Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Our school staff got together at the boss's house. People brought lots of traditional and delicious food. We got out guitars and played games. You really miss family on special days like holidays, but it helps so much to have friends that open their hearts and homes.

How many quarters to you keep in YOUR ears? The major form of transportation is the aiga bus (small buses painted bright colors with names like, "South of Pago.") You can go most places for a quarter. If you're wearing lava lava, where do you keep your quarter for bus fare? In your ear, of course.

Terry cracks me up. She is determined to learn to talk Samoan with her eyebrows. They do a very subtle flick of the eyebrow to indicate, "yes." Terry can't move her eyebrows without rolling her eyes. It is NOT subtle. Samoans also gesture with their lips to show direction - efficient use of body language.

We plan a field trip to "the mall," a store in Nuuuli, to buy matching lava lavas for the Christmas program this Friday night. The letter to the parents said we would go sometime this week, depending on when the boss gets her car fixed. Things are "flexible" in Samoa.

People are definitely gearing up for Christmas. I've been told there will be countless groups of carolers. Even the prison ("the Tafuna Hilton?") allows the inmates to wear festive costumes and carol around the island.

Family graves (large concrete slabs and impressive headstones) are not isolated in graveyards. They are typically right beside the homes. And there is no feeling of "off limits." People and animals lounge across them. Laundry is strung across them. And Christmas lights are strung across them. Why should the deceased not be included in this festive season?

The Samoan culture puts the greatest emphasis on family, and hospitality. They are an incredibly generous people. And they are a deeply religious people. I think if the baby Jesus had been born on Tutuilla, he and his family would have been well fed and made very comfortable in a fale.

Manuia le Kirisimasi (Happy Christmas)

Here is an oldie from our stay in Taiwan.

7/15/99
Ok. I did it. I went out for a late night snack and ordered a fish. The fish is maybe still flopping one minute, and served steaming hot in a matter of minutes. The proprietors will often hover around the patron. Meanwhile I have no problem smiling, nodding, and saying, "Hao chi," (delicious). I'd eaten much of it, but I could sense some impatience from the lady so I pointed to the eyeball, and she nodded an emphatic, "Yes!" So I popped them out and in my mouth. Actually they weren't bad.

All the blocks here are arranged by what type of store they are. So you have the clothing block, the computer district, and the used furniture block.

I was bummed out with the Tainan bus system yesterday and today. Yesterday I waited about 40 minutes before my bus came. I was rather proud of the fact that I could read the Chinese characters (written top to bottom) for train station. I waved emphatically, but he went on by. I had to chase him down in the rain and bang on the door. Then today, at the train station, I asked for a schedule. The lady gave me one but said they were not very accurate. I showed her my destination, written in Chinese, and she told me to cross the square. I crossed over and got on a bus, told the driver my destination, but he and the passengers gestured that I was on the wrong bus (or maybe my aftershave smelled bad.) Here came the lady from the train station apologizing, saying that she had misinformed me, and I needed to go "over there." So I went over there. People there told me that I needed to go stand, "over there." After a series of, "over there's", I had to hail a taxi so I wouldn't be late. I had to wonder if a favorite pastime of the Taiwanese is, "Mei-gua (American) Ping-Pong. You take turns "serving" the American back and forth across the square.

My assistant's boyfriend, Jeff, presented us with some tia-dun (iron egg). It's a specialty of Kaohsiung that looks much like a black olive. It has a hard rubbery outer layer, and it is much like a salty egg yolk inside.

 

This is a banana tree in our front yard. Notice the large red "bloom?" on the end of the stalk.  

I include a couple more pictures to assure people that Terry Lynn is alive and well. Here she is looking studious (?) at the Rainmaker Hotel.

 

Looking across the lagoon at the Rainmaker beach.

 

My island sweetheart with pua flower (Hawaiian pumeria).

 

The 2 shots of falls are on Oahu (enroute from Taiwan to Samoa.) We had time to visit a falls near Waikiki.
You should be able to pick out a bathing Terry.

 

Same falls.

 

Another beach shot taken from Rainmaker Hotel beach in pago Harbor.

