Fai filemu

You have to love the three day weekends and the four day work weeks! There sure are a lot of them here. Today is a holiday. Happy ANZAC Day, everyone! I understand that it's a veteran's day for Austraila, New Zealand, and I'm not sure who the A and C are for....maybe American & Cananda? At any rate I have the day off work today and everything is closed and there are no busses. However, I was issued my Peace Corps mountain bike this last Saturday morning and have been riding everywhere on it. I am now able to visit volunteers at their sites without having to come into town to catch a bus that goes out to their village or pay an expensive cab fare. I rode over to another volunteer's site Saturday evening and stayed with her until this morning. It was a relaxing weekend of drinking coffee and cooking good food! Yes, for those of you who know of my addiction, I am still quitting caffeine. I have in the last two months really gotten back on track. I stay away from it during the week and then allow myself a treat on Sundays. I had quit before joining the Peace Corps but with the stress of adjusting to a new environment I went right back to it at full force addiction levels. But now that my life has settled a bit I'm back to my healthy habits. Over all I'm really trying to live a stress free life. Hence the title of this post ("take it easy"!) Without a car to worry about, no bills to pay, and living in a tropical paradise I am constantly reminding myself that I am so truly blessed. It's been easy to forget these blessings when I focus on homesickness, feeling unproductive at my assignment, and frustrated with the language & culture but as of late I'm feeling pretty serene and peaceful about things.
The situation at my job is filled with uncertainty as the principal of my school (the person who requested a volunteer and was my counterpart) has been fired by the board of directors. There is no true leadership at the school currently and I'm not able to start any of my projects. I'm hoping they hire quickly and that the new principal will be excited and willing to work with a peace corps volunteer. Until then I'm just continuing with my work of teaching teachers and a few students how to use the computer. I've also started a seconday project. This Saturday I helped an NGO in Apia that advocates for people with disabilities start a social support group for adults who have intellectual disabilities. It felt good to be involved in something more than just my day to day assignment. I'll be doing events with them about once a month until the group is able to plan events independently without needing the leadership of the NGO. So my days aren't jam packed with activities but I'm okay with that. I'm getting to do a lot of reading, studying for the GRE, running, walking, bike riding, and paddling with my Samoan friends. I'm learning to really appreciate life without focusing on being "productive" 100% of the time, which I feel has made me much more spiritually productive.