Counting Chickens

My dog likes to eat chickens.

But not full grown ones, just the little baby fetal chickens that can't run away cause they're still stuck in the egg.

This is gross. They smell horrible, and thus, so does he.

But the bigger problem is that chickens are food for humans too. Thus every chicken he eats before it's hatched is a potential chicken that humans could have eaten. This makes people in my village not like my dog very much. In fact if he continues to do this they'll want to kill him. So yeah, I hope he stops.

April has been a great month. In April 2008 everything worked out the way it was supposed to.

A summary:

1. After a long tortuous wait, and lots of rumors, we found out that our water project has been completely funded by UNDP. Yes that is right the water project is a go. In the next week or two our committee will recieve funding and be able to continue the previously started water project. Photos of happy, soaked, rejoicing people soon to follow.

2. Krissy's good friend Karri and her boyfriend Nate came to visit us and we had a blast. We went to some beachside resorts, hung out and played baseball in Ekipe village, took a short boat trip to the island of Pele, and another to Nguna where we hiked up a dormant volcano. They also brought us a ton of goodies including a new digital camera so guess what, pictures on the blog are back. Thanks Mom and Mark, Tony Scalise for the video camera, everyone else for all the wonderful gifts and Karri and Nate for carryng it all.

3. Krissy and I took a group of the kids from Ekipe who have been playing baseball now for about 7 months and brought them to Port Vila for Vanuatu's first-ever Inter village baseball match. Ekipe won 13-10 and everyone had a great time.

4. A North Efate Primary School Sports Association has started. Seth and I had been working to get the Headmasters from these schools to meet and begin collaborations and now it has happened. The launching (with the second inter village baseball game and first inter village ultimate frisbee game) will be at the end of June.

Seth and I hard in the Resource Room at work on the North Efate Sports Program and a trip to Iririki Island Resort for a cure for what ails you

This is the typical island pose for a camera

Gettin on the Camion to drive to Ekipe I love it

The day after we got to Ekipe we played a baseball game with the kids, Nate's team won.

Teaching kids about the most important American that ever lived: Brett Favre and Nate learning how to open a coconut

The walk to Paonangisu and goofin off with some kids

We stopped along the way to enjoy the Beachcomber Hot Springs (about 1.5 hrs from our house)

We got to Paonangisu and celebrated the long walk with our friends Jasmine and Troy

The next day we took a boat to Nguna for a day on Pele with Seth and after that a boat to Nguna to hike up the volcano. Here we are launching the boat and riding to Nguna after. We were greeted with lots of rain. And after a month straight of rainy days....

...it made it very muddy. Nguna is basically an hour long hike straight up, and there were lots of falls... see Nate's ass

but it allowed us to get the steretypical Peace Corps shot:

The hike up the volcano was a bit of a bust, these two guys followed behind us the whole way mocking our laughs and making weird little devil noises. Meanwhile the local leaders of the trip hacked through the tall grass since no one had come up here in a long time. The slow going was made especially painful after we encountered swarms of black ants. Here's a picture of Seth and I freaking out. These things are very painful and then itch for a week after. I got three or four bites on the same foot and the whole thing was so swollen the next day I couldn't walk.

Eventually we made it to the top for a wonderfully cloudy view and a torrential downpour

After a grumpy hike back down, we returned to Ekipe village the next day. Nate was a champ and chewed his and Karri's kava himself, something I've never been able to do.

I always have a friend chew mine

After a night of candlelight stories back in Ekipe

We went to some Sunday Churchin,

After all the excitement we had another day of relaxin on the beach in Vila before Nate and Karri headed back to the States.

All in all an awesome trip. Thank you guys so much for coming to visit us and sharing our crazy life. Also thank you Mom for the awesome new digital camera, absolutely love it, the blog was hurtin in its absence and so were we, love you.

Well, coming up next, an In Service Training for 20 Volunteers in Ekipe, The All Volunteer Conference in Vila, and training the new group. Talk to you after that.