Hello everyone, I
have no access to Internet at my home stay so my plan is to post whatever
updates I have written when I go into town. The goal is to keep each individual
entry relatively short, but post a lot of them for you to read at your leisure.
This post will
discuss the basics of my home stay, and the rest will be funny stories, interesting
cultural differences, and whatever else pops into my head and might seem
interesting.
I have only been
at my home stay in Ha’asini for three days but I already love the experience.
The main office warned us before we left that many of our families would not be able to
speak English, but Faiana speaks English very well and her 18-year-old son,
Sione, just spent the past four years living in New Zealand, so communication is
not a problem
I live in a
house with Faiana and her friend Fusi. Fusi does not speak much English, so I
learn a lot just by trying to understand what they are saying to each other. The
house is very comfortable with a common area, a kitchen, and my own room. I
have 24/7 electricity, but no running water so I use rainwater to brush my
teeth and I shower with a bucket, which is not nearly as bad as it sounds. In
my backyard there are plenty of dogs, and I share a fence with some beautiful
pigs and roosters that don’t know when the sun rises so they are loud all day.
Faiana’s parents
live across the street, and Sione lives with them. He speaks perfect English
and is 18, so he has been a lot of fun to hangout with. My days are spent in
class learning Tongan and various teaching methods, while I spend the rest of
my day trying to meet everyone in the village and practice what I learned.
The younger kids
are the most fun to play around with due to my limited Tongan. For the first
few days I was simply called palangi (white person), but now everywhere I walk
I hear calls of “Soni, Soni,” even if I have never met the kid before. I went
for a run one of my first days in Ha’asini, and I ran past the school during
the lunch break when all the kids in primary school go home for lunch. The
moment they saw me, about 40 kids chased after me and ran the last quarter-mile
with me to my home stay. It was kind of like my Tom Hanks in Forest Gump moment,
and it will apparently happen to me for the remainder of my time in Tonga
according to other volunteers.
Since you were nice enough to read this far, I have an update that is a
little more interesting. Last night, I went to a local resort with Sione and
one of his friends. Every Wednesday and Friday, the resort has a buffet and a
show. Not even counting the rest of the food, they roast an entire pig, put an
apple in its mouth, and cut the meat for you right off the bone. Imagine
Thanksgiving, accept a larger animal, an open fire instead of an oven, spittle
rather than a tray, and a massive pig like the kind you see every 10 minutes in
Tonga versus a turkey, and than you get the idea. For the show, the final act
was Tongan fire dancers, which are basically Tongans who juggle with sticks on
fire in traditional Tongan warrior garb. It was awesome and I have some
pictures below.
Cutting up the puaka (pig)
Tongan Fire Dancers
That is it for
the nuts and bolts of my home stay details. I hope I didn’t bore you, as this
post was more to update the family with my life, but I promise the next post
will be more interesting.
No comments:
Post a Comment