about costume ideas, and when someone suggested monk Friday afternoon, I immediately rejected it. But somehow it crept back into my deliberations yesterday morning.

On second thought, the idea had merit. The clothing wouldn’t be difficult; though I don’t have a brown robe, a brown ’ie faitaga would work perfectly. Additionally, what with the Giants doing so well in the World Series, being a Franciscan monk would fall right in line with San Francisco. In fact, Saint Francis would be a great tribute costume on a number of different levels.

But the part that really pushed the idea over the edge—the thing that would bring the costume from mediocre to memorable, the way the costume could really outdo years past—required a certain amount of sacrifice.

For whatever reason, in my experience Peace Corps Volunteers take Halloween far more seriously than most people I knew in The States. Perhaps the qualities that make for a good PCV fall in line with those that make for a good Halloween costume maker/wearer. Or maybe life overseas means we have a lot of pent-up Americanism and Halloween simply provides an outlet. Whatever the reason, past years have set the bar high.

And, if I do say so myself, I’ve had a pretty good track record. In 2008, my mosquito costume was certainly a failure, but it was a memorable failure. Though it became unwieldy almost immediately and it was unrecognizable to most people that night, people still talk about how awesomely bad it was. Last year my Halloween homage to Country Director Dale was a big hit. At Group 83’s Welcome Fiafia earlier this month, Dale even introduced himself as Matt. So I like to think I’ve built a bit of a reputation for coming up with a costume that generates some sort of buzz, which is all to say that expectations for this year were high.

So I shaved my head. It was the added quirk that brought the entire costume to a new level. When I told Dan my idea, we discussed whether it should just be clipped short or whether a safety razor and shaving cream would be necessary. We decided on the latter. Dan used a longer setting on the clippers first to get the general shape and then went over it again once we were both satisfied. I did much of the work with the safety razor, although Dan helped with the back.

The monk’s hood provided a good method of reveal that let people soak in the costume initially, and with its removal, the tada! moment. Many people at the party thought I was wearing some sort of bald cap, and I was asked several times during the night where I found such a thing in Apia. Everyone’s next question of course was, “What are you going to do tomorrow?”

My answer: shave the rest.

And so as I type this now, my head is completely bald. It will be difficult to explain this to school staff tomorrow, but I figure once people get over the initial shock, things will be business as usual. Students won’t be around this week on account of testing, and there should be a fair amount of stubble by the time they get back next Monday.

In any case, I feel like I rose to the Peace Corps Halloween standard. Don’t expect this next year.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Erin showed up as a Native American. Me as Monk.

Koa and Summer as John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

The costumes. 4 volunteers showed up dressed as other volunteers. Left to Right: Kyle as Jenny S. 82, Jim as Trent, Blakey as me, Elisa as Tifa.

The real people. Left to Right: Jenny S. 82, Trent, Me, Tifa.

Phil and Supy, in a sequel to 2008's Big Spoon / Little Spoon, came as Masima and Masima Saina (Salt and Chinese Salt... even though Supy is Thai.). Joey 81 was a baseball player.

Emily showed up in full Dia de los Muertos garb.

K8 showed up as Miss Mortein, a superhero of her own creation.

Group 81 showed up in its entirety as we do on occasion. No other group has ever achieved this outside of training in all my time here. Yes, we love patting ourselves on the back.

Me tonight. Bald.

Christmas in August

I left my house twice today. I couldn’t find the motivation to put on a shirt before I took out the garbage this morning, which resulted in a tongue-in-cheek “Seki ā lou tino,” sweet body, from one of the boys who lives on campus. Then later on this evening after my propane stove ran out of propane, I walked up the mountain to purchase a chicken salad wrap from one of the nearby pizza places. Yes, when it rains on a Sunday, it’s hard to find any reason to go anywhere. I made some phone calls and talked to people back home, and that was nice. But I think the highlight of my day was Northern Exposure, season 3 episode 10: an episode entitled “Seoul Mates”.

From the DVD’s description of the episode:

Cicely townsfolk await the pageant of the raven, the town’s annual Christmas rite, and this means a first ever Christmas tree for Joel, unexpected time alone for Maggie, a nostalgia for past holidays for Shelly, and a new family for Maurice.

This particular episode won an Emmy for outstanding writing in a drama series, so it’s got qualified brilliance, but I think it hit me on more of a gut level this afternoon.

