Back in NZ/Samoa Thoughts

Well, gang, Just arrived from an arduous 48hrs of no sleep and travel from a remote Samoan village to home here at the Old Convent in Kaikoura. Samoa was great, although many aspects of my two week trip took me quite by surprise. I had no idea, somehow, that Samoa is very much a third-world country as far as poverty and lack of infrastructure and development. I felt out of my comfort zone pretty much the whole time, especially with the language barrier. I knew minimal Samoan, and my Samoan friends new very broken English. The first week of the trip, we were all together as a CCSP group. We stayed together in Safua, and took day trips around the volcanic island of Savai'i on which we lived. We visited blowholes, volcanic craters, saw flying foxes, cyclone damage, lava flows over entire towns, etc. Very informative week, especially in a geoligical sense. The second week was more relaxed, constituted mostly by downtime in my village homestay. I filled in the time by snorkeling, climbing coconut palms, journaling, and tilling taro in the inland plantations. Very good trip, but exhausting after a while because of the lack of communication. Food was very rich...lots of meat and starch of all sorts...It's good to be back home in NZ...photos soon!