This is going to be a long one folks. Sorry in advance.

This sign has a whole new meaning to us now. We are alive and well. We do appreciate all of the thoughts prayers and packages we've been recieving. We will definitely have some stories to tell when we get back home. Jess and I have been through quite a bit in the past months and due to little to no internet access I have not been able to keep you all apprised of the goings on here. I will try to sum up a lot of the important events and some not so important events.

There was a rather large earthquake that originated southwest of our tiny island. If you've seen video or news footage you will understand the extreme damage that the resulting tsunami caused to Tutuila island. Jess had already gone to her elementary school when the earthquake hit. I was getting ready to go to my school. At this time she did not have a cell phone so I couldn't get in touch with her. This is what scared me the most. I was walking to school when I was picked up by one of the members of our host family that was on her way to work at the hospital on the far side of the Pago Pago harbor. She drove me a short distance when we saw cars honking their horns and making their way uphill to where we came from. We pulled over and I got some video of the wave receeding out of our former village of Alofau.

At this time I was taken to a small mountain where Jess' school was evacuated. Everything else was a blur. I remember getting back to our new home; and I remember being grateful that it is up high on a hill. It is hard to deal with seeing so much tragedy in such a close-knit and small area. Our music teacher took me on a tour of the island the following day where I took some of these images.











Power issues are still prevalent as we have roaming blackouts due to the generators that need to be refilled with diesel. The first week after the tsunami we did not have school. The second week we taught without power. Jess definitely suffered the brunt of this. Without power there was no fan to cool her off and she was dealing with temperatures up to 100 degrees. I was not allowed to teach in my building as there were some stress fractures found between the first and second stories. It was my great pleasure to hold classes in the gymnasium, which is outdoors, and along with six other teachers we spent the better part of that second week telling our own personal stories and helping each other cope with our losses.

Even though there was heavy looting, people have a lot of their villages in order...to a degree. As no one here has house insurance, people have filed claims to FEMA which has resulted in checks given to families who suffered structural losses. I have seen in several cases where this money has been spent on large flat-screen televisions and even new cars! There have been a few cases where I have personally witnessed houses being repaired. This is definitely teaching some of the youth here a terrible lesson.

On a lighter note, one of the largest holidays here in American Samoa is "White Sunday." It is a day to celebrate the youth. Children are dressed in their Sunday best and they get to lead the church services as well as perform skits and songs. Ther is also a large meal after this service, which was fantastic!

I'll try to get more pictures up soon. I've got to head out and get back to my loving wife! We are leaving off around mid-October. Maybe with the next couple of posts I can get you up to speed.

Much love,
Charlie & Jess

Where were we? September 28th

Hey wonderful blog followers!!! Jess and I are doing fine, thanks again for the wonderful packages that we keep receiving. It makes it feel like Christmas here! We got to go swimming this weekend and the dog who is now part of the family came too. His name is "ooch" and he's been dubbed "ooch the pooch." I think that living as we do, so far on the east side of Tutuila island keeps us seperated from the noise and havoc of the west coast. But, then again, we are also far away from fresh food and other fun things. We do have local stores that allow us to purchase dry and canned goods, but vegetables are a rarity. We are also dealing with a mini-fridge that makes us constantly rearrange things so that we can fit leftovers, etc. and it makes it hard to keep food that we might normally keep for a while.
The insect problem has not been very bad here. I did have a run-in with a wasp that was very ill-tempered and he left me a nice welt. Apart from that, the mosquitos are only out at night and don't tend to bother us very much.
School is keeping us both very busy, writing lesson plans and continually adapting them to meet our students' needs is hectic work. We do enjoy our students and I am really hoping that we've made a small difference so far.
I've gotten everyone on campus using Google Earth, it is a trip to see all of the teachers looking for their houses and their families with this. I've also been lucky enough to have a projector in my class and we've been doing all of my lessons with PowerPoint! My students are in the process of painting their favorite author's portraits on my classroom walls. I've definitely got some future Picasso's and Cezanne's.
I know what everyone wants to see is our new pad. You will have to wait until we get it nice and clean before I attempt photo postings of this. As it turns out video posting is not feasible due to firewalls set up at our school. I'd use a bypass proxy but I'm really trying not to get into trouble here. So, no video or pics of our home, but I hope you like these photos.