 

Steve standing between Lion's Park and Airport beach. (And, no, I don't have a bush growing out of the back of my swim trunks.)

Steve would love to hear your feed back!

The toilet situation fascinates me. On the train you step through a glass door, which is visible from about the waist up, so you can smile and wave at passer-bys. At other public places, the latrines are even more public. I was a little taken back when the little old lady walks in the men's bathroom and reaches around me for the butt cup (cigarette that is.) I could almost hear her say, "Honey, you ain't got nothin' I ain't seen before."

One personal victory in a related subject, in addition to conversational English, I am expected to teach the children American customs and etiquette. Some of you know my struggle for equal rights (for men) pertaining to leaving toilet seats up. Well, all my students are going to be told that it's rude to put the seat down in America. So take that, ladies!
I don't think I mentioned the first song I tried to sing for Terry when I got my guitar... an old John Denver, "Follow me, where I go..." It was the first one I ever sang for Terry when we were dating. I didn't realize how well it described what she had done for me by coming to Taiwan, and it really caught me off guard. I got too choked up and couldn't sing. Haven't tried that one since.

Many Taiwanese men have a few really long hairs growing out of a mole. I don't think the majority has to shave.

I've taken a fiendish delight in faking out the Chinese at intersections. All you have to do is rev your engine, and the group instinct takes over. Often they all start to take off.

We've had serious rains here. Roads washed away. A guy on a scooter disappeared when the road caved in. They never found him. In Taiwan (where I teach) they couldn't raise the floodgates because the tide was coming in and the sea gates were closed.

I must admit I forgot to watch the news. They haven't been buying the English paper where I work so I wasn't aware of unrest between the mainland and Taiwan {the reader might remember some serious saber rattling). The whole island has many military installations. The military presence is very visible.

People were concerned that Terry didn't make the trip with me (since she wasn't in the pictures.) The photo shows her at the top of diamond head, a volcano on Oahu.

Steve would love to hear your feed back!

 Went to my first umu last Sunday. Caroline and Malo invited us to a traditional Samoan dinner honoring their daughter, Atamai, on her birthday. The dinner was in Malaeloa. We arrived around 7:30 a.m. The umu is traditionally a guy thing. Women generally wouldn't even be present. But Terry was allowed to "hang out" as long as she drank the coconut (niu) milk so graciously prepared by Malo's father, Pule, stay out of the way, and look cute.

The fire had already been started with wood and coconut husks. Basalt river rocks were then piled on the fire. This can be an exciting time if any new rocks have air pockets. They become bombs. My patient teachers instructed me on husking coconuts, scraping the meat out of the coconut, scraping breadfruit (two-step process) with a coconut shell.

Some other procedures I observed but didn't take part in included squeezing the shredded coconut meat through plant fibers (much like packing material) to get coconut cream. I also watched them make palusami, coconut cream with onion and spices wrapped in taro leaves. They pulled the stem out of banana leaves with their teeth. They had a barbecue going.

While waiting, one of the fellows was braiding baskets to haul the food. In very short order he had braided three big baskets from coconut fronds. The process reminded me somewhat of French braiding.

Around 10 a.m. the fire was out. The red-hot rocks were pulled apart and the ashes swept away so the waiting foods including bananas, could be arranged for cooking. Red-hot rocks were stuck up in dressed chickens. The whole mound of food was then covered with the remaining hot rocks and covered with taro, banana and coconut leaves. Very little steam escaped from the umu. They compared the umu to a pressure cooker. In 45 minutes the umu was done.

After family members returned from the church service we were treated to an incredibly delicious feast and very warm hospitality. We were sent home with food from the umu, as well as "ladyfinger" bananas from the family's plantation.

