Table Runner

Here is my latest project. Made with scraps of material including that from my beautiful girls who danced for USP Open Day. One of them is graduating on the 15th December and so this is her gift from me to remind her of Samoa. She also played in the netball team. I hope she likes it!!

2nd Worst Hair Cut Experience EVA!

Hi all

After making an appointment with a recommended hair dresser here in Samoa I waited for 2 weeks for her to return from the States and was really looking forward to my trim before heading home to see you all at Christmas.

This was my experience however.....

I arrived at the salon. It is not a huge place. 3 cutters chairs and 2 basins plus they have managed to fit one of those foot baths in and have a new beautician (who was incidentally doing toe nails and sticking sparkly jewels on!!)

I took a pew. The place seemed over crowded but as is normal in Samoa the person with the appointment seems to come with a number of hangers on who watch and talk!!! I could see the hair dresser I made the appointment with was very busy putting someones hair up. Looked like some special occassion was happening that night. I figured she was running late and would be a while so engrossed myself in a magazine (wow a magazine. These are few and far between in Samoa and VERY expensive to buy). I was enjoying the gossip when I was interrupted by a Fijian Faafafine with short afro hair (there is a reason I'm telling you this) and blue eye shadow!! He/She asked me to come to the basin.

I trotted over and took a very uncomfortable seat and waited patiently. A few minutes later I was duely informed that there was no water!! Oh well no hair wash today then.

Next I was shown to a seat and the Faafafine sprayed my hair down with the squirty bottle. After a very rough comb of the hair I figured I was as ready as I was going to be for the hairdresser. She however looked very busy with her job at hand........

Low and behold the Faafafine whipped out his scissors and started to cut my hair!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I didn't know what to do. Should I say something? Should I not? In my head I thought that maybe I should give the benefit of the doubt as maybe he was some fantastic cutter with awards or something???????????????

Unfortunately I was to be sorely disappointed! With some reference to my split ends (an expert in palagi hair obviously!) my appointment was over in a flash with a bare minimum cut off my hair and some funny angles to show for it. Much "product" later and I emerged from the salon with hair like concrete looking ridiculous. Mind you one of the other patrons thought it looked nice (or do they pay her to sit there and say that?!!)

Oh well now I've sorted it out myself (fixed up the funny angles) and given it a wash things look ......... well as they did before I went to the hairdresser actually. So I probably won't be going there again. Might try Double D's the Aggie's hair salon next time as I'm sure to receive some palagi treatment there and after all I suppose that is what I'm expecting!!

Christmas Show

Last week we got invited to the Robert Louis Stevenson Primary School Christmas performance. We know 3 of the teachers there. Adam was a bit dubious about this event so I had to ply him with dinner beforehand. Surprisingly he managed to still be awake at the end of the show! I loved it. The kids were all doing their Samoan performances celebrating traditional Samoa. They looked lovely in their traditional wear. I was impressed with what the teachers had done to get them all into uniform. The dancing and singing was great. It's always nice to take in a bit of culture. This has been the only Christmas thing we have been to so far and might be the last. We will see. No Christmas parties planned for us here. No one can afford it which is sad. Check out these photos....

The Cashew

Hello All

Check this out. It is a Cashew!! Adam picked it off the tree at Samoa College the other day. Isn't it cool. First time I have seen one. Apparently you can eat the fruit (the red bit) but the nut is in the stem (the green bit) which you have to roast so you an crack it open and get it out. 1 nut per fruit. No wonder they are soooooooooooo expensive. It tasted just like a real one!!

Clubbing Samoan Style!

Talofa all. Well before the road switch the government ruled that all night clubs down town would close at 10.00pm and no liquor would be sold after this time. This was presumably to stop drunken driving while people were figuring out what side of the road to drive on? All good yeah?

So now that the driving seems to be going well with no major problems we wonder when the clubs will open back up again until 12.00am, which was their closing time before?

A notice came in the paper just last week to say the early closing was being lifted. Yay we all thought (especially the students who's lives had been significantly impacted during this time). Low and behold though it now seems that those who live in the near vacinity to the clubs are complaining about the noise so get this.......

Clubs are now open until 12.00am but the music has to stop at 10.00pm!!!!!!!! There have been many suggestions about donning your hoodie, dark glasses and plugging in your ipod so you can continue to dance to your own tunes for 2 hours while the club stays silent!!!

I haven't said this for a while but "This is Samoa"!!!!!

APS

Well Monday morning and it was time take Lucky to APS for choppo. She came on heat last week so we have had the entire male population of the neighbourhood in the back yard lately!! Apparently it is not best to do choppo when the dog is on heat but as I wasn't actually told this (even though I asked) the poor thing had to endure anyway.

As for the enduring I'm not sure if Lucky or Adam had to do the most?! Poor Lucky has never been in a car before and of course knew something was going on before we did so getting her in there was interesting. Having evicted the big ass male dog from down the road, and patching up the hole in the fence so no one could get in or out, we tried the gentle coaxing patting of Lucky to get her as close to the car as possible. Adam in the end backed the car up towards her but of course she then definately knew something was up!

Poor Adam next .... he had to lift her up into the car. Well I was not going to be of much use as she is too big and heavy for me. Luckily we had lined the boot with a tarpaulin. Anyway Adam managed to come out of the experience covered in dog pee!! Lucky was actually not too bad in the boot of the car. Sat down and rode quietly.