The first photo was taken a short walk from our new home,








there is another of a tiny roommate of ours (a very well behaved gecko),










another shows jess getting ready for our snorkeling adventure this past weekend, lastly you can see Ooch as he wanted to go swimming too.









We love you and miss you folks bunches,
Charlie & Jess

September 8, 2009

Hey Folks!!!! This is just a test. If this works you should see a video that you can play. It is a short guided tour of our new digs here in Am. Sam. I hope all is well with everyone, and we thank you for all of your support and packages you've sent. Thanks again, Charlie & Jess

9/1/09

Whoa, has it been that long? Sorry for the lack of posts lately. I've been stressed out at school, just trying to accomplish a lot with a little. Amazingly I just got a digital projector for my classroom and I think I'll be doing great from here on out! I've got so many lesson plans that are written for projectors from my years of experience working with Dare county. Thank you all for your warm wishes. Jess and I are in our new digs and we love it. We are in a clean place, the weather is not killing us, the neighbors are very quiet (and not too close), and we are very comfortable there.

School is getting a little better for Jess too. She is on a roll with her lesson planning. Even though math and science are still difficult subjects for her to plan for; she is working extra hard and it appears to be paying off.

I hope all is well with you! Thank you very much for sending packages. It really makes us feel that we are not so very far away. We miss you all very much. I will try to keep you posted on upcoming events and I'm still trying to add photos and video.

Much love,
Charlie & Jess

August 13th

Whoa! It has been a while hasn't it? Sorry for the delay on my part. I have been trying to work out a schedule to bring my laptop to school and have it coincide with the internet allowing me to access this blog.

Everything has been well since my last post. Jess was a little under the weather with a cough that has cleared up nicely. She does have to get up at 5:00a.m. every morning to catch a bus to her elementary school. I do not envy her in the least. I have had some minor knee pain due to the dislocation that I had way back in 2003. The knee has acted like a gravel mixer in it's noises and feelings, most recently causing some irritation. I think the more I walk and excersize, the more it will clear up.

We do appreciate those of you who have sent care packages! We hope to receive them soon. We have yet to move into the "resort" as I like to call it. The construction portion (adding doors and windows, a stove, and a refrigerator) should be complete by the end of this week. The rest of the house's contents may not be complete for a couple of days after the construction. The both of us are very excited about getting into the new place and settling down. It seems like we've been living out of our luggage for quite some time now. We don't yet know if we'll need any other supplies sent, but we'll let you know if something comes up.

Jess and I are approaching the end of our first week of school. It has been very good for the both of us. We are a little bit more informed about the way the classes and the schools are run. My school has a rather large pep rally this Friday. We are also participating in our first football games of the season this Friday and Saturday. If I were to place a bet it would be on our team!

Sorry for the lack of pictures. Right now the school computer does not allow me to upload images. I'll try to put them on another site and then attach the link to the blog. We hope everything is going well with all of you!

~Charlie & Jess

July 30th

Hey folks,

Sorry It's been a while since the last post. It has been raining and we have been in classes for the past two days so no pictures and nothing really to report on those days.

Today Jess went into town and taught her first lesson to some Samoan students and Bobby and I rode public transport out to the east side of the island to check out our future accommodations.

It looks to be a great year for us! The room and bathrooms and everything look like we are staying at another resort!!! Let the pictures do the talking. We are about 15 minutes out of the small village of Alofau (pronounced "Ah-loh-fow"). It is up on top of a hill so the breeze is very cool so we won't be sweating all of the time. All in all it looks great.

We have some great views from our "resort".

The school that I'll be teaching in has approximately 600 students and I believe it to be the smallest one on our island. We are the Faga'itua Vikings (pronounced "Fahn-gah-ee-two-ah")

We are also the island / state champion football team here too. Our principle's name is Elvis and our Vice Principle's name is Pooch. Pooch is also the head coach of our mighty Viking team. It seems to be a very small, but very cool school.

Bobby will be staying in the village, and until our rooms get furnished, we'll be staying with them for a while. He is staying on a woman named Maria's property. She has two awesome sons named Alex and Rain. Her sons and their friends Mos and Frank went with us up to the site where we were staying and filled us in on some of the local legends.

