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