East meets West ...

Hellooooo ....

I got into Seattle late last night. I was due to arrive Monday night after leaving the conference hotel in Harrisburg, PA that afternoon. I got up to Newark and had a three hour layover before a schedule 6 p.m. departure to the west coast. I camped out at the Brooklyn Brewery Jazz Bar and caught up on some e-mails while looking out on the skyline of NYC. As a sipped a Brooklyn Lager -- I was assured by the proprietor that it kicked Sam Adam's ass -- I became a bit nostalgic for previous visits to the city and made plans with Alison to head up there for New Year's. As I wrapped up our conversation together and made my way to the gate, I heard that the flight to Seattle was overbooked and that Continental was looking for volunteers to leave Tuesday. A hotel voucher, meal vouchers and $500 in credit later, I was postponing my plans.

I got in touch with Andrew and Sara (recently married in Hawaii in August) and was invited to join them and Sara's mother for dinner at Andrew and Sara's apartment in Mid-town. I was going back, back to New York! I hopped on the air train to the NJ transit station and took a 30 minute ride to Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. I made my way over to their apartment and enjoyed a dinner of potatoes and carrots -- they hadn't necessarily planned a vegetarian entrée and looked at me a little disparagingly when I explained my unique dining proclivities.

We talked and looked at a photo book of Andrew and Sara's trip to Egypt, Greece, and Turkey before I said my goodbyes and left with Andrew to watch the second half of the Monday Night Football game at a Irish bar. I stayed until the end of the game and weathered a monsoon of sorts outside. By the time Favre had blown another game, the rain had stopped and I walked the 10 blocks or so back to the train station. Much to my dismay, the trains were being held about 45 minutes to allow for the traffic leaving the Jets Stadium to clear. Pulling out of NYC at 1:40 a.m, I got back to the airport around 2:15 a.m. and waited 40 minutes for my Ramada Plaza Conference Center and Hotel shuttle that never came. Instead, I paid the Hampton Inn shuttle driver $5 to take me to my prescribed hotel. I got in after 3 a.m. and, despite puzzling over a door latch that had been ripped off, I finally went to sleep.

Tuesday, I got up and made my way back the Newark Liberty Airport. Arriving four and half hours before my flight left me plenty of time to study for the LSAT. I grabbed a green tea from a partnering coffee shop and settled in at the Heineken Lounge. Brain exhausted, it was time to cash in my meal vouchers. Pooling together the lunch and dinner coupons left me with the small fortune of $20 for dinner. Mexican it was and I wolfed down a very palatable California shrimp roll dinner.

Barely stopping to catch my breath I raced over to my gate to check on my flight. Delayed and over booked! I briefly pondered the opportunity to collect another $500 voucher and possibly of cancelling my transcontinental trip altogether. Yet, I had a date with destiny on the west coast and I was determined to get out there. Technical issues conquered, the flight was ready to be boarded.

Being sequestered to window seat in a three person row, I allowed myself to dry out and nervously hoped that I wouldn't have to get up to go pee during the six hour flight. I looked out the window and snapped a few photos of an orange, yellow, purple October sky before briefly nodding off, as the plane departed, reading a long winded article in The Economist about Zimbabwe's political troubles.

In the air, I passed the time crossing and re-crossing my legs, earnestly erasing mistakes as a worked through my LSAT prep book, and trying not to elbow the guy next to me . Luckily, I had a pair ear plugs because there were two kids in front of me who were playing some sort of personal gaming device and encouraging each other with incessant chats of "You can do it, you can do it, you can do it". While I generally support the spirit of teamwork, I gave serious consideration to whether or not I was the type of guy to stand up and tell a kid on a plane to, "Please, shut the hell up." Eventually, I realized I wasn't

Landing in Seattle, Angie, who I had met at Andrew and Sara's wedding in August, picked me up. We talked about her husband, Tom, and life in Seattle as we made our way to their beautiful home just north of the city.

I woke up this morning and Angie dropped me off at Enterprise. I picked up the rental as the agent looked at me dubiously as a sputtered assurances that I had car insurance and he spied the book Angie had given me -- "Seattle's Best Dive Bars." Possibly despite his better judgement, he tossed me the keys and I raced out of the parking lot. On the way into the city, I stopped off at an area called Green Lake to pen some thoughts and go for a run around the three-mile lake.

