Getting ready to go! PureLife!

Time has come, finally, tonight the plane to leave the island!

Preparation for this trip has been quite time consuming. Finding warm clothes on an island with constant temperature between 24-28 degree Celsius all year is quite challenging. I collected pieces of warm clothing from about 5 different persons, ranging from size small to extra large! But considering that I will be doing a lot of outdoors, warm cloths are a must! The other day my friend Dave found me on the chat and asked me if I would get sick if I were on a plane turning around in small circles… I did told him I would follow him to the end of the world (and Alaska is quite close to the boundary apparently), but that was a bit over my imagination. Apparently he rented a plane to do some survey work… cool!!!

Yesterday was a busy day. At work I had to have everything ready for my 3 weeks absence, and as I went to collect my monthly stream water samples, I also had a little funny accident… You need to know that not all villages have access to government water. These villages usually built a little dam somewhere upstream, and from there they canalize some water either into solid pipes or in big hoses. Yesterday the pressure in the pipes was quite high, as it just rained a lot. Well, yesterday the pressure in the pipes was quite high, since it just rained a lot… by mistake, I stepped on one of those hose and… it got off the connection! I was invested with a large amount of water that scared the hell out of me. Then I took the hose and tried to stick it back in. The pressure was so strong that it took me a while, and when I finally succeeded, I was soaking wet from head to toe! I felt like that little kid in Belgium that put his finger in a little hole of a leaking dam and stayed there forever to save the town…. Anyway, I still love my job!

What else? I finally got my paper tickets! I bought them with Kayak, but they do not ship in American Samoa because they need a physical address (not P.O. Box) but in this island physical address do not exist. So I had the tickets sent to some friends in Oregon (thank you Biniam and Liz!!!) and they sent it to me with regular mail. Once I realized that the ticket did not arrive on Thursday’s night flight, I start worrying. Monday morning they still weren’t on my P.O. Box. I prayed the post office officer to look for them for me, and he dove head first into a full basket and found them. The power of a “fa’molemole” (that can be translated as “please”) and a smile are behind description in this place.

So, got tickets, got the backpack set, I am ready to roll!

My trip will officially start today at 4:00, that is as soon as I am out of the office (but there are voices around that we may be getting an half day…)

After work I was invited to a reception held by the governor into his residence in honor of the NOAA research cruise ship. They are doing a lot of research in American Samoan water, and the governor just went with them in Rose Atoll, our most remote island. I have never been in the governor’s house, so I am quite curios to see how it looks like. Plus the NOAA people are very nice and I am planning to spend my 7 hours lay over in Hawaii with one of them hiking. FEW MORE HOURS TO PURE LIFE!!!!!!!