November 10, 1999
It's Wednesday, Nov. 10 here in Tafuna, American Samoa. I would like to state my appreciation on this Veteran's Day for those who did so much for this and future generations. I hope that if you know a veteran that you take time to sit down and ask them about their experience. Wives of veteran's can be a real wealth of information about what was happening stateside, too. We found a new Papua New Guinea friend, Henrietta, a parent of a Pacific Horizon student (Terry and I teach at Pacific Horizon School.) She showed us the coral reef she is building at Coconut Point. She goes to the farthest edge of the reef, gets live coral (with the "mother stone") and sort of plants it closer to shore. Coral reefs are in serious danger around the world. The reef in Samoa was decimated a few years ago by a hurricane and the Crown-of-Thorns starfish, as well as many other stress factors. Henrietta has been working to reestablish a living reef where there has only been bleached coral skeletons. I found some sea urchins at the edge of the reef. I pried them loose, and they affixed themselves to me as I swam back to shore, poor guys. Then I split them with a knife and sucked out the red slime - very sweet, but I don't think I'll base my diet on them. This is something I wrote soon after we arrived in Taiwan back in early July. 7/3 It rained a lot in Taiwan. Hot and extremely humid. The Taiwanese just live inside or out on the sidewalks. I was doing the same thing as Terry. We had our grand opening Sunday. I gave a demonstration to get the parents to enroll their children in my employer's bu xi ban (an English language "cram school"). Terry did that Saturday. All her visiting parents enrolled their kids. Picture this. Everyone in Capon Bridge hears about the power in the new Taiwanese dollar, so they decide they want their children to learn to speak Chinese. Everyone brings 5 year olds in to the "You Can Speak Chinese" School. Got a general idea? In Taiwan they have "car bathrooms." That's what they call a car wash. There was an American-style toilet in our apartment, but that was more the exception than the rule. Most have sunken basins that you squat over. And you better take along your own toilet paper. Most do not have dispensers, and if they have toilet tissue, it's folded like facial tissue. Our apartment had the basics, but it was kind of spartan. We slept our first night on Terry's dresses. The next day I bought 2 sheets, but since I couldn't read Chinese I bought 2 fitted sheets. I decided they don't use top sheets. They put a blanket on top. The 2 fitted sheets felt great. The Taiwanese have a lot going for them, but they seem oblivious to their beautiful surroundings... eg. "What's that flower?" No idea. "What is that crop in the field?" Not a clue. Birds, trees, etc. They are not tuned in to that. My boss put it this way, "All we care about is work and money, money and work."	Taken from the beach behind Rainmaker Hotel in Pago Harbor.   One of our churches, a city block from our compound between our home and our school. We would spell it Susan Wesley mother of the founder of Methodism. Pua (pumeria in Hawaiian.) Incredibly sweet smelling and often worn in hair. Steve would love to hear your feed back!
7/4 We had a strange 4th of July. The demo at school went well. They paid Terry $600 just for coming with me. Unfortunately that's taibi (or New Taiwanese wuan) so it's about US$18. Lots of other interesting foods. We've learned not to ask what it is. I fried tofu and bread with what looked like belly button fuzz this morning. For lunch my boss's family took us out to a "simple meal." Course after course. Very good, some very spicy. Terry had just managed to get a piece of meat to her mouth with the chopsticks when the host identified it as pork. Terry had joked so much about, "All the mystery meats are called pork ..." I thought she was going to choke on her mouthful. Another time, we decided to leave a food stall without a purchase, when Terry looked down and said, "I'd like a puppy. I said I was surprised she wanted it so fresh, and picked it up, and headed back in the food stall. I thought she was going to hurt me. I keep going to bookstores trying to find a Mandarin dictionary, but since I don't have a dictionary, I don't know how to ask for one. I lost my first load of laundry. Dropped it off, but then I couldn't find the shop to pick it up. The names are all in Chinese characters. I went back down the street a third time and finally found the shop. I tried a laundry closer to our apartment for the 2nd load. (I have to change clothes frequently. My clothes are dripping with sweat in such a short time - I stink!) Anyway, the guy at the 2nd shop inspected my clothes and shook his head when he pulled