Visiting Home

Sooo, what I have here is an entry that I started while I was at home, but couldn't finish, because that's just how much stuff I was doing. Enjoy anyhow.
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I've been back in the states for about three weeks now, and I'm still unable to answer one fundamental question, one that all visitors to the Rock contemplate at one time or another, one so common that at least one blog that I know of takes its title from it:

Was any of that real?

Seriously. It just blows my mind how everything here is so different. Or maybe I should say that it is not not different. Everything on the Rock is different, and here it's the same that it's always been. Understand? Good, explain it to me.

And those differences makes for some good stories. The buildings there are different. The food is different. The driving style is different. The ATMs are different. And if you plug your clock into the wall, time moves differently.

But suddenly I'm back home and everything is the way it's always been: predictable. The buildings are made with tile roofs. The food is classic American. You can use most ATMs without getting out of your car. Time moves at about the same speed no matter what kind of clock you're using. It's like I spent the last 18 months in a dream and have suddenly woken up. OR HAVE I?

I'm not going to spend 15 entries detailing everything that I've done while here, but instead I'll just offer up some moments that really struck me:

• Mispronouncing the name of a certain bus stop in LA twice, and not getting laughed at. This is the moment where I knew I was no longer on the Rock.
  

• Riding a bus from the airport seated next to a person who, due to some sort of cosmic coincidence, is on his way to Guam for the first time.

• Eating lunch with my college friend and host Ben in an LA restaurant, and people behind me are actually discussing a TV show for more than thirty seconds. And in English!

• HOLY CRAP FREEWAY!

Yes, I was amazed enough to take a picture. Riding on this was, and I quote, "Just like NASCAR!"

• Being in front row of the audience of the Tonight Show with Scarlett Johansson as the guest. She's apparently been in some movies or something, but in my world, she is most famous for this photo:

• Eating Krispy Kreme. Yessss.

• Hanging out with, and more importantly, getting Chipotle with, Ben and our friend Catherine, the latter of whom was awesome enough to get us those Tonight Show tickets.

• Discovering that Venice Beach has somehow gotten wilder since I last visited LA in 2006. I didn't think that was possible.

• Spotting the Carolina Panthers' team plane parked at Charlotte/Douglas Airport

• Seeing my parents for the first time in nearly a year.

• And my dog, too. Was she ever surprised to see me!

• And my sister. I saw her as well. Since it was her college graduation that I came home for and all.

• Staying in a mountain cabin for a week with a view like this:

It looks even better if you mentally remove all the blue discoloration caused by my cameraphone.

• Actually feeling truly cold weather for the first time since November 2008.

• Getting my hair cut by my sister, who used a beard trimmer for most of it. Nothing like a haircut that involves getting as much hair yanked out as trimmed.
  

• Watching my sister graduate college, complete with an awesome speaker who kept quoting Green Day. "This is the dawning of the rest of our lives."

• Attending a huge party at the cabin that approximately 1 metric crapload of people showed up to, including a former Dean of the University.
  

• Going hiking with my family

• Going kayaking with my family

• Going tubing with my family
  

• Going fly fishing with my dad on an awesome guided tour where we didn't even have to untangle our lines.

• Getting my car unfrozen from the cryogenic storage pod next to Walt Disney's head, which took about $80.
  

• Slowly but surely learning how to drive over 30 MPH again.

• Eating Chick-Fil-A. Yessss.
  

• Going to Greensboro to see the epic play Avenue Q with my friends Stephanie and Tom and discovering that it's basically the perfect time in life for all of us to be seeing that show.

• Giving my good friend and reader of this blog Anthony a lava lava, which he almost immediately started wearing as a cape, 'cause that's how he rolls.

• Watching a music video that I directed in high school and then going out and eating dinner with the same friends that were in it. We ate at, of all places, a Filipino restaurant that's opened up since I've been away. I like it better than the one near my workplace.
  

• Seeing Iron Man 2 and being blown away by the picture quality.
  

• Attending a Charlotte Knights ballgame, which ended in a tie-breaking home run- wait scratch that, a really impressive foul ball. THAT WAS FOLLOWED BY ANOTHER HOME RUN BY THE SAME GUY!
  

Such a great turnout.

• Going to the brand-new NASCAR Hall of Fame, which is the single most awesome museum ever.

• While there, getting to be in the background of an ESPN2 show that was taping there. Yes, I called home and had it DVR'd.

• Road tripping with my sister up to DC, then Delaware and the Baltimore area to see our grandmother and three other relatives. Of course, we also did plenty of the touristy stuff in DC.
• Going to the beach in Delaware, which I just now realized means that I hit beaches on both coasts during this trip.