I miss American Christmas. Don’t get me wrong: experiencing Christmas here in Samoa has been educational, and I’ve had some enjoyable times, but it’s hard for it to feel festive amid the tropical heat.

I also feel like my Christmas experiences here have either been either too heavy on the Jesus (e.g. laying it on thick at midnight mass) or too heavy on the secular (e.g. radio mixes mashing “Feliz Navidad” with the Black-Eyed Peas’ “My Humps”). Is there no middle ground?

Also, since Thanksgiving isn’t a thing here, and Halloween isn’t much either, there’s no official start to the Holiday Season. It’s like sometime around September, someone fishes out their copy of the Mariah Carey Christmas Album, and just thing like that, things have begun.

I won’t bore you with my reverence for Northern Exposure, but I will say that this afternoon’s episode captures all the best parts of the American holiday season: the cold, the pluralism, the music, the fun. But it also has that overarching Peace-Corps-like tone with the stranger-in-a-strange-land premise and the relative isolation. In short, it made me look forward to being back in America for Christmas this year.

I’m still queasy about my return home in a few months, and anyone who knows me knows I detest starting the Holiday season too early. But I guess I just felt a warm wash of anticipation this afternoon. The malls, the cold, the red cups at Starbucks, the Drifter’s version of “White Christmas”. It’s going to be a good time.

Yeah. So that was my Sunday.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The Alternative Event

I fully intended to attend the embassy picnic. Charges d’Affaires Robin throws a good party, and there was no reason to think this wouldn’t be any different. It was a pot luck, and I planned to bring a box of Cheez-Its (what’s more American than Cheez-Its?). Trent’s plan was to make chili dogs, and he brought all of the dressings to my house, intent on using my stove to cook before we headed over to the picnic.

We did not attend the picnic.

With nearly every PCV in Apia for the 4th of July festivities, and with Samoa shutting down after 1:00 p.m. Saturday, I invited a bunch of people to my house to hang around for a while before we set out for the picnic. Often lazy Saturday afternoons are spent lounging around the Peace Corps office, and I figured it might be fun to have people over and change up the tired routine. So around 2:30 yesterday afternoon, 10 volunteers showed up at my door.

From the beginning, there was no urgency to get to the picnic. It wasn’t as though we were all raring to go, and then we slowly lost enthusiasm. Things were nonchalant and easy-going.

My frisbee has been lying around the house lately—the cat likes to wrestle with it, and I prefer she claw up the durable frisbee rather than shred rolls of toilet paper. In any case, Dan and Koa found the frisbee and went outside to throw it around.

Paul fell asleep. A game of Euchre developed. Trent boiled water to cook his weenies, but then he got distracted and Phil took over in the kitchen. The cat was cranky, and thus she was banished to the bedroom.

Paul woke up after a while, and he, Phil, and I went outside to join the frisbee game. For a long time we stood in a pentagon, attempting fancy between-the-legs catches and stuff like that, making fun of each other when someone screwed up.

My principal’s twin daughters were out on the field playing with the art teacher’s 3 sons. Frisbees aren’t too common in Samoa, and the kids were curious about our game. And when our casual tossing-it-around became “3 Flies Up” the kids sat down to watch.

The game was immediately competitive. Our rules were pretty open: pushing, shoving, holding, elbow-throwing? All legal. The Euchre crew came out to join.

The afternoon felt very fourth grade. When Chris left there were only guys left, and it felt like we should have posted a “No Girls Allowed” sign on the clubhouse door. When the frisbee flew over the fence, we had to run around and knock on my neighbor’s door to get it back.

After a while we all accepted we were going to miss the picnic, and no one seemed to mind. We ate Trent’s hot dogs, and around 5:30 we called for a taxi van to take us to Jordan’s house for Group 80’s Going Away party.

The people who actually attended the picnic showed up not too long after we did. It was a good time, from what I hear. Oh well.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Phil and Trent playing 3 Flies Up. You can see Paul in the distance as the thrower. Paul is amazing at 3 Flies Up. We started calling him "The Greased Pig" because he was so difficult to catch.

Matt 82 at Friday night's cocktail party.

We picked up a cake that Jordan had ordered on our way to Jordan's house. It was a nice cake.

Koa and me.

No One Knows What to Do with Themselves

As with most holidays in Samoa, the day after Independ -ence Day is also a holiday. The day after Christmas, the day after New Year’s, the day after Easter: holiday, holiday, holiday. The common term for such days is aso malōlō, a day of rest. Essentially it’s like the holiday is the Saturday and the each therefore has its corresponding Sunday. Given volunteers’ capacity for celebration, a day of rest is all too welcome, but after 2 or 3 weeks of vacation, on days like today no one knows what to do with themselves.