out my underwear and socks. He either was telling me to not wear them, or (I surmised,) he doesn't wash those articles. So I did a load of underwear by hand. We found VERY few English speaking people. Very few signs are in English. Shopping is a trip. "Well dear, Would you like chicken feet or this stuff that looks like eyeballs for dinner?" Tried lichees today. When you peel the rough red outer skin it looks very much like an eyeball. Even the same feel. Very sweet and very good. We didn't see too many wild critters, since it is so urban. You do see egrets in the rice patties. Also, when I got up the other morning and stumbled into the kitchen I found myself staring at a pattern of a gecko on the wall, and mumbling to myself, "I could have sworn that the "pattern" was moving." And when I looked closer the 'pattern' skittered off. They're kind of cute. They click at you. Not used to having them in my kitchen though. 7/5 Around 8 a.m. Monday, I heard a string of firecrackers go off. It was strange to think that back in the states Hampshire County folks might be setting off fireworks in a few hours (8 p.m. Sunday, July 4th - a 12 hour difference.) Had my first 3 classes of about a dozen students each. They were fun. Did puppets and games, and sang songs. And I'm getting paid for this? Poor Jennifer (English name). She was volunteered to give me my first motu-ouch-uh (I think that's how they say motorscooter) lesson - driving in Tainan. Tainan is the 4th largest city in Taiwan. I was driving and she was the passenger. I could feel her trembling. I kept asking if she was OK? Apparently she didn't share my confidence in my own driving ability. Got on the train in Tainan, and managed to get off in Kaohsiung. I was really afraid I'd end up in Taichung or even Taipei - many hours to the north. It's interesting to try and relate the little squiggles the Chinese friends have written for me with the squiggles on the rail stop signs. I then had to catch a bus back to our apartment. At the rail station you can get hua choi ling (I think). A fried pizza with chives dough with meat (don't ask what kind) greens and a fried egg. You get it in a baggy, then I was coached to squirt a bunch of different sauces on it, and sprinkle something else for good measure. Food doesn't get much better. I was surprised Taiwanese daylight hours are noticeably shorter. But then I realized they have almost equal day and night hours year round. 7/6 At this point I was expecting to be unemployed again. My boss seemed to make up the scheduleas she went along. Even my Chinese assistant, JoJo, was confused about the work assignment. Anyway, she wanted me to stay an extra 6 hours today. I simply smiled and explained I couldn't do that. I think they thought I was stuck there. But again the stupid American doesn't know enough not to walk. So I walked across town to the train station. Bargaining at the shops was fun. I was checking on a guitar. After I'd tuned it up and played a while the guy dropped the price from NT$3000 to NT$2000 (about US$90-$60). I think he thought he had to make a sale to make me stop playing. The magic phrase sounds like "tie gway." It means "too much." Bargaining is expected here. Once I was looking at a watch, NT25000. The owner offered, NT$15000. I tried for NT$1000. He laughed at me. I guess I hadnít quite mastered the bargaining skills. There were an incredible number of people, cars and scooters in Taiwan. But U.S. traffic jams are much more impressive. The Taiwanese population has expanded beyond the ability of the law to enforce. Can you imagine a traffic pattern where you simply planned your movements with the goal, "How can I get there without getting killed; and without killing someone else." It was amazing how well it worked. I felt safer walking amidst the ordered chaos than on a major street in the United States. No crazy cabbies trying to hit you. Traffic merges so naturally. Red lights have little importance. And you often have people driving up the "wrong" side. But it's NOT the wrong side, because that's where they needed to be, and no one was driving over there. They park on the sidewalk or just in the street (if a short time.) I wish they could teach our cities how to drive. There was a scooter crash almost beside me. Nothing serious. But I did see an angry exchange. A very unusual sight in Taiwan. Anger (loosing face) is to be avoided at all cost. I really don't think the Taiwanese do much relaxing. The men go to late night guy hangouts. Pretty girls sit with you and serve you - but no hanky panky. Children go to sleep around 10 PM. They watch a lot of TV. I was given the key to an apartment in Tainan, so I could watch TV or take a nap between classes. But all the stations were in oriental languages.