• Going to Carowinds with family friend Mitchell, and, after going on nearly every ride, including the thrilling new Intimidator (that includes 10 rollercoasters, BTW) went for a swing on the Xtreme Skyflyer.

See that tiny speck by the top of the tower on the left in the back? That's where they drop you from

Okay, I've gotta break format to tell about this one; this picture just doesn't say enough. You have to pay extra for this, but it's worth it if you're completely insane. After being strapped into a harness, they tow you and up to three friends 153 feet up in the air. Someone with a bullhorn gives you a countdown, and you pull the release cord on yourself and swing, pendulum-style, toward the ground. It's been there since 1995 and I was always too scared or poor to go on it, but not this time.

One thing that's really unnerving about getting towed up is how you're hanging horizontally, with your face facing the ground, so that you both can't look anywhere but down and you don't know how high you are until you get to the top. I kept expecting to be there, but I just kept getting farther and farther away from the ground. Finally, we reached it, the guy below gave a countdown, and I gave the handle a yank.

Nothing.

I tried again. And again. Uh-oh.

"PULL THE YELLOW CORD!" yelled the bullhorn-guy below. I twisted around (a bit scary in itself) and saw that, genius that I am, I was pulling on one of the metal loops on my harness that didn't do anything. Behind it was the yellow handle. Despite ever instinct in my body, I gave it a yank and began plummeting from the top. I let out a Samoan war cry as I swung toward the earth at breakneck speed.

It's actually pretty fun once you get past the terror of that first drop. I have to credit my time on the Rock, a relatively dangerous place where your typical year involves an earthquake, a cyclone, and at least two flash floods, for eliminating my fears of silly amusement park rides that 100% of the thousands of people who have been on them have survived. Anyway...

• Getting a new camera, so that you won't have to be subjected to all of these camera phone pictures.
• Saying goodbyes and then flying from Charlotte to Dallas to LA (with a one night layover there) to Honolulu, only to see this unlikely mindscrew in HNL airport:
  

When you see it, you'll poop bricks.

• Flying from there back to the Rock, on an unbelievably empty flight. We're talking about two dozen people total. Although I met some UH students who were headed down there for the first time and got to tell them all about what they were in for.

• Fully realizing that I was back on the Rock when I called my cell phone's voicemail and was told that the caller is not responding at this time.

Of course, there were lots of other great moments that I will never forget, and good times had with family and friends, and lots more funny little culture-shock bits that deserve mention, but I'm tired. Too bad for them.

A Supersized Miniseries

Sooo, I've been busy not being on the Rock lately, but have also been busy fixing connectivity problems with my laptop and doing other non-blogging things like watching my sister graduate from college and lying in the nice hot tub in the cabin that we've rented up here in the mountains of NC. Seeing as it will probably be a few days before I get to write about my time in the States thus far, starting with a few awesome days with friends in LA, here's a link that I've been holding out on sharing.

It's a supersized blog miniseries of a couple sailing across the ocean. Specifically the section about their travels through the Samoan islands. Actually, I'm not sure that you can really call it a blog, as it appears to have been written sometime in the 70's and eventually copied onto the Web. But the story is never dull. The woman is named Freddy and it only gets stranger from there. I'd personally skip everything on that first page that goes on about the universe being hourglass-shaped and similar to a kaleidoscope, but that's just me. Also, if you've enjoyed my friend Jeremy's blog, you'll probably like this guy's outlook on life.

Remember that the links to the next few pages of the story are at the bottom, under the section titled "Log Book Three." Or you could just click here for the next part, then here for the next then, here for the next, here for the next, then here, then here. I really just wish they'd have made that site a little more easy to navigate, but it took me at least ten minutes to figure that site out. But I also like linking things.

A couple of things:

1. I haven't really read most of what's in that, but I liked what I've read so far and intend to read it all at some point. Except for some overly detailed descriptions of their cat's medical problems at one point, I have yet to find anything offensive.
2. In case you're getting confused, they're going through all of the major Samoan islands in an west-east direction, starting with the most natural and probably most interesting one, Savai'i. Of course, this is the one that I have yet to be able to afford to go to.
3. Most of their adventures in the Samoas appear to take place in AmSam.
4. If you really enjoy reading it, you can always go back and start at the beginning, which starts off with their harrowing escape from Chinese pirates.

Oh yeah...

Thought I'd mention that I'm about to embark on a monthlong trip home, which will mark my first visit to the mainland since getting here in November 2008. It's going to involve a few days with friends in LA, my sister's graduation form college, and numerous other mini adventures. I had a bigger entry planned out, but I didn't have time to write it.

