O-H-I-O

hey everybody,
sorry the blogs haven't been coming regularly. We've been at my childhood home, in Ohio, for the past few days. We have done several outings with my family, and I've been surprised by the number of folks mentioning having read this blog.
So a lot has happened in the past week. We spent a week in California, visiting Alex's cousin. We spent the fourth of July drinking wine, eating crab and posing for pictures under the American flag. We went shopping at several charity shops (I scored a new pair of gorgeous shoes for $6) and mostly just enjoyed the weather and our return to the states.
Last Wednesday we flew into Dayton, Ohio. We ran (walked) a 5K with my mom (my time was 50 minutes and 1 second), attended a go-cart race with my Dad, visited lots of relatives at a family reunion, helped mom buy old furniture and received our official peace corps invitation to serve for the next two years in ....(drum roll).... Vanuatu!!! Here's to not eating canned turkey tail for two years!
We were hoping for (and sort of expecting) Vanuatu, it seems like a good placement, we leave on September 12th, so we have just over two months in America. We plan to spend some time with my parents and some time with Alex's parents and visiting friends.
Starting September 12th, we will have three days training in the states (I'm guessing mostly paperwork and safety briefings) and then we head to Vanuatu for 10 weeks of training. During this time we will learn more specifically about our assignment, start learning the local language and begin to understand the culture of the land. After the first 5 weeks or so of training, we will go on a visit to our proposed site and finally learn where we will be spending the next two years of our lives. After training, we move to our site, spend the first two months living with a family and then get our own place.
Alex's position is community health extensionist and my position is small enterprise development advisor. Peace Corps sent us pages and pages of information to read, plenty more forms and about 5 more essays to write...good times. We've finished the readings and Alex has started in on the essays.
Vanuatu is an island in the South Pacific, it's a chain of 83 different islands, sort of between Australia and Fiji, north (well north) of New Zealand. Most of the 83 islands have their own language while everyone speaks a pidgin English known as Bislama. We'll have 10 weeks to learn enough of the language to get ourselves started. I'm intimidated about learning the language, though it's said to be a relatively simple language. Internet research suggest the people are really happy, the houses are simple and pretty, Alex will have to dress conservatively (think long skirts and the occasional mu mu). Vanuatu is known for it's kava, a narcotic drink the consistency of mud. I've seen canoes in pictures. They eat a lot of sweet potatoes, coconut milk, plantains, and such.
Alex is super excited about the fresh mangoes and pineapples.
We plan to stay in Ohio for the next few weeks and hit up Michigan to see Andrea and Luke (and belly). We will then be in DC for a while and hope to get to North Carolina to see so many of our friends we miss so much!