Talofa (hello) from Samoa.

I'm Steve Bailes. My wife and I took a year's leave from teaching to teach overseas. We first flew to Kaohsiung, Taiwan at the end of June. We taught there for about 6 weeks, until Terry almost ended up in jail. Then we flew to American Samoa, about halfway between Hawaii and Australia. American Samoa had been our first choice when we first thought of teaching overseas, but the first job offer had required a two-year commitment. So in August we flew to Pago Pago with no jobs and no housing. We now have both.

The main island of American Samoa, Tutuila, is a volcanic mountain rising steeply out of the ocean. We live in Tafuna, the largest plain on the island, 10 miles west of Pago Pago. There is one main road, route 1, which runs the length of the island. As you drive the southern coast from Tafuna east to Pago harbor you see coral fringe coral reefs on your right.

Beyond the reef are waves that make surfers drool.

Now look to your left, and your eyes rise up a sheer wall of volcanic basalt rock, covered in lush vegetation.

It's been a chilly week. Marguerite (originally from Swain's island, the farthest of the American Samoan islands) called the weather service and was told it was 76 degrees F. Much too cold.

It's looking like a lonely week. Pastor John is "off island" visiting family and friends in Texas, California and Ohio. Jimmy, our "adopted" surfer kid, just got word that he is to leave the island a week early. He plans to go back to college.

Scott is leaving the island, no longer flying for Samoa Air.

This is my Jr. High students (the Voyagers) coming back from a field trip to see Eileen George's Samoan art exhibit. You'll notice Mt. Alava again, but this is taken from the other end of the island, at Pago harbor.

 

This picture shows the Voyager classroom. You might notice that 50% of the wallspace is open windows. Curtains are sim ply knotted to allow better air circu lation. There has been some dis cussion about the fuzziness around my head. Some hypothesize that it is due to my halo, while others maintain it is simply a glare from my head. I'll let you decide.

Steve would love to hear your feed back!

He will now pilot for Hawaiian Air. These palagis (pronounced: pa-long-eez) have been good friends.

Palagi is a Samoan word meaning "light from heaven," and refers to Caucasians.

Before I tell you anymore about Samoa, let me tell you a little of our time in Taiwan. We got into Kaohsiung late Wednesday. We started Monday afternoon - sort of. The flight to Detroit was cancelled due to thunderstorms. Got a United Express to get us to Detroit. But roads flooded there and we had a twelve-hour lay over.

In June we flew fifteen hours to Osaka (where I left my mandarin Chinese dictionary). Then hopped on the last DC10 to take us to Taiwan - several more hours.

We checked into a hotel late Wednesday (morning for you).

Early the next morning we went to Terry's school. Within the hour she was teaching. She looked so natural even though the kids didn't speak English. Her natural gentleness translates into any language.

I left around noon to meet with a bunch of people including my boss.

Talofa.

We rode out to Tainan to see my school. Both Terry's school and my school were brand new.

Taking the train back to Kaohsiung, I saw fields of sugar cane and rice with beautiful white egrets feeding.

Terry and I found a seafood outdoor cafe. I couldn't tell the waiter what we wanted, so she brought a live shrimp over. I shrugged and nodded, apparently very effectively, because she brought us shrimp (very fresh - very cheap) and rice.

Number one commandment from locals: "Don't drink the water." Quite an eye opener for me. You either buy bottled water or boil it. The most common sign of hospitality is to present the guest with a glass of water (often hot) or tea. Clean water is a precious commodity. We take it so much for granted in the states.

We moved into another apartment temporarily. We shared it with a Canadian and a Taiwanese; both girls worked at Terry's school. No sheets, just a mattress on the floor. Friday morning - bad news: the gas tank that heats the water was empty. Good news: the weather was so hot the cold shower felt good.

Terry went back to her school Friday morning. I took a cab to my boss's office in Kaohsiung - sort of.

The taxi drivers don't speak English, and you've probably guessed my Mandarin is - uh - lacking. The driver felt so sorry for me, he gave me his city map - but everything was written in Chinese characters.

So I still got lost. A father and daughter on a scooter drove blocks out of their way to show me the way to the office. He even chased after me when I didn't think I wanted his help. He kept showing the Chinese address I had written down to various locals until he found the office for me. Then he smiled and rode off.

"Who was that masked Chinese man?"

It's after midnight on Monday in Hampshire County, and it's after 5 p.m. in Tafuna. Time to go home for dinner.