I woke up at 10:30 this morning and watched a bunch of episodes of Arrested Development before I decided today might be a nice day to sit poolside at one of the hotels in town. Living in the South Pacific, Samoa inevitably becomes a tourist destination and despite our day jobs as teachers in the developing world, on weekends there’s sometimes a tendency to cool off at one of the nearby resorts.

So after prolonged preparation and a fair amount of dillydallying, I headed off to the nearest hotel to malōlō. And, wouldn’t you know it, I couldn’t get a deck chair because the 4 poolside were occupied by Peace Corps Volunteers.

Serving in the Peace Corps in the South Pacific, there’s a lot of internal controversy over our reputation as “Beach Corps”. We do a lot of work, but we live in a place where sun and surf can clearly become a distraction. On the one hand we often live and work in the same place, and we immerse ourselves in that work. On the other hand, when school’s out of session and there’s no work to be done, what is one to do?

Most of us brought books, although a couple of volunteers have family in town so they chatted and played catch-up. I splashed around for a bit and talked to a few volunteers I haven’t seen in a while.

A couple hours later I came home.

It wasn’t the most interesting day, but that’s how things go on an aso malōlō.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

My staff at the parade yesterday. I'm in the back row, far right.

The 3 ladies that look like police officers are actually employees of the Samoan Ministry of Revenue. Imagine if the IRS wore police uniforms. Check out the chevron on her.

Blakey's parents and her brother Peter are here. Lily's already giving him the PC Samoa straw-up-the-nose treatment.

Independence Day

Our call time was 6:00 a.m. I woke up at 7:20. I’m not clear on why we were supposed to be there so early. Rolling in 2 hours late, there was still a whole lot of nothing to do. I stood under part of an umbrella most of me still exposed to the rain for the good part of an hour and a half, waiting patiently for our chance to march in the parade. At one point I turned to Maengi and said, “We should have showed up later.” She agreed.

When I was in high school, my school’s marching band was invited to march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade. Though I had no part in marching band or the colorguard auxiliary, I maintain bragging rights. Most schools need to submit an audition tape; we were invited. In any case, I’m not sure the magic of this morning compared to marching down the streets of New York in a nationally televised parade. Nonetheless, excitement was in the air this morning of Samoan Independence Day.

I missed last year. I flew in from New Zealand on the evening of Independence Day after all the festivities had ended. As much as I was assured by my fellow Peace Corps that I hadn’t missed much, I still felt a twinge of guilt, and so I was quite happy to show up this year, in style and on time.

I probably would have shown up earlier had it not been for the Indian missionaries. Maengi and Thanpuii had originally tried to get out of showing up all together with the excuse they hadn’t sewn their togigas, their uniform, yet. My principal’s reaction, “Don’t worry about wearing the uniform! You can come and march in whatever you like.” They came out of the meeting and told me I could share a taxi with them.

They figured we wouldn’t be marching until 8:00, so we wouldn’t need to leave until sometime between 7:00 and 7:30. I was brushing my teeth when Maengi called to me from the front of my house, “Matt! Are you ready? We’re calling the taxi!”

It’s a sad truth I try not to think about, but I from anywhere in my house I can easily shout and be heard by someone standing outside my front door, “Yeah. I’ll be ready!”

Traffic heading into tiny Mulinuu (translated literally: the end of town) was dense, and eventually the cab driver suggested we get out and walk. It was raining and, getting out of the taxi, I regretted not brining my umbrella. Thanpuii and Maengi both brought umbrellas, albeit very small ones. Thanpuii shared with me as best she could during the walk. By the time we arrived, the right side of me was drenched.

The “parade route” was extremely short. We all lined up at the back of the field and then marched about 100 metres past the grandstand, and that was it. There were all kinds of VIPs and the Head of State looking out, so I wouldn’t call the event anticlimactic, but as I said, it was rather short.

Walking home, we realized we still had time to make McDonalds’ breakfast. The Egg McMuffin was the highlight of my morning.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Hoards of people waiting to march.

The Prime Minister and Head of State. Pardon the blur.

My school briefly met after the march.

Boats in the harbour Monday.