I've got a recommendation for a coffee shop to sit down and drudge through some more studying before checking out a Picasso exhibit that just opened at the Seattle Museum of Art. It's only touring three cities stateside and figured it'd be worth the time. I'm meeting up with Tom, presumably at one of the previously mentioned "Dive Bars" later this afternoon and hoping to cap off the evening with a twilight tour of the Space Needle. Tomorrow, I've got a hot date with the University of Washington Law School and Criminal Procedure class.

After a year living on an island 19 miles by two miles, life of the road has its perks. Hope all is well and check Facebook to see when this road show will be pulling into a town near you.

Best,

Steve

Vietnam Part II

Please pardon the lapse in time since my last post, the idea of encapsulating my second semester and last six months in American Samoa seemed like an incalculable task and one that I'm postponing until my summer travels have concluded.

In the mean time, our traveler picks up in the mountainous north west region of Vietnam. Alison and I have been traveling together for nearly a month -- two weeks in China working the for Global Young Leaders Conference and another week plus exploring Vietnam.

We arrived in Sapa this morning after taking an eight-hour overnight sleeper train from Hanoi.

The idea of a sleeper car was exciting and new and prompted the exclamation, "This is so Darjeeling Limited of us." Safely tucked into our cubby-esque bunks, like a sweatshirt tucked into it's assigned space in the kindergarten classroom, we retired for the night.

Upon arrival in Lai Cao, we took the hour and twenty minute bus ride from the rail station to the village. The pleasure of enduring such an adventure at 5:30 a.m. was only heightened by riding in the middle of the back row of the bus -- thus limiting the ability for any sort of neck support and comfort for a weary head.

Upon arriving in town, we were amazed to see the town buzzing with local villagers all before 7 a.m.

This picture does a poor job of illustrating the town's early morning hub bub, but a great job of illustrating that waiting until after noon to start drinking might by a uniquely Western social construct.

Showing up without a hotel reservation, finding accommodations for the night was the first order of business. Once this was accomplished, we realized that there were two hours to kill before check-in and set out to find breakfast.

Per our Lonely Planet's recommendations, we found Baguette and Chocolate, a French bakery, that was just opening for business. We were the first to arrive, but the establishment would soon fill up as the other sleepy train travelers settled in for a cup of joe. Breakfast accomplished in a conceivably European fashion - croissant w/ honey, toasted baguette with butter & jam, yogurt and coffee -- we explored the town's central square and tried to avoid the overbearing local villagers pushing their wares.

A typical interaction began with a series of questions not limited to, "Where are you from? What is your name? How old are you? How long are you staying in Sapa?" Before concluding with a pushy, "Would you like to by my cultural trinket?"

For those of you who find this charming, we did too ... for the first three or four times it happened. However, after hearing this exchange rinse and repeated a dozen times and being followed down many a side street, some of the luster and charm of cultural exchange wore off. Nonetheless, our ramblings did yield a number of fruitful returns.

Luckily, it was soon time to check-in to our hotel, which for $25/night afforded us a wonderful view and a balcony overlooking a lush green valley of farmland. Content to relax after an early morning start, we continued to explore the town for a bit before settling down on a outdoor deck for cup of coffee and the intention of completing Updike's Rabbit Run trilogy.

Thus accomplished, a night of balcony sitting and wine sipping awaits.

Travels in the Far East and Happy New Years

It’s been nearly 10 hours and my legs are starting to get weak. I got the Narita International Airport in Tokyo this morning at 7:30 a.m. and still have another three hours before my flight leaves for Honolulu later tonight. Such a stint in an airport isn’t typically something that one looks forward to, but this wasn’t what one would consider a typical trip -- access to the business lounge with free snacks and adult beverages doesn’t hurt either (however, my sister likes to remind me that I paid costly for these amenities).

I left American Samoa just over two weeks ago and our Christmas break couldn’t come fast enough. In the days leading up to the holiday vacation, I was losing sleep contemplating adventures and the access to the consumer driven culture of mainland America (Note: Few would consider Hawaii mainland United States, but I invite those few to spend six months living in American Samoa).

Upon landing in Honolulu, I roused my dreary sister for the 5:30 a.m. pick up. My girlfriend my roommate and I went back to my sister’s apartment and passed out for a few hours before gleefully embarking for a fine dining establishment called the Yard House, which claimed to have over 200 beers on draft.

