I spent the day today with my hands in the dirt. It is such a great feeling to be one with the earth and the food you eat every now and again and I get to help! It is refreshing to have the organic push come from someone other than me. I am totally on board of course, but others care! Needless to say it has been great getting back to work.
 

Dexter Poindexter has nothing on us cause we really “feel on fire.” The first 3 days we were in Tonga were extremely torrid. Trying to come up with a description of the early afternoon sun we could only surmise the word-blowtorch. It wasn’t just us, everyone commented on the heat and no one moved much between noon and 4pm. We have no thermometers but it was probably around 95F and very humid with no breeze. Later we had a fisherman tell us they fish at night because “if you fish during the day the sun fishes you.”

Well I realize I have been grumpy lately and my emails have showed that. I guess it is easier to write when it is venting frustrations. So a few days ago I found myself sitting on a cinder block fence waiting for a bus. Nakolo is on Halaliku (cliff road) and I had a beautiful view of the cliff, or hill and the ocean and ‘Eua the neighboring big island. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I was sitting in the shade, the one place that you can think of the sun as gorgeous in the tropics.

Here are the answers to a few questions I thought you all might be interested in:

What are you counterparts?

Friday morning March 20th and I am up early and excited, we fly to Ha’a Pai today for a weekend vacation. We wanted to fly earlier in the week but all the flights were full. As it turns out all the previous flights this week were canceled due to ash in the air from the volcano erupting near here, serendipitous.

Our flight was the first out in 3 days, necessitating a larger plane to carry all the canceled passengers. (We flew just off the still smoldering new island and got some pretty good photos)

Well I made it here and let me tell you it is beautiful. Shannon (another PCV group 73) and I are driving around the South island and doing hikes and such wherever we find something cool. The first thought I had though, Wow is it cold! Imediately the woman in the airport (the point I discovered the temperature) said "it's nice in the sun!" A nice way to say it is cold.

Alice became ill repeatedly and finally got an appointment in Australia with specialists whose job it was to get to the bottom of her health issues. The long and short of it is she has had a long standing anemia which has made her susceptible to every new bug that has entered her world. Since her world is completely packed with new bugs, she has been sick a lot and very worn out and drained from the anemia. The Aussie Doctors figured this out, treated the underling causes and Alice is better.

Dianne (Alice's Mom)

FYI- I did it I finished my Peace Corps service. It has been bitter sweet so I am glad to have another few weeks there in December. Saying goodbye for real might be hard though. Now I am traveling in New Zealand for a few weeks and IT IS COLD! I don't know how I will survive Michigan next month. I am feeling randomly overwhelmed but overall good. More adventures to come. Peace
-Alice