Holy Week

We diagrammed the heart in Science today, aorta and ventricles and all. I’m a little worried about my science class because we’ve still got 3 units of material to cover and not very much time until the common exams in late April. And school-wise, this week is a joke. “Tomorrow is Sports Day,” I announced, “So we’ll finish up the circulatory system on Wednesday since I probably won’t see you tomorrow.” The class let out a collective “YESSSSSS!”, which I like to think they did because they don’t have class rather than they specifically don’t have my class.

If there’s a term for Holy Week in Samoan, I don’t know it. In fact, the term “Easter” doesn’t get much play either. The focus of this week is Aso Maliu, the day of death, Good Friday. And we’re to the point now when it feels like just about everything we do is in some way preparation for Friday.

To’o, a science and religious knowledge teacher, stopped in during my English class this morning to collect two students, a boy and a girl, to go rehearse for Wednesday’s passion play assembly. “Who are your best actors?” he asked. I shrugged and turned to look at the prospects. To’o picked out a boy from the front row and one of the school’s more well known female vocalists from the back. Fine by me.

Rehearsal went on all day in the Great Hall. I know because my computer lab overlooks the Great Hall and I got to hear the assembly’s soundtrack over and over and over. The play is being directed by 4 teachers, who have given up all of their classes today, and probably tomorrow and Wednesday, to coordinate Wednesday’s assembly.

I don’t mind all this. If nothing, I’m reveling in the downtime. I’m exhausted, and I welcome the break in activity. I just think it’s a bit of a farce to hold classes this week. Classes were shortened today because of the morning assembly. We’ll have a half-day tomorrow for sports. I’m guessing we’ll have a morning assembly on Wednesday and then another one in the afternoon. No classes Thursday, Friday, or Monday.

As I said, I welcome the break, but when am I going to finish teaching my kids about the circulatory system?

There again, no one else seems to worried, so I’m not going to get myself all worked up. If the kids don’t learn it before the mid-term, I’m sure we’ll find time to teach it to them before the end of the year. Unless sports and assemblies get in the way.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The new art room has been too hot lately, so in addition to passion play rehearsal (up top), art classes have also been meeting in the hall, easels and all.

The cat jumped into a plastic bag this morning while I was getting ready for school, and then got stuck. It was pitiful and hilarious.

Christmas Time

Dan has related the story to several people. He and a bunch of others had slept over at my house, and we were laying around, too lazy to get out of bed, but awake enough for conversation. Apropos nothing, I said, “We can play Christmas music!”, after which I crawled across the room and put my Holiday playlist in rotation. It was Black Friday, the official start of the Christmas season, and hell if I was going to waste any time.

I don’t know that I’d say Christmas is my favorite time of year, but I definitely like it a lot, and without the trappings of North American winter—crowded shopping malls, Mel Tormé on the radio, ubiquitous Starbucks red cups, cold weather—the Christmas season isn’t quite as enthralling for me here in Samoa. So I feel the need to overcompensate, and thus the “All I Want for Christmas is You” on Black Friday morning.

This overcompensation seems to be part of the Peace Corps experience. Some of us who’ve always felt a little ambivalent about hardcore American patriotism have been born again. I’ve always been a big fan of Creedance Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” but now even when we briefly talked about ASCII in my computer classes, I was quick to point out the A is for American. Whoo!

In any case, I’ve tried a couple different ways to remind myself it’s Christmas time. Last year I read David Baldacci’s “The Christmas Train,” which is a terrible terrible book. I made it a point to save all the Egg-Nog-flavored Ghiradelli squares because they capture the essence of Christmas pretty well.

I’ve considered hanging Christmas lights around my house—this is my first dwelling since college in which I have sole control over the building. There are several problems with putting up the lights: they’d be difficult and/or expensive to acquire, they’d be difficult to hang, and plugging them in inside the house would probably mean a breach in mosquito security. Expenses like that are hard to justify since I won’t be here for Christmas next year.

The ferry between Savai’i and Upolu gets a lot more crowded during the lead-up to Christmas, so the PCVs that live way out there get a good Christmas reminder. There is a whole lot of Christmas music played on the buses and the radio, but it tends to be of a slightly different style—i.e. put to a synthesized techno beat and often awkwardly mixed with inappropriate non-Christmas music. The worst example of this I’ve heard would have to be (no joke) “Feliz Navidad” mixed with Black-Eyed Peas’ “My Humps”.

