From pink to green

April 1^st will officially mark one and a half years in Samoa! I can’t believe in 9 months my service will be complete. It’s been quite the journey, to say the least.

There’s only one week left of school until our term break, which means I’ve made it through my last ever Term 1 at Sili Primary School. It’s been a very productive term for my classes. My classroom also got revamped! Instead of just concrete floors with woven mats, I now have a linoleum sticker covering the concrete. Samoans call it “carpet”, although I can’t quite agree to that terminology. Whether or not it’s carpet, it still has made a huge difference! The first day I had my new carpet, my students came in and immediately started doing snow angels and rolling around on the floor. It was quite the scene!

We love reading on Miss Sala's new carpet!

This term also involved a first for the Ministry of Sports, Education, and Culture here in Samoa! The ministry organized a sports competition for my district (8 primary schools) in rugby and volleyball. Knowing that the competition was approaching, school ended at lunch every day so that the boys could practice rugby and the girls could practice volleyball. Our hard work seemed to pay off because Sili got fourth place in both sports, which is not too shabby. On the day of the competition, the girls even got to show their knees and wear shorts! This is unheard of in Samoa. It was a very fun day and I have to say I was a great cheerleader!

The cutest volleyball huddle there ever was.

Aside from school, my home life is probably 99% different than it was last year. What used to be a pink house is now a green shop. I was gone for a weekend and when I came back, there was all of a sudden a shop in my house! With Samoa being located in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, products and food that can be imported must be very processed in order to make it here. So, Samoan shops mostly sell packets of ramen noodles, tinned fish, and corned beef. Sugar is our other big seller, and that’s about all the shop sells. It’s not quite what Americans would imagine when hearing about a shop. Regardless, my house has now been running as a shop for about a month now. My students find it hilarious to be able to come shopping and see me. I’m too busy with school to really work at the shop, but I’ll help bag sugar when I can. I’m a pro at measuring sugar now!

My new living quarters (shop on the left, bedroom on the right).

I’ve also been able to do more exploring around Samoa recently. It’s hard to believe a year and a half later I still haven’t seen everything, but it’s true! I’m working on it and hopefully will have seen everything by the end. One weekend, a bunch of volunteers and I went on a waterfall hike! It was on a rather undeveloped part of Upolu, hiking up the Falese’ela River. The hike itself was about 6 hours long and probably the coolest hike I’ve done! We were essentially walking through the river the entire time (I was an absolute pro because of my Sili River practice). Throughout the hike, different waterfalls popped up and we ended up jumping off most of them! The craziest part about jumping off waterfalls is climbing up them in the first place. Those who know me know I’m definitely not a rock-climber, so scaling the side of these waterfalls was quite the challenge. However, I think I jumped off about six waterfalls that day, the tallest one being 50 feet high!! Talk about an adrenaline rush. Samoa is so neat because it’s completely undeveloped land and not even marketed or advertised for tourists.

PCV's hiking through a river for 6 hours!

Another exciting thing that happened this month is that my cousin and her family came to visit! This is the second time they’ve visited during my service, the first time being in June. It was so fun to see them again! I’m so lucky I’ve had visitors and gotten to see so much family during my year and a half so far. While they were visiting, we went to Togitogiga Waterfall, which was another first for me! It’s on the southern coast of Upolu and it’s in a national reserve. Yet again another instance of gorgeous and untouched waterfalls! It was so fun to explore and see my American family members again.

Thanks for visiting again, Maile and family!

As the term comes to a close, I am packing my bag and heading to Rarotonga, Cook Islands next week for break! How lucky am I that I get to explore the South Pacific so much?!

Time for some island hopping!