After having a paltry selection of four beers to choose from in American Samoa and not a single bar with beers on draft, arriving at the Yard House seemed like an outer body experience in the making. When the hostess showed us to our table, it was as if St. Peter had beckoned us through the threshold of the Pearly Gates. For hours, the three of us drank beers of impossibly dark complexion and distinct aromas. Nachos were placed in front of us and quickly consumed.

Alison had made the woeful choice to return to Boston for the duration of winter break, while Alex and I continued to explore the full range of palatable malted concoctions. We eventually retired to a bookstore and were taken aback by the familiar, yet forgotten aroma of new books.

My mom arrived later in the evening and we spent the duration of my four days in Hawaii shopping, eating and exploring a contemporary art museum with a fantastic cafeteria.

Eventually, I departed for the Steve Atwell Asia tour 2009. Taking to the Silk Road for the first time, there would be some minor hiccups in store. I left on a Tuesday morning and passed over the International Dateline to arrive in Tokyo nine hours later around dusk on a Wednesday. The airport was immaculate, modern and nearly empty. I saw a few travelers milling about a cafeteria area and it reminded of the sterile, mechanized world of the SIMs video game series. I scuttled to my gate and marveled at how expensive everything was while contemplating a variety of culinary options including a bag of “Nuts & Fish.” I opted for a nut cocktail.

I boarded my flight to Saigon, arrived six and half hours later, spent 55 minutes being ping ponged about by the Vietnamese immigration authority, and was finally escorted back to a flight to Japan to secure the visa I needed in order to enter the country. Dismayed doesn’t accurately describe my emotions, especially when fate dealt me the cruel hand of seating me back in seat 38G – the seat I had just spent over six hours in for the flight from Tokyo to Vietnam.

Arriving back in Tokyo and with some extra time on my hand, I was met and helped immensely by an airline representative who passed me through security and offered directions on how to find the Vietnamese Embassy. With only a few snags and 80 USD this process went relatively smoothly. I stopped at a restaurant to use the internet, drink a glass of red wine and point to the Moroccan style chicken BBQ on the menu. I drank the wine with pleasure and could only smile when the vegetable cuscus was placed in front of me, instead.

A hotel room for the night and twelve hours of sleep later, I was back on my feet and destined to explore the foreign underworld of the Tokyo metro system. Heralded as one of the most efficient and confusing in the world, I figured this would be a good opportunity to put my travel skills to the test. Deciphering the metro map in a mix of Japanese and English, I felt like a NSA code cracker when I put in the correct number of Yen and out popped a ticket.

I spent the morning shivering through the streets of the Akasaka district and exploring the Buddhist Senjoi Temple. As I plodded back through the crowds and onto the metro, I could only stare in amazement at the punctuality of the trains and how quiet the passengers were. Not a cough or hushed whisper escaped the lips of an entire metro car full of people.

Back on the go, I made my way to the airport and on to Vietnam – this time with the appropriate paperwork. I met up with my friend Liz, who is teaching English in Vietnam, and we were up to 2 a.m. catching up on life on the far reaches of the globe.

This reintegration process didn’t help when she had to be up at 6:30 a.m. for class and I prepared to play in a Frisbee tournament. I visited her school and watched her instruct her class on lessons in possession and plural and singular tense. I enjoyed the lesson, but was eager to find the playing fields for a much anticipated weekend of ultimate Frisbee.

In the end, our team did well – eventually losing in the finals – and I played well enough to receive honorable mention from some of the spectators who stuck around long enough on Sunday to finish the cases of beer provided by the tournament and see the game.

Liz was off Monday and she played tour guide as we ran around Ho Chi Minh City from one fine dining establishment to another as I slowly became reacculturated to the multitude of dining options available in a city. We visited Reunification Hall – formerly the government headquarters of the South Vietnamese government, but overrun by the North during the Vietnam War (called the American War by the present communist government).

The next day, we flew to Cambodia to explore Angkor Wat and spend New Years in what we anticipated would be the sleepy town of Siem Reap. Visa troubles were kept at bay when we quickly and easily picked up a Cambodian visa upon arrival at the airport and passed through to my third country in less than a week.

Hotel accommodations were initially tough to secure, but we found a suitable place for one night – despite not having air conditioning and having to get up in the middle of the night to drag a fan into the room from the hall. The next night we moved to the much nicer and elaborately decorated Bopha Angkor Hotel, which featured a swimming pool tucked in a secret garden area.