Blakey and I are trying to figure out our plan for Christmas day. I’ve suggested watching the various cartoon Christmas specials, which we have in AVI format on the community hard drive in the Peace Corps office. I also thought about compiling various Christmas episodes from different seasons of different TV shows. Blakey wants to cook. Yeah. I think that will do.

I hope you’re well. No pictures today. Sorry.

Gift Bags

During a break in the action, I looked over at a panoramic view of a beautiful sunset, and though I wasn’t clear on whether or not I was authorized, I crossed the room and walked through the French doors out to the veranda. A chain link fence separated the expansive backyard from the ocean waves that calmly lapped the beach. With the picturesque sunset, the fence was an eyesore, but I suppose security’s got to be tight at the Head of State’s house.

Samoa has two national leaders: the Prime Minister, which is an elected position, and the Head of State, which is something more akin to the Queen (or King, in this case) of England. The position is more of a figurehead than a governor. Before today, I’ve seen the HOS 3 times: he made an appearance at the 4th of July party, he attended the girl’s rugby game at Apia Park that I attended with my host family, and he was a central figure at the National Memorial Ceremony after the tsunami.

In any case, the HOS is throwing a Christmas party for children living in tsunami-affected areas, and he called on a number of service organizations—Rotary, the Lion’s Club, et al.—to help organize the event. I’ve been getting more and more involved with the Apia chapter of Rotoract, the Rotary club’s youthful counterpart, and we’ve been tapped to man the food tents at the event, which will be held tomorrow. We were also asked to come help stuff gift bags tonight.

Initially we stuffed the gift bags with small stacks of books—Harry Potter coloring books, young adult novels, comic books, etc. There was some effort to separate the bags into girl bags and boy bags, but as the evening wore on and the number of bags became more unwieldy, the separating line was blurred.

We bunched the bags in groups of 5 to aid in keeping tally and laid them out in improvised rows across the entry way of the HOS’s house. Then stuffers came through with candy, tossing handfuls into each bag. Having the bags all tied together in groups of 5 made it difficult to toss candy in logistically, but by that point I’d been tasked with keeping tally of the number of bags stuffed. I dodged candy duty.

Someone brought a large cardboard box filled with stuffed animals into the room, and 2 guys went around choosing stuffed animals and dropping one into each bag. Once a bag had books, candy, and a stuffed animal, it was complete.

I caught a ride with Ainsof, the current president of Rotoract, this afternoon. He told me they’re expecting approximately 900 children at the event tomorrow, although I heard from someone else the number could be as large as 1,200. When the dust settled, we’d stuffed 1,083 bags. So let’s hope the 900 estimate is more accurate.

Either way, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s event. I think it’s going to be a good time.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Ainsof and Blakey hard at work.

Stuffing in action.

Group photo with stuffed bags.

I'm not sure who took this picture, or how they took it. But it's, like, totally psychedelic, man.

Thanksgiving 2009

I woke up at 7:30 a.m. yesterday to cook mashed potatoes. I had a busy day scheduled, and since I haven’t done dishes in a while, I had to get up pretty early to make sure I could get the potatoes finished and check off everything else on my list. I boiled the entire sack of potatoes, and I also chopped up 4 entire cloves of garlic and sautéed them in butter to give some flavor to the potatoes. Using the spatula handle as a masher (Supy helped using a regular table fork), I had the potatoes ready to go by 9:30. Without a bowl of appropriate size, I put the entire pot in the refrigerator to be reheated and served later yesterday afternoon.

There were errands to be run yesterday. Phil and I both needed to see the travel agent, plus I had business at the bank and I needed a bowl for my mashed potatoes. I got lucky with that last item because Chan Mow is having a big sale on plastic dishware. Awesome. I was able to get this all accomplished by noon, when the country shut down like it does every Saturday.

I transferred the potatoes from the pot to my brand new plastic “basin,” and then showered, shaved, and headed to church for a holiday party.

This is probably the firs time in my life I attended a Christmas party before I celebrated Thanksgiving, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Since I helped out with White Sunday, I was invited to come to the kids’ end-of-the-year/Christmas party, which was conveniently scheduled to end a half-hour before the big Thanksgiving event up the hill at the Charges d’Affaires house was scheduled to begin. Good times all around.

Leaving the party before it was officially over, I received a text from Phil saying taxi arrangements were already underway, and I needed to get home as fast as I could. They could have picked me up on the side of the road, except I needed my mashed potatoes. I power-walked home, grabbed the saran-wrapped dish and got out to the road.

