Malae, ba nebee?

Which means, "Foreigner, where you goin'?" And the answer usually is, "Ba ne ba," which means, "There." But today we can say, "Ba Same," because we are going there in just a bit. All of our stuff is waiting to be put on a PC SUV and four of us are heading south to different sights together. The others are going in other SUVs or rented mikrolets (yikes!). Mikrolets are little vans that have two benches on each side and can get very hot and very rami rami (crowded) very quickly.

The swearing in went really well. We all decided to wear lipas or tais, which are traditional garb here. They're basically very pretty skirts. Yes, even the men wear them. I don't have a picture just yet of that, but will put it up as soon as I can. I CAN put a picture or two of Same to hold you over.

The first is our new house. Nice, huh? The family doesn't own that black SUV on the right, it's the company car. It is very pretty there. The other picture is our simple bedroom with a lot fewer bags than will be in there this afternoon. It'll be fun lugging all that stuff around again.

I'll sign off for now and say I hope I can write again in a month or so when we come back to Dili. With that, off we go! Ate logu!

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

Yes, we become, I can't believe it really, Peace Corps Volunteers tomorrow! The ceremony will be at 3 pm and we all can't wait. It's hard to believe we've finished 10 weeks of training already. It seemed like such a long time at the beginning. Now we are all off to new sites around this little island.

We're going to miss our host family, as our most of the other trainees here. We really got close to them in these last two months. The pictures below kind of show it.

The first is Paulina, the third oldest in the family. She was always happy and laughed alot, the way 14-year-olds giggle at everything. The second is Juliaun Mateus (no, I don't know how to spell it), and yes, he is that cute. He lived next door. The third is a family picture that we got on the next to last day with them. We could never get all 10 of them together. The fourth is the kids playing Ultimate Frisbee at the school. I taught them how to play in my broken Tetun and even translated the 10 rules of Ultimate into Tetun and gave them copies. I'm sure I'm the first to do that. I'm trying to get frisbees to them but they don't sell good frisbees in Timor. Go figure. The last is from Family Day, last Friday. It's a three-legged race. It was a really fun day with American and Timorese food, dancing (Bekah even dance-partied and the neighborhood is probably still talking about it), and a volleyball game.

On Saturday we had a Health Fair put on by the Health Promotion Volunteers. It was really good. The whole village came and learned so much from the booths and games they made. Bekah did one with a spin-the-wheel that taught the kids about eating well before school. There was also a volleyball tournament and an exhibition Ultimate Frisbee match for all to see.

I will write more tomorrow. So, see you then.

So far away

Well, the main thing on our minds the last few days has been the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. We feel our homestate can taken a shot to the heart and we feel the pain all the way around the world. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected. The staff here has been very understanding to our emotional needs and let us stay in Dili last night to watch BBC World News and check out what we could online. Bekah and I are dealing with it in different ways. She is more outwardly concerned and I am taking it all in slowly. One good thing about it is we can now try to emotionally prepare for such unexpected news in the future, should anything happen back at home or here. In other words, we can realize that we will be here for 2 years and that something very well could happen...well, you know. And we can try to figure out what we need to do to cope.

In local news, the trip to our new site was great. Short, but great. It is very modern compared to where we are staying now. We will be in the middle of town. The house has water and electricity most nights. We even watched a Bollywood movie in Indonesian with the family. We will miss our host family here very much, though. They've become good friends. We'll miss their smiles and laughter. But we all have a lot to do for the next 2 weeks we'll be here. We have a project and a presentation on what we plan to do our first 100 days at site. We will also have a big party for all the host families with Timorese and American foods and activities.

Pictures are on the way - of Same and Balibar and everything in between. So, until next time, stay classy, America.