Hello again

Alex and I are in Port Vila, again. Peace Corps called us in to lead two workshops, one with volunteers and the other with staff, both about PHAST and participatory methods. We led the training with volunteers on Friday. The staff declared the training voluntary and we had a few folks choose not to show up (including some folks that have led PHAST in their village and we desperately needed their feedback, it was frustrating (more so for me, Lucas). But it was good in the end, very much Alex and I handing our project off to the newer generation of volunteers. And we feel good about giving it to them.
Our staff training is tomorrow, we still have preparations to finilize. It'll be good, and our expectations aren't as high as they were for the volunteer training.

We interviewed with Antarctica yesterday. We should get an email or call this week to see if we got a job, but I doubt there are any positions available this near to the start of the summer season. I suspect we'll get offered "alternate" positions, which means we'd be medically qualified and ready to go if they needed to replace staff that didn't work out for whatever reason. I was originally an alternate my first Antarctic season. It might actually work out better this way, we'll have time to go home and visit family and maybe even figure out where we are going to live before we get called up. And we might not get called up at all too, which would be fine too, as we really are ready to find some ground and put down some roots.

We will probably buy plane tickets tomorrow (after a meeting with our country director), leaving Vanuatu on October 11, a few days in Fiji and then on to DC. Visit family and then find a place to live in Virginia. Unless Antarctica calls early or we stumble onto some type of great job, Alex and I should be seeing lots of you (if your Lucas' family) at Brian's wedding in November.

We were without our computers for the last month on the island, (It's a long story but essentially we put the computers on the cargo ship and they took a month to get to us.) So I haven't done any blog entries at site this past month. We were good, more folks are starting to ask us for help, which feels good, we've gained some level of trust over time. The dispensary store had a theif, they haven't lost any money, but it's been 9 months now and they haven't made any money, well they have made lots of money, probably at least a thousand dollars, but they don't have anything to show for it. It's a common problem with businesses in the South Pacific, the slang for it is "rat i kakai"; which means that a rat has eaten the profits, sort of like a dog eating homework in America. Most of the rat eating probably came from giving family a can of food here and there and not thinking much about it.

Okay that's long enough for now, we are good, ready to get back home and start the next 'phase' of our lives.

Oh, and one last thing, it'll probably be good not to send us mail anymore, as it often takes months to arrive and we'll be leaving in not too many months. Don't worry though, we'll keep sending you mail.