Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone back home and I hope that you enjoyed the holiday weekend! Our Easter weekend was full of activities that kept us busy throughout the weekend. It was a much-needed break from school to just relax. On Friday Dana and I spent the day just relaxing around the house and getting things ready for next week at school. We decided to get everything done with on Friday and just enjoy the rest of our holiday weekend. Here is a recap of a few of the things we did over the weekend.

I have recently joined our local volleyball team. The team consists of all people that live on our island. On the weekends we travel to play teams on the main island. The volleyball team is a church activity so only people who attend the church we go to are allowed to play on this team. Last week was our first week of practices. It is a little different then playing in the states. For instance instead of playing in a gym I am playing on an outside court right next to the ocean in the sun. I really enjoy playing on the team. This weekend we had an early practice. Early meaning we started at 4:30 in the morning. I for a while thought the locals were just pulling a prank on me little did I know they were actually being serious. I understand why they had such an early practice because it is a lot cooler in the morning when they sun is not out it is much more enjoyable practice. It’s a good thing that I am a morning person otherwise that would have been a real struggle.

On Sunday morning we had our sunrise service for church the bells started ringing at four in the morning. Thankfully church didn’t start until 5:30 so I got to sleep in a little. The Easter service was a candlelight service. So everyone was holding the candles and it was still dark outside so it was very pretty. Sunday was also Dana’s birthday so we had an excuse to get ice cream and cake and be lazy all day on Sunday.

On Sunday afternoon at around 3:30 we had our joint church service. The church that we attend is a pretty big church its about the size of the church we attend at home. All of the people at the village were attending this service. It was quite the experience first of all the church was completely full on Sundays the church usually gets only half full. We all sat according to church so each church had their own little section in which they sat in for the service. Each church had the opportunity to sing a song and then they had a short little service. It never fails that when we attend big events like this they like to call us out. I think it is their way of showing they appreciate us. The pastor goes just have the person next to you translate since you seem to like him so much. Take a wild guess that Lusi was next to us and translating for us.

On Saturday we decided to go on a hike around the island. Our time here is slowly coming to an end and we want to enjoy the beauty of the island as much as possible before we leave for home. Dana and I hiked the whole island and then went swimming for a while. On our way back we noticed the locals all playing a game of cricket so we sat and watched for a while. We were also told that on Monday they were having an island wide cricket one side of the island against the other side of the island. We attended the game on Monday and watched all our students and the adults participate in an island wide game. It was fun to watch everyone together except it was a little hot outside. I have never sweat so much while sitting and watching a game before.

Hope you all had a great Easter!