I'm getting ready to go to our "tea time" session so I'll sign off for the moment. I'll let you know about the living situation as soon as there is anymore movement.

Much love,

~Charlie & Jess

July 27th

Today was our first "day of rest". In Am. Sam. we are supposed to pretty much lay low on Sundays here. The culture is very religious and Sundays are a strict "rest" day. People are pretty much supposed to go to church and do things that they feel are relaxing. To Jess and I it was needed.

We walked to get some vegetables (these are kind of rare in fresh form here), and while we were trekking we passed by the local KFC and Pizza Hut. To me they look a little out of place next to the absolutely gorgeous backdrop of the mountains. It is just part of the Americanization that has taken over certain aspects here. I for one prefer the cooking we ate the other night. I do understand that barbecues such as that are much more expensive and more time is involved in the production so a fast food joint with cheap prices can replace the traditional methods of eating. But at what cost?

We had a meeting this afternoon at a fale (pronounced "fah-lay") that was a little hut in the park across the street, next to the water. It felt so great to have the wind blowing this afternoon after the severe heat I felt this morning. The meeting had a lot to do with what we are to expect for the rest of this week of orientation as well as the upcoming year. We also confirmed our living arrangements for this year. We read an interesting article about calling it Oceania instead of the Pacific Islands, it's pretty deep so I won't go into it here. I did take a photo of some of the other guys in our group that looked pretty funny while reading it though. The fellow in the front is Bobby and he'll be living in the same town as Jess and me. The fellow in the back is Matt and he is a trip too! He lived in the Marshall Islands last year and of the entire group, I think he's the most prepared for this year.

I didn't take a lot of photos today as we didn't really do much else. We have been having evening "Tea Time" lessons where each of us have assigned groups and subjects that we have been teaching each other and our group taught about teaching writing lessons. I learned a lot about other peoples' styles through how they teach during these times, as well as their responses.

We are finally reunited back in our original room. Jess had moved out (due to the illness that had permeated my room) and now that the two-day flu has passed through everyone's system we are back together! We miss you guys bunches. We'd love emails of some pictures of what you are up to as well. I know you guys are enjoying your summer and you're getting ready for school too. I can't wait to share my teaching experiences with you. I think Jess is a little nervous about teaching math, but I know she'll be great.

Sorry no interesting stuff today, it was as it should be, relaxing.

Much love,

Charlie & Jess

July 26th

I was told that you wanted more pictures so I'll try to keep things going like this while I have the time.

Jess and I started the day by heading to the local library and getting our library cards. Normally I wouldn't consider such a thing an adventure. When you get to ride on the public transport here though it becames an awesome trip. The vocational school we're staying at is probably a 30 to 4o minute drive. The local bus or "family" bus is driven by a man who likes to play his music REALLY loud. It is so cool to ride in a small vehicle playing some real Samoan music (sometimes mixed with U.S. Hip Hop, R&B, and almost anything with bass) and drive around paradise.

It was cool to see the Wyland painting he had just finished this past year. For those who don't know about Wyland, he's the fellow who likes to paint whales everywhere. American Samoa just happens to be one of the world's largest spawning grounds for the mighty humpback, so it was very fitting that he came here to paint.

We wandered around Pago Pago harbor for a little while before hopping on another bus back towards Tafuna. We got off and purchased our new cell phone service!!!!! If you need to contact us now it is absolutely free for us to receive your calls but it does cost us to call you. Our parents have our number and I don't feel comfortable posting it here on this public site.

We then had a sweet time walking for about 45 minutes through a very garbage ridden route to some secluded beaches! It was fantastic when we got there though. The other married couple (John and Cynthia Delaporte) are so cool and they got pretty far down the trail before they had enough of the trek. After they got turned around by a local who told them that there was another 40 minutes of the not too easy trip they split, but Jess and I pressed on. In only 5 minutes we came on a quiet beach that we got to snorkel on and we saw TONS of tiny little fish. (Hunter said she'd send us some disposable waterproof cameras and we'll get more pictures of that sort for you then). But we kept moving even farther away from our "home" and found a group of our buds that had found the BEST snorkel spot. 15 feet of crystal clear water, lots of fish, starfish, beautiful coral (and the guys we met there said they had seen a couple of large rays there too)!!!! To make it all surreal the beach is called "airport beach". It is pretty straight forward. Even the locals claim that the best snorkeling on Tutuila island is at "airport beach" approximately 50 feet from one of the runways. I kid you not, we looked down on an amazing aquatic ecosystem, then looked up and saw garbage and a fence that went around the circumference of the airport. Needless to say it was a long trip back and I'm really sore right now. It was totally worth it and I'd do it again tomorrow.