Just thought it was worth making a note of.

A Tale of Lua Samoas, Part Six

Wow. I expected to tell everything about my trip to Indie Samoa back in February in two or three entries. Anyhow, this entry should be enough to wrap it up.

Fagali'i Airport from the runway. All of it.

If you haven't figured it out¹ by now, the titles of this blog miniseries means "A Tale of Two Samoas." The two groups of islands share a common culture, landscape, and a lot of other things that it's too late at night to get into, but on another level they're very different.


I actually had something really long written out about exactly how they were different, but it basically came down to "Independent Samoa is way nicer because they have to earn their own money (as opposed to getting a ton of grants from the U.S.) and have to keep everything clean and at least halfway functioning in order to keep the tourists and business partners coming back. I have the long version of that saved where I really stretch out an old comparison of American Samoa to a career college student about as far as it will go and might get around to posting it some day.



I also realized how many Samoans living in AmSam are really from Independent Samoa, aren't all that crazy about The Rock, and just there to work. Kinda like me. Except for that part about being from Samoa.

Reefs off Upolu

I don't really have much more to say for this entry. Just enjoy the pictures of the flight back.

RainbOWNED!

Approaching Cape Taputapu, the westernmost corner of Tutuila.

Getting closer...

Wait a second, am I going back to..?

NOOOOOOOO!!

¹Googled it

Blackout

Living in a quasi-third world territory with significant leftover tsunami damage, infrastructure here isn't all that great. There are power outages once every two months or so, and it's gotten worse since our friend Mike let his contract as CEO of the territorial power authority expire. In fact, there was a power outage just tonight. Allow me to break down how it went:

7:30 PM- Power went out abruptly.
7:35- Air conditioning is gone. Fear, denial begin to set in. Animal instincts start taking over.
7:40- Where did light go? Forage to find light. Find ancient flashlight so bright it once banned from Boy Scout campouts. Cave bright again!
7:45- Forage for food. Find hot food on stove, almost as if it had been there before power outage. Can't remember that far back, too long ago. Food good!
7:50- Airport officials take flashlight. Say they need to borrow it so 767 can land on runway safely.
7:55- Try to make own electricity by rubbing two stray cats together. Only a few sparks.
8:00- Try again, but add some car batteries and wire. Accidentally discover fire instead. Fire hot! Fire awesome! Find candle with picture of man named San Jose.* Wonder why man named after city in California. Fire burn candle!
8:10- Candle burns itself out. Adam laugh at absurdity of it all (and at bad pun about San Jose). Adam only pawn in game of life.
8:15- Realize I never made bed. Fashion crude stone tools, skin leopard to make a bed.
8:20- Can't let food in fridge go to waste. Mix animal blood with taco sauce from fridge to make paint. Begin work on elaborate cave painting.
8:30- Power came back on. Decided to finish cave painting.


*Readers with good memories will get it

Oof.

At least it happened in Hawaii and not here:

A Tale of Lua Samoas, Part Five

So after brunch, we went out to see Apia during the day.

The original Mr. LavaLava's, named after Samoa's first pimp daddy.

A Coke bottled in the Vailima plant.

750 ml. That's, what? 10 gallons?

So then we went out for a drive to find a nice beach to swim at. Problem was, it was Sunday, and most people here don't allow swimming on a Sunday, because...they don't know, actually. And I've asked. It's just an unquestioned tradition. So we drove around for a while looking for beaches where we could swim.



Canada? What are you doing way out here?

Useless fact: In my nearly 18 months of living in the Samoas, I have met people from as far away as Italy and Madagascar, but never any Canadians.

We went to another nice beach where we weren't allowed to swim.

As far as we could tell, this is what Canada is building there, very close to that same beach. They're climate change-proof fales or something.

So we went down a different road.
And passed some horses, the first ones I've seen since I left home. It was such an unexpected sight to see one by the road, it might as well have been a llama.
So then we arrived at the waterfall.

It has a nice overlook at the top of the steps.

This is actually one of two of Kolio's neighbors who went with us that I haven't mentioned yet.

And we finally got to go swimming here. But I don't have any pictures of that, because I was, you know, swimming.

It's actually a lot bigger than it looks in this pictures. And a lot less overexposed.

That's better.

It made for some really great swimming. It was deep enough that I couldn't even sense where the bottom was, which meant that you could jump in from some fairly high places. The current right below the waterfall is also pretty strong (pushing you away from the waterfall, not anything dangerous).

Then I had to get ready to go back to the Rock. But I still have one more entry to write about my trip back and some general reflections that finally explain the title that I've been using for this series of posts.