from 1 June 2007

Hi Everybody,

I'm back in Vila for the day because we need to do research for history projects we're presenting in Bislama and so us Health volunteers can meet people at the Ministry of Health. I think most of our groups are in Vila today, but we all came separately since we are all going to different places. I do know that you are curious to see the kastom haos I will be living in, so I've attached so pictures of the outside, the swim haos, a picture of the food safe, the desk, the kitchen, and I even threw in a picture of the airport at the end. Things here have been going well, and technical training is turning out to be very intensive, comprehensive, and exhausting. But I'm having lots of fun learning all these relevant (finally!) issues to what I will actually be doing. No more sessions on environmental law, land tenure, marine ecology that I don't understand and if I do choose to work in, will ask other people for help anyway. Instead, yesterday, we spent a few hours talking about toilets and the different ways to build them and what to look out for. Maybe not as interesting or fascinating as marine ecology, but definitely more relevant. Well, I'll keep this short, but here's one last thing: I have a new address! It's more direct, the old one still works, but if you send mail to my new address, someone in the Peace Corps office won't have to forward it to this address anyway. It all ends up in the same place, it just will take a quicker (maybe) path to get there.

Stephanie Oegema/Peace Corps Volunteer (*the Peace Corps Volunteer part is important since I'm not sure if the post office worker knows who I am yet*)
Malvasi Village
c/o Rovo Bay Post Office
Epi Island
Vanuatu
SOUTH PACIFIC OCEAN

How are all of you? I would love to get some updates so not everything I send out will always be about me!

Steph