Samoan tradition does forbid swimming on Sundays (I don't know how I'm going to deal with that one...)

Much love,

~Charlie & Jess

(This is where we left John and Cynthia)

(This is the first secluded beach we came across)

(We only got about 15 minutes at the really nice diving spot)

July 25th

Hey folks,

I have been under the weather for a while now and today I started to feel better and move around a lot more. It's been wonderful having Jess here to take care of me. I'm sure I owe her about 20 massages now. I think a little bit of the flu came through and knocked a lot of us on our rears for the past two days.

Today was pretty exciting, even through the fog I felt around my head this morning. We went into town and spoke with the National Forest personnel and they let us in on the rules of hiking and such around the island. From there we went to the north side of the island and tooled around a little. The scenic views here are so beautiful that it is difficult to describe them. The tour led us to several small towns that my collegues on this trip will be teaching in.

We came back this afternoon and I watched and helped (minimally) in the preparation of our dinner. It was cooked in traditional Samoan fashion. First a mound of dry coconut leaves, taro leaves and bark from several trees is place in a safe burning position. Rocks about the size of my fist are placed all over the mound. The fire is set and more fuel for the fire is added to this. When the fire has burnt itself almost completely out the ashes are swept away and our food was placed (in aluminum containers / foil) onto a small section of coconut trunk slivers that are positioned on the hot rocks. More rocks are put on top of the food followed by more damp leaves. The resulting mound cooks until steam no longer is coming out of the top layer of leaves. When we pulled the food out it smelled terrific.

We had a large banquet and everyone enjoyed themselves. I now have a new favorite food!!!! They have something called Palusami. This is Taro leaves wrapped around coconut meat/milk and cooked like the umu (pronounced "oo-moo") I described above. We also had chicken, salad and other wonderful dishes.

I'm a little bushed after all that heavy eating so I'll call it a night.

Much love,

~Charlie & Jess

July 21st

Woke up this morning and sat in classes for about 8 hours today. I’m sure it was necessary for those teachers who have had little to no experience teaching, but for me a lot of it was review. It was our introduction to the Dept. of Education here and they seem like a great crowd. They really seem like they are on our side and expect a lot out of us. We learned about health risks and some counseling and management skills. We had a short presentation about language and a fun P.E. session where we played freeze tag. You should have seen us running around like little kids.
It was a very long day and my tush was definitely tired of sitting down for that long. I went with one of the guards of our school compound to get some Hawaiian BBQ last night and it was excellent. He also shared some of his sweet coconut bread with us too! His name is Kaleo and we’ve had several discussions about culture and his experiences both on his island and as a U.S. Marshall. We have been experiencing some issues with our internet access here so some of my posts may come in bundles as I can’t post every day. These posts may also become stretched out further as our school activities press our engagements elsewhere.
I was told that my school will have about 800 students and we as the Vikings were the state football champions last year looking to retain their title this year. I might be volunteering some of my time to working with the team, as they seem to be pretty cool fellows.
We stayed up late this evening playing Scrabble and Password. It was very fun and we got to sit down and play with some people we hadn’t had the time to meet yet.
Love to you all,
~Charlie

