The Post Office is Open!

Today has been a great day! A year after our local post office was robbed and shut down it has reopened and I received lots of letters and packages. The oldest being the letter from Dossie dated July 18th 2010. And more recently an awesome birthday package from Justine. I also received a Halloween package and two Christmas packages and a cinco de mayo birthday package. I ate half the Halloween chocolates and a bowl of cheesy tortilla soup. And I feel kind of sick but am loving it.

Nina was just here last month on her way back to the states. I was meaning to visit her on my way back but she beat me to it. It was a nice excuse to travel around the country. We visited the island Pentecost where they have a peculiar ceremony for celebrating the yam harvest every May and June. They build tall towers out of sticks and vines 40 ft high and jump off of them into the dirt with a vine attached to their ankle. It’s sort of like bungee jumping. It was really impressive. After that we were supposed to head off to Yasur volcano, which is the most magnificent approachable active volcano on earth. Unfortunately it was being a little too active and consequently not very approachable. Peace Corps forbid me to go so we decided to hop on a small passenger ship heading to the island just to the south. That ship should have arrived at 6 pm but instead it showed up at 1 am. We got on only to find out that it was not stopping at the next island but going directly to the capital city. 12 hours after our 3 hour tour had started, we finally reached the capital and spent several days lounging pool side at various resorts to make up for the time we’d spent on the boat. It was good fun to catch up with Nina and hear all the Friar news. Nina quote, “So it seems like the theory behind Peace Corps cuisine is ‘it’s better with Peanut butter.’” Yep, so true. Biscuits: better with peanut butter; ramen noodles: better with peanut butter; spoon: better with peanut butter.

Here's a video about Land Diving, the Nangol Ceremony