We got to APS to see a man exiting the door covered in blood with gashes up his arms and a big plaster on his nose. "Crikey" I thought. I hoped our experience was not going to be like that! It turned out he had held his dog in his arms for injections or something and the dog had gone mental.

Somehow I managed to get a muzzle on Lucky without a similar experience. She was actually very well behaved which surprised me. Old Man got choppo pretty easily and I expected a fight with Lucky. Anyway then came the hard part. Sitting for 1 1/2 hours waiting for them to do the job. There was a "bleeder" apparently which meant things took longer. At the end of it all a very groggy dog emerged with needle sticks in her legs and shaven bits everywhere plus IV fluids. Poor old thing.

We got her home and out of the car OK. She lay for quite a few hours in the car port and slept which was good as Old Man kept trying to lie in the sun after his op which dogs are not meant to do especially in this heat. I got a bit worried though as she looked very "puppy" like so kept checking for breathing. At one stage she was very groggy and not breathing much.

All is good now though. She has pulled through and is nearly back to her usual mischief. We still have dogs hanging around but apparently that will cease soon as the estrogen gets out of her system. We need to fix the fence properly as somehow the wire, gardening twine and clothesline have all not worked in plugging up the gap. The dogs still get in and out!!

Now we look forward to breezy dog handling with no more puppies .... just got to sort Old Man now who is limping badly. I think fighting over Lucky ......................

Nearly Christmas

Talofa all. Yes we are still here! Have been back at the desk at work for a week now and have realised that I haven't really been here much in the last 2 months. First it was 2 weeks in Fiji, then the tsunami struck then we got involved with the visiting scientists and straight after this we had Barbara and Malcom, Kayla and Olivia visit!

It was great to have those guys come and stay with us. We were all pretty packed into our little 2 bedroom house but surprisingly there was enough room! We set up the spare room for the girls and had a spare bed in the lounge room for B&M. A bit more rearranging of the furniture and we were there. The house sure was full!

During the first week of their stay we spent 4 days around Apia. As soon as they got off the plane the jeans were off and cooler clothes were on. Kayla got really cool and donned her togs so she could run around the back lawn under the hose. Great fun was had by all. Aunty Angela, fully clothed, somehow got soaked as well! We also visited Aggies, the Mailelani soap factory, Robert Louis Stevensons house, went to the markets, a Fia Fia night of wonderful Samoan food and entertainment, the turtles at Malua and had a go at cooking a Samoan meal. We also had a day at Palolo Deep so were able to do a bit of snorkelling and playing in the lovely warm water. Adam spent one afternoon grating coconut on his new grater and then squeezing it to get the coconut milk out for the dinner. The grated coconut was also toasted in the oven and is now making lovely coconut loaf that we are eating.

After this we packed up the car and headed to Samoana for 3 nights. Somehow we managed to get 6 people, 2 car seats, 1 pram, 1 porta cot, 3 suitcases, a chilly bin, food and snorkelling gear all in the rental car in 1 go. It was like heading off on summer holiday. Slight problem with our room however when we got to Samoana where the self composting toilet was a bit stinky due to the fan having stopped working so after 1 night of this we were able to move into a new room and all was good.

We met some great people while staying at Samoana. As always everyone is friendly and shares the dinner table etc. Richard was there with his contraption that he had built to house his video camera so he could do underwater filming. He also had some fab photos of the Nemo's and gave me instructions on how and where to go to get some myself. We went out one day in the kayaks with Richard, guided by Wes, to a snorkelling spot and saw TURTLES in the wild. Fantastic. Too quick for me to get a photo but saw some lovely blue coral that I hadn't seen before. B&M and kids enjoyed being in the pool all the time and we went through quite a lot of sunblock with everyone trying not to get burnt.

Next stop on the tour was Aggies near the airport where B&M had booked for 5 nights so we dropped them off there before heading back home and to work. Ugh! Caught back up with them the following Saturday for the day at Aggies before their departure to the airport at 10.30pm. Everyone was looking suitably relaxed from a week spent by the pool reading and playing. Somehow we managed to go through WST$400 in one afternoon which was a bit of a shock. Could have been to do with the "blue sky" cocktails at the pool bar at $35.00 each however I swear I only had one - honest!! We got to see Fraser our friend performing in Aggies Fia Fia night which was great and also his Siva Afi fire knife dancing which we didnt' know he could do!

So catching up on some work now and getting ready to come home for Christmas on the 18th December for 3 weeks. It is very hot here at the moment. Don't know what has happened to the rainy season but the river beds are still dry. Next week the Aussie Netball people are visiting and are running some clincs on Umpiring and Coaching so I hope to go to these and learn something. We don't have anything planned for our next 5 weeks before coming home which is a great relief to be honest. Time to catch up with ourselves. The USP students are dutifully studying this week and exams begin next week then after that things will quieten down a lot when everyone heads home. Graduation is on the 16th December so that is a day to look forward to although it will also be sad to be losing those we know.

Since working with the scientists on the tsunami a colleague and I have decided to try and write a book of survivor stories so will keep you posted on that one. I have also just submitted an abstract for a conference for Agricultural Libraians in Paris (I Knnnnnnnnnnnooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwww!!) next year so will see how far I get with having that accepted and getting funding through USP to go.

Hope you are all good. Sorry for the lack of phone calls our landline has been out of action for 3 months. We have finally managed to get the engineer around today and he says the problem is further up the line. They knocked off at 12.00pm though as it is a public holiday this afternoon so that everyone can go and take part in Health promotions outside the government building. Aerobics anyone? Nice for some aye?!! We at USP are all still working!