I'm still here!

(My motel room)

(My view from my motel)

"Kia Orana" (Hello) from Rarotonga, Cook Islands.

I'm a regular worker now, waking up at 6:30 (!!!)each morning, having breakfast with my other members of my group and taking the bus along with locals and school children. This time we actually made it to the school, yesterday we forgot to tell the bus driver our stop and when we saw the school go by, we all yelled, "Stop!" How embarrasing, but a lesson learned. I'm sure we were the talk of the rest of the bus riders after getting off...I'm sure they thought, " Such Amateurs!"

We are the Vaka 104, the 104th group to volunteer at the Cook Islands. Volunteers have been coming for the past 10 years.
Sorry I didn't blog yesterday. I spent the I work from 8-2 and then spent the rest of the day with another volunteer, Megan, a recent college graduate who majored in Anthropology, and we explored the rest of the town that we haven't had a chance to see. What a great way to spend her time before going to graduate school. She has her whole life ahead of her...I'm a little jealous. Ah, to start all over again...uh, nah...I changed my mind. =)

I will try and take more pictures of my group and the kids I work with. The school is having an athletic competition on Friday, so most of our time will be helping take times and measuring out long jumps and such. No reading this Friday. Then next week, they are having a inter school competition at ther local stadium, it's all very exciting and the kids are really anxious to participate.

I helped with measuring the long jump and said to the other local teacher, that "It's almost like the Olympics." The kids were having a ball and they even had the preschoolers running their own "races" even though they are technically not in the competition.
It's a funny thing, they don't have a bell for breaktime, recess, lunchtime and dismissal, they have a couple of older boys beat on a drum. On the first day, every time we heard the drums, we had to ask, "What's that one for?" It was always one for the beginning and one at the end of the break.

I volunteered to type up the journal that we are all writing in for the rest of the group and will be having that in a blog off of the Global Volunteers site. That blog will be written by every member of our group and you'll be able to hear from different people with different points of view and see what they were doing on their work projects.

Yesterday, before dinner we also went to the Cultural Center and took a lesson from some young children, boys and girls. They were really cute.

We have a couple of local young ladies that cook us traditional American breakfast (eggs, french toast or pancakes) and dinner. The dinner is usually a local cuisine, lots of seafood and local vegetables. Very yummy!!! I'll take a picture of the "spread" tonight and post it on a later blog.
Stay tuned.

Thanks for the comments, I really look forward to hearing from all of you. I don't really have the time to answer emails, so feel free to leave a comment. It's truly a really bright part of my day.

Meitaki (Thank You!)
Sharon