There's this word in Bislama: "Manbus", pronounced man bush and it refers to someone who's been in the bush too long. In the village they call people manbush when they like dont know how to work something or haven't been out of the rural area much. Like if theres a kid staring at me because im white, they'll be like stop staring, manbush! Well turns out ive only been in Vanuatu a year but manbus tumas. I arrived in Brisbane on Monday night and my journey here and time here so far has been a little overwhelming and I realize how [View Full Entry]

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I am still in Port Vila and have been here for about a week. Before I came here I was in Santo for a week doing some work on my Masters Intl project. I came to Port Vila for a safety and security meeting because right before I left for Santo I had some more issues with creeping. I think I explained before but "creeping" is what guys do here when they like a girl. They go to her house in the middle of the night and "singout" to her to let him inside the house. Sometimes the guy and girl [View Full Entry]

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It's a good thing I've learned not to keep my expectations too high here. The first leg of the journey went pretty much as planned. But after that, pretty much all the plans to visit various bungalows and custom dances started falling through. The tourism office developed their budget for this trip based on the assumption that I would be traveling on the cameraman's yacht without talking with him and on the assumption that the yacht would reach each place in very little time. So turns out after visiting Southwest Bay, Walarano, and the bungalows in Norsup and Lakatoro there was [View Full Entry]

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Hello friends, hope all is well. I'm using the internet at the tourism office now. I was supposed to leave today for my work for the tourism office but not surprisingly there was a problem with the funding so i am leaving tomorrow and they put me in a guesthouse for the night with electricity and everything so i cant complain. I'm going to be making a tourism audit for Malampa Province, and at the same time there will be a tourism promotion video being filmed which they said i might need to pop in and pretend im a tourist for. [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! Its been a while since I updated the blog so i'll give a quick update on whats been going on over here. Overall things are going really well and i'm really happy here. I'm in town today to pick up some baby chickens for the RTC (yep thats right, i love my life) and run some errands. We're doing a faol project at the RTC with some egg layers that came from New Zealand, there's about 30 baby chicks and the students are gonna raise them then sell the eggs. They came last Friday, but the manager couldn't get [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone! I finally have more than a few minutes and internet that actually works so I can update everyone a little more on what's been going on with me here in the pacific. I'm in Port Vila for about 3 more days, got here last Sunday for early service training. Coming in to Port Vila felt like driving in to New York City, which is really odd because my first impression of Vila was completely different. When we first arrived it seemed like a deserted town, but now it seems like a playground. I am actually ready to go back [View Full Entry]

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Hello friends, it's been a while. I have a chance to write a short update because I'm in town paying a lot to use the internet. I have been at my site in Wowo for almost 2 months and things are going very well overall. I started work at the training center a few weeks ago with advertising and working on the strategic plan so I've been pretty busy. Classes start technically next Monday although usually students don't start coming until a few weeks later. So far we only have 1 registered student, Bob, who lives in the next village over. [View Full Entry]

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Hey friends, It's my last night in Port Vila so my last chance to update my blog in a while. I'm heading out to my village tomorrow at 6 am. I've been here since last Friday and it's been a very busy week filled wth shopping for supplies for my house, drinking beers in the pool, and packing. I bought kitchen supplies, a stove, mattress, food, buckets, a bunch of calico, sewing kit, ping pong paddles, and a bunch of other random supplies that will come in handy. I have plenty of projects to keep me busy once I'm at my [View Full Entry]

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Hello again! I have a lot to write because I just came back from my site on Malekula, Wowo village, last Sunday night. Wowo is in Northwest Malekula, if you look on a map Malekula is the island shaped like a sitting dog and Wowo is on the top of the dog's head. I have a lot to write about, but unfortunately don't have much time. Overall I love my site. Another trainee, Karen is going to Malekula as well, but she is staying in the provincial center, Norsup. We traveled together on the way there and back. On Sunday we [View Full Entry]

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Hey everyone, I’m in Port Vila for the morning today since it will be the last chance before we leave for “wokabaot week.” It’s about the end of week 5 of training and sometimes I am ready for it to finish. We finally find out our sites next Wednesday and I am really looking forward to finally knowing where I’ll be living for the next 2 years. They have been telling us we would find out a few weeks ago and then it got moved to the next week and the next week. During wokabaot week we spend a week in [View Full Entry]

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