Spent the long weekend traveling to Western Samoa (technically now just "Samoa", but that gets confusing), an independent country about a 20 minute plane ride from American Samoa.
Western Samoa is Samoa 2.0
Seriously, everything is just a little better there. Plenty of sandy beaches, good food, beautiful people (not fat! apparently diabetes is much more of a problem in the American version of Samoa). I traveled with a group of people I've met here and we spent some time in the capital of Apia, then headed to a surf camp on the south shore. The pictures below give a much better indication of how pretty it is than I could with words. The shore we stayed at was hit hard by the tsunami last September, but the resorts there are already rebuilding. A few of the pictures show the beach fales we stayed in; just a mat and a mosquito net was all we needed, it was great. We felt really safe apart from the one night we woke up with a man in our fale shining a flashlight at us.
Religion is big both in American Samoa and Western Samoa, but I enjoyed hearing the Christian version of the good Bob Marley song No Woman No Cry ("No Jesus, No Life") and noticing that instead of speed limit signs they just had signs that read "Slow down, hell is full".
Now I'm back to work, and the research is going really well! I've collected almost half the surveys I need and I think with a month left I'll be able to get more than enough. The interviews have been more tricky, but we'll have to figure out a way to make it work. Hope you all are enjoying the summer too!
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