To answer your questions....

To answer some questions from recent emails:

Are you in your little house?
No, sadly our house is not finished yet. We left a list of everything that needed to be finished and tried to talk strong a little bit. We're hoping it will be finished when we return to our village in two weeks.

Are there too many rats?
I've learned some islands are infested with rats, but (thank you God) our is not one of them. I have seen the occasional gigantic mouse, but never inside our house, except when the cat carries in a kill to show off.

Are your sores healing?
Yes, they are all healed, I am officially infection free. (Wounds literally take almost forever to heal this climate, I think there's just too much microbial life here)

Does your roof leak?
No, but we are currently living in a concrete mansion with a tin roof, we'll see how the leaf roof works when we move into our house.

Do you have to treat all your water for drinking?
We're drinking rain water, so no, it doesn't need to be treated. When they rain stops we'll be drinking water from another source - the waterfall. We'll try drinking the waterfall water without treatment and see how it goes.

Can you buy more phone cards if we put the cash in your checking account Lucas?
I've heard rumors that if you go to the phone company's website and create an account you can put money on our phones directly...but that still doesn't fix the problem that it's about 50 cents a minute for a phone call. And to answer you actually asked, we don't have access to an ATM machine on our island, but could withdraw money when we are in Port Vila.

Where do women go to give birth in your village?
They give birth at the health dispensary beside our house (future house). The health department recommends that mothers give their first and last birth in a more substantial hospital, but I get the feeling folks, at least where we live, really just ignore that advice.

What is covering your cold cement floor?
Beautiful woven mats, there's a picture of Alex sitting on our mat in the January 9th posting.

What are you sleeping on?
a foam mattress on the cold cement floor, it's the size of a double bed.

Do you sleep under nets?
yes, one net.

Does Alexandra visit the homes by herself or with you or another person?
She usually went (she's finished now) with Mikey, the nurse's aid at the dispensary. I went to a couple with her.

Did you get the rug?
yes, thank you, love the color.

Are you eating healthy or is the coconut and banana diet too much sugar?
A coconut and banana diet would not be good, but our diet is alright, we get plenty of fresh fruit and plenty of carbs, just have to make sure were getting enough protein and not too much coconut and banana.

Do you need more Flintstones?
the Peace Corps provides us multi-vitamins and additional vitamin C tablets.

Are you learning the names of all the villagers or only a few?
I'm really bad with names, Alex is doing alright and we just let her talk when it's time to use names.

Are you taking over other PC volunteers work or are you the first in the village?
We are the first in our village, which is nice in a lot of ways, except that the village seems to have unrealistic expectations of how much we are going to be able to accomplish, which is kind of sad to imagine being the source of much disappointment for the next two years.

On a map we found Nambwarangiut, but your address said Naparangyut: were you guessing on the spelling or are they two different places?
That's where we are! Both spellings would be correct as it's more of a spoken language than a written language.

Does one have ESP knowledge of an event in the future OR does one contribute to the event by accepting the feeling that the event/accident will happen and pondering how severe it may be?
I'm going to go with the 'contributing to the event by accepting the feeling that the event/accident will happen and pondering how severe it may be' option. And not just the pondering but actions and attitudes too.

How much can one mentally alter another person's life?
I'm going to say not a whole lot, but one could mentally alter one's own life quite dramatically.