Pleasant Surprises

I took a trip out to West ambae to drop off the owners of the stori house because my dadi was driving the boat. I swear every trip I take around this island makes me believe more and more that there is something magical about Ambae. As we rounded the halfway point coming back, my dadi pointed out Fingalato aka the village of pygmies in the high cliffs. The path to them is REALLY dangerous but my family knows how excited I am to go see them so they said they'd take me the long way, which is safer, next year. But for now I'm content sitting at the bow of the boat with an old water bottle and fishing line wrapped around it, just trying my luck at catching a tuna.

I've had a few nostalgic moments here in vandue. One happened when I was looking at my large map of the world - and I mean really looking at it - when I realized how many islands there are in the Pacific and how many are still not independent from the US/France/UK/NZ/Australia. And then I started to look at other oceans and tiny islands when I reached the conclusion that I will never be able to visit every country in the world.... But it won't stop me from trying.

The other moment of nostalgia occurred last night as we fueled up the generator so the community could watch Rudy on a TV. Instead of watching the movie, I kept getting distracted by the moon on top of my head. It seemed so close up and then a cheesy old line from countless movies came to mind. We may be miles, oceans, plane rides, and boat rides apart, but we are looking at the same moon. We are looking at the same moon. Isn't that incredible? Time and space seem so odd to me, because I look at the map and see how far I am from the US, that I'm in a completely different atmosphere than, say, the cold snow in Colorado. But yet we all look at the same moon every night. Seriously, think about it next time you can spare a chance to look at the moon.

In other news, I have a bunch of small, barely noticeable white blotches on my skin which I have diagnosed to be some kind of harmless fungus. It's attractive. I've been treating it with cream. When I went to Billy's house to story with him, he said, "wow, you smell really good. Like how girls smell back in the states."' I said thank you, confused because I don't have any perfume or good smelling soap. Then he said it again and I said, "that's nice, but all that I've put on my skin today was the cream you use for jock itch".

It took a moment for that comment to sink in for the both of us, and then we just shook our heads and laughed. Only in Vanuatu would fungus and jock itch be funny.