July 20th

I got up around 5:30a.m. American Samoa time (mostly because I was still on California time) but I was in the right place because the sun came up about 5 minutes to 6:00 and the island lit up. Every picture I take and everything I see is what I would dream paradise to be. It is relatively warm out and very muggy. It rains a little every day, the humidity makes it a little difficult to breathe. I will definitely be taking everything very slow.
We went to a cultural museum for 3 hours today and watched the children and participated in the Samoan Arts of: wood working (carving wooden blocks to be used in fabric prints), weaving tree bark (this was awesome and I can definitely see myself meditating while doing this, kind of like making hemp necklaces from back in the day), painting (patterns painted on wood bark from mulberry trees), and Dancing (this was by far the hardest for me). We participated in all of the events with the children that had been working on their projects for the past three weeks. They were such awesome kids, I know our classes will be great if we have such wonderful children in them.
Before we left we were treated to a traditional dance (that we were trying to learn earlier in the day). The students did a fantastic job. During this ceremony, one of the children said to me that she thought I looked like a real Samoan, so I’ll take that as a compliment.
After the Cultural Museum the palagi (said Pah-lahng-ee, meaning tourist / white/ American/ non-Samoan) went on tour. We rode in a school bus to the far east side of the island where we saw where we were going to live and teach. We passed by my high school’s football team “The Vikings” and I yelled to them garnering a great cheer from the boys! It reminded me of the good old Patrick Henry football days.
When we got back this afternoon we had some time before dinner which I filled with swimming and tossing the Frisbee in a cove right across the street from the Technical School where we are staying. Did you think it would take me more than 24 hours to jump in the water here? I know you didn’t doubt me. We had a meeting this evening discussing some of the more administrative sides to our program, but the mood was lightened by embarrassing stories and pizza.
Insider info: there is a Pizza Hut, KFC, Carl’s Jr. (this is a Hardee’s restaurant for those not in the know), and a NAPA auto parts store not far from where we are staying in the country’s capitol. When we move out to the small town of Faga’itua (pronounced Fahng-ah-ee-too-ah) we can still access the shops and modern conveniences for a fee of $1.50 and a 20 minute bus ride.
I am so terribly tired so I shall retire for the evening. I hope everyone is doing well, I’ll try to keep the posts more concise in the future for both our sakes.
~Charlie & Jess

July 19th.

Jess and I had a wonderful time in L.A. with Tim and Janet. If you don’t remember them from the wedding; Tim is one of my close friends from college and Janet is basically my second mother who lives in Southern California. Tim picked us up from LAX this past Wednesday. We went to Little Tokyo and had some Japanese / Korean BBQ for lunch and had a decadent dinner at Botega Louie in Downtown L.A. after a short tour and a quiet afternoon at Tim’s place. Thursday brought a change of pace… we got up relatively late, had breakfast and then went to Hollywood for a guided tour. We went to see the Dodgers play the Astros and the result may just be the end of my curse / luck streak as my boys in blue didn’t pull out a win. This was the first time in Dodger Stadium (after seeing five wins) that I witnessed a loss.
Tim drove us back near LAX after the game and Janet was nice enough to pick us up and take us back to her place Thursday evening. We went to the beach Friday morning and had a very relaxing time. (My first taste of the Pacific in three years was everything that I remembered it to be). I got to take Jess to Good Stuff. (One of my favorite lunch spots in Hermosa Beach). We were going to see Harry Potter that evening but they were sold out. We got tickets for the Saturday morning show instead.
Janet’s daughter-in-law Logan came over for breakfast Saturday morning and we were off to see “The Halfblood Prince.” I really enjoyed it and I think everyone else did too. We went back to Janet’s house, packed all of our bags again (this is getting monotonous) and Janet dropped us off at our hotel where we had our first encounter with World Teach.
Saturday evening went very smoothly and we met all of the people going on this tour with us. They seem to be what I imagined them to be. Most of them are young, adventurous and very outgoing. I think we will become a very tight-knit group over the next couple of weeks and we are already sharing what knowledge we have of our soon to be home country.
Jess and I got up about 6:00 California time this morning and we will arrive in Pago Pago (pronounced Pango Pango) around 1:00 a.m. California time.
A side note to explain the time zone difference… We will be seven hours behind everyone on the east coast. When you reset your clocks this Fall we will only be 6 hours behind you. In the Spring when you set your clocks forward we will be seven hours behind once again.
We still don’t know what our living arrangements will be for the first couple of weeks but I imagine we will be living out of our luggage for a while.
We hope everything is going well back home. I will post some pictures and keep everyone updated when we have some time to spare.
~Charlie

Testing 1,2,3

Hey folks! This is just a test to make sure we are up and running. Jess and I have just finished our packing for American Samoa and will fly to Los Angeles on the 15th of July. Our real departure for Am Sam will be on the 19th. Can't wait to post all the interesting happenings as we live and teach abroad!

~Charlie