The event was a massive pot luck along with some catered dishes provided by the Embassy. Blakey received my potatoes and put them in the needs-to-be-mircowaved queue. All of my obligations finished, I headed out to socialize on the veranda.

An hour later, Spencer came around to let everyone know dinner was ready to be served. Cale and I got a good spot in line and just as we reached the turkey, I spotted my 4-clove mashed potatoes in their newly purchased plastic basin… sitting behind the counter still covered in saran wrap, cold and sad. Between the catered mashed potatoes and the ones Jim and Briony brought, my potatoes were benched.

I was disappointed. But as my grandmother’s Portuguese mantra goes, “Mais fica.” More for me.

I took them home. I’ll enjoy the garlic skin-on mashed potatoes all by myself. All four cloves.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Musical chairs at the church party.

Chris and Blakey in the chairs, Supy in the foreground.

Cale.

A bunch of us were able to catch a ride with group 82's bus, which dropped us off on the way back to their training village. Proving his Samoa cred 4 weeks before he's due to go home, Max rode on Phil's lap.

Halloween Comes Together

As reported Thursday, much controversy has surrounded Halloween, both because of my lack of costume and the contentious debate over where to hold the party. The bus coming back from Fausaga was an hour late, and I still had no costume when we rolled into Apia at 4:00 p.m. I called Supy, and it turned out the location issue also had yet to be resolved. Things were becoming dire.

Word went around back in August that Jim and Spencer were dressing up as Simon and Garfunkel. I’m a pretty big Simon and Garfunkel fan, and I felt a little heartbroken when heard about this. After discussing the matter with others, it was suggested I go as solo artist Paul Simon. I could get a pair of jeans, a white t-shirt and a grey suit jacket to try and pull off the “You Can Call Me Al” era look. This would have been a slightly obscure reference, and it would have only been funny to me, and I probably would have had to walk around the party explaining the costume to everyone. And who wants that?

Last year’s Halloween party was awesome. It was held at Zodiac in Vailima, which has a huge outdoor patio area where a bunch of traditional Halloween games—bobbing for apples, Cale’s Slimer piñata, etc.—were held. The plan was to replicate this party as best we could. Blakey, the official Social Chair, talked to the management at Zodiac, and given the success of last year’s party they were having a bigger party this year, which they were advertising on radio and TV. Also they were charging a $20 cover. This did not sit well with many volunteers.

My other idea was to go as a Samoan bus. Buses here are pretty distinct, outside and inside, and the plan was to dress the front of me like the outside and the back of me like the inside. I had big plans for the back. I found a UFC t-shirt with an over-the-top pro-American slogan and a feather boa, and I was going to make a flyer for an upcoming siva to tape to my back. The front was a bigger problem. I couldn’t figure out a way to capture the outside of a bus. All my ideas required a lot of money or a trip to Target, neither of which I have access to. I finally scrapped the idea Thursday night.

The Yacht Club surfaced as a possible venue about 2 weeks ago. Consensus among volunteers was agreeable, but Blakey texted a bunch of us last Sunday to say The Yacht Club had been booked for the night of Halloween, and that we were tentatively back at Zodiac.

It’s unclear how the double-booking issue at The Yacht Club was resolved, but when I talked to Supy on the phone yesterday, a contingent of volunteers had decided to go to The Yacht Club. There was a widening schism and at one point it looked like volunteers were going to split for the evening.

On the costume front, I ditched the concept-centric approach and decided to try the materials-centric approach; I brainstormed costume ideas based on things I already had. I figured my thick-rimmed glasses were as good a starting point as any.

I stayed out of the location controversy. While the issue was debated via text messages and in person at the Peace Corps office, I sat at my house, out of the fray. And lo and behold, around 5:30 p.m., it was finally decided that all volunteers had opted for The Yacht Club. Done and done.

I decided to be Peace Corps Samoa Country Director Dale. I realize this reference will fall flat over the Internet, but it was a pretty big hit at the party. Just know that the man has a distinct enough style that it could be replicated. It also helped that Dale and his family coincidentally happened to be eating at The Yacht Club.

So it all came together in the end.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.















Me as Dale and Dale with his daughter, Celine.















Jim & Spencer as Simon & Garfunkel.















Casey as Sean of the Dead.















JICA volunteers were there too.















Paul as Captain Morgan.















Koa as a Never Nude (There are dozens of us!  DOZENS!).