haven’t finished my post from wokabaot week, so this is from right after that! I’ll finish posting pictures and thoughts this week while in Vila. Enjoy!
We took off from Ambae around 1 on Saturday and, after a rough grass landing on Pentecost to drop off some people, we headed to Port Vila, land of things. I loved my visit to Ambae, but I missed my friends and was looking forward to a fun night in town with everyone! Peace Corps puts us up in a places called Pacific Paradise, but don’t let the name fool you- the older volunteers warned us that it’s just a motel. Still works for me!
We arrived to Pac Par and were pleasantly surprised – I’ve never written “pleasantly surprised” before, it feels dumb, but it’s accurate so I’ll go with it. The room I’d be sharing with Laura was clean, had a ceiling fan, and most importantly… it had a bathroom! Each room had it’s own bathroom! This includes running water! First thing I did was take a shower and wash off the grime that cold bucket baths don’t take care of. I’m not a big shower-er in the US, maybe one every 2-3 days, but between 3 pm on Saturday and noon on Sunday I took 4 extra long showers. And I regret nothing.
After everyone basked in luxury for a bit, we headed into Vila and fulfilled dream #2 – good food! A group of us went to a restaurant called the Brewery and pigged out. Laura and I split the three cheese mushroom pizza, a cheeseburger, and fries. I’m still drooling at the thought. While everyone scarfed down their meals as if we were brand new industrial-powered vacuums, we traded stories about our sites! Each house, village, school, community is unique and hearing others’ stories was fascinating. I can’t wait until I save up and make some visits! Some of us grabbed gelato after dinner – Maddy Thiel I think it was you who told me, “dessert doesn’t fill you up, it just fills in the cracks!” A theory I definitely support.
Afterwards, we went to a “club” and did club-like things. Just kidding, it was 7:30 and the place was empty. We made some song requests and took over the dance floor, which was easy to do considering we were basically the only humans “clubbing” before 11 in Vila. We were just a bunch of kids (of all ages) in our dirty clothes with bug bites and sun burns, but man, did we look good! Everyone dusted off their best dance moves when the fog machine was turned on. There was river dancing, conga lines, interpretive everything, and beyond. And naturally when this many good dancers come together, dance offs occur. We also played several rounds of dance circle, now known as synchronized swim circle, where one person picks the move and everyone follows suit. You pass the choosing power around the circle with a quick booty bump and you’ve got yourselves a party! I played this often with great friends this past summer, so it was fun memory-jogging while making new ones, too!
People filed out throughout the evening, but a group of us stuck around until 1:30 ish. Dane turns 30 on March 10th, so we wanted to celebrate proper before returning to the training villages. We finally made our way back to Pac Par where Laura, Dane, Dave and I ended up having a storian (chit chatting) until 4 am. After seeing that it was so late, we realized we didn’t take any advantage of having a clean, comfortable bed with no mosquito net. Maybe next time!
We woke up early, despite our attempts of sleeping in. Because that’s what happens when you’ve been going to bed by 9:30 every night and waking up with the sunrise and roosters. Laura and Robert went to the store and brought back eggs, beef sausage, snake bean, avocado, and cheese and we cooked up a feast! A few of us gave our laundry to the hotel staff to wash. We haven’t yet mastered the effective washing/scrubbing technique, and if you saw the state of some of my clothes, you’d agree it was the best 5 bucks I could have spent! After breakfast we walked to town and shopped around before heading back, packing up, and taking off for Epau! Epau is about 45 minutes outside of Port Vila and they’ve hosted years of training, so I was looking forward to life in Epau for 3 weeks.
On March 23rd we head back to Vila for 6 days and I’m sure there will be plenty of pizzas, showers, and dance moves on that visit, too!
Until next time
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