Social Bug

My parents always told me when I was growing up that I was a social bug. Meaning that I spent a lot of my time socializing with other and I never really stayed home. I always liked to hang out with friends and keep myself busy. I think it is safe to say that us three are turning into social bugs. I am not going to lie at first we struggled really hard with making friends. Partially due to the language barrier and well we are really different. I mean I was talking to one of my students the other day. They were telling me that they have five people that sleep in the same bedroom as them. I could never ever imagine being raised like that. It’s safe to say that I would have gone crazy being that close to my family all the time. No offence family but that would be just a little to close for comfort. We started hanging out with our friends almost every night. Since I talk about our friends all the time I will start saying their names in my blog! Also because I know I will want to look back on this and remember our friends.

Our first friends were Moki, Luci, and Lima. These three took us under their wings and introduced us to the island. They helped us make friends with a lot of the locals and helped us get acquainted to the island life. We also are really good with Joe, Vice, and Mark. We have really enjoyed getting to know them and forever thankful for all the times that they have helped us out so far.

This week we had our first case of lice in the house. For the past couple of weeks Virginia has been scratching her head. We didn’t know exactly what was going on but we figured she may have just gotten sunburned and then was peeling. Well here we are three weeks later and she has blisters on her neck and scalp. We decided we better pull out our lice treatment and take care of it before it got any worse. It was quite the experience to say the least. First of all I had never done the lice treatment before. After coating her hair in the treatment you are supposed to rinse it with warm water. Since we don’t have any warm water we got a big pot out and heated the water up. I had lost track of time and let the water get a little too hot. Do you know how hard it is to cool hot water here? It is not an easy task but we managed. The hardest part was dumping the hot water on her head. I started laughing which caused Virginia to laugh and while I was laughing the water dumped onto her face causing her to get water up her nose. To say the least it was an experience. After the hot water incident I grabbed the comb and slowly combed through each strand of her hair. By the end it grossed me out on how much lice we found in her hair. Lets just say we won’t be letting it get that bad anytime soon.

We FINALLLY made it to the mart. It only took us three weeks to get to the mart. Luckily one of the teachers drove us to the mart and dropped us off. While shopping we found some tortilla shells. I seriously can’t wait for the day I find lettuce so I can make some tacos. We were waiting for a bus to go back to the harbor to go back home. Virginia waved the bus done and it drove right past us because it was too full. The joys of public transportation out here, I cannot wait until the day I can hop in my car and get food. We were sitting outside the store when this car pulled up and asked if we needed a ride. Don’t worry mom hitch hiking is totally normal here. Little did we know that the person in the car was person who served us at the small little café three weeks ago. She had recognized us and decided to turn around and give us a ride back to the harbor. I seriously love how nice these people are to us. One of our friends told me that the Samoan way is to always help someone out because you never know when you will need help from someone else.

We have now reached our three-month mark of living in the American Samoa. Virginia, Dana, and I are more or less inseparable.  The second that we separate from each other it just doesn’t feel right. We have such an interesting relationship because we all come from different backgrounds and different lifestyles. I love hanging out with them and joking around with them. I really don’t know how we are ever going to say goodbye in June. We even have plans for the weekend we are going to a football game on Saturday morning! Our friends even got us red shirts to wear to the game. J

With Love,

Abby