The next morning we were at Angkor Wat, a World Heritage Site and the largest religious monument in the world, to see the sun come up as the calendar closed on 2009. We spent the next seven hours trudging around ruble and temple steps constructed between 1100 and 1300 A.D. Feeling we had adequately fulfilled our respective roles as Lara Croft and Indiana Jones, we retired back to Siem Reap to rest before New Years Eve night.

That night, we met up with one of my teammates from the Frisbee Tournament, who happened to be in Siem Reap with his wife. We enjoyed dinner and a traditional dancing show before taking the streets for some traditional American Style dancing. We drank and partied with thousands of other people – quickly dispelling the notion of a sleepy Cambodian village – until the DJ led us in a countdown chant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1CryHzxvIk

We rang in the new year as the DJ blasted the Black Eyed Peas “ I Gotta Feeling” and the crowd collectively altered the words and shouted “It’s gonna be a good, good year.” Fireworks lit up the sky and beer poured from the every direction.

The next morning, I welcomed 2010 and my 26^th birthday with a massive hangover. This was amended with a healthy dose of Advil and a hearty Mexican lunch. Liz and I spent our final afternoon in Cambodia shopping for gifts to send home and surveying the empty streets – amazed that so many people had been there the night before.

We made our way back to Vietnam and enjoyed take out on Liz’s roof where we shared words of encouragement for the upcoming year and parted ways.

A few more hours and I leave for Honolulu where I will meet my sister, my roommate, my girlfriend and enjoy one more night in Waikiki before picking up the torch and continuing my teaching career in 2010.

“It’s gonna be a good, good year.”

All the best - Steve

Tsunami Relief Supplies

Many of you have offered to collect donations or put together relief supplies to send to the people of American Samoa. I was at a shelter yesterday and from the conversations I had, there is a need for the following:

- Hand santizer

-Facemasks

- Towels & wash cloths

- Games - cards, coloring books, crayons, basketballs, footballs, marbles

- Baby-safe stuffed animals

- Baby food and formula

- Diapers, baby oil and lotion

- Reading glasses

- pillows

- Baby blankets

- Shampoo, conditioner, deordorant, lotion

- Milk & juice

- Laundry soap

- Toilet paper

- Basic med - Tylenol, Advil, etc.

You can send these to me at:

Steve Atwell

WorldTeach

P.O. Box 5411

Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799

- - American Samoa has a small population and one that is built around people pulling together to support one another. In addition to the earthquake and tsunamis here, this week has seen some truly devastating natural disasters tear through the Pacific. If you want to help, please consider making a donation to either the American or International Red Cross http://american.redcross.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ntld_main&s_subsrc=RCO_RedTab&s_src=DRF

In addition to communicating the needs of the people here, I’ve put together an account of my experience in the days since the tsunami:

The last few days have been a blur of exhaustion and personal fulfillment. The day after the Tsunami, I returned to my village to begin cleaning our house, mopping the floor and taking things outside to dry. The damage to our house was minimal - my sixth grade science text book was one of the few things damaged. Taking a break on our front porch, a number of our students came over to check on us. When they found out we hadn’t eaten - with the power out, we had no way to cook a hot meal – they brought us a huge plate of barbequed chicken, hot dogs and rice. Alex and I sat on the front porch gorging ourselves on meat and drinking the last of the quickly spoiling orange juice.

As the sun began to set, it dawned on us that we were unprepared for the impending blackout that nightfall would bring. We fetched our blue lagoon scented candle from the coffee table, brought it outside and listened to music on my battery powered speakers. One of the students from a local high school made a fire in our front yard using a piece of driftwood and a bountiful supply of coconut shells. We spent the evening listening to Indie rock, rap and Bob Dylan as the moon came up and bathed the darkened village in a silvery light.

When we woke up Thursday morning, we still were without power or potable drinking water and decided to pack our things for a long weekend in town. We hitched a ride and were finally were able to pick a cell signal as we crested the mountain and began our decent into Pago Pago.

We called our friend in town and found out that the Red Cross staging area had been set up within walking distance from their house. Alex and I convinced the driver of the truck to let us stop at a hardware store to pick up hammers, gloves and facemasks. We dropped our things at the house and quickly made our way to the Red Cross.

When we got there, it was late in the day and we were soon frustrated by the lack of action and limited direction we received. Instead, we caught a ride to Leone, one of the towns on the West side severely hit by the tsunami. We met up with some other volunteers and walked the rest of the way into the village. When we got there we checked on an elementary school teacher whose house had been destroyed. As we approached, she appeared on a second story balcony, but reassured us that she was fine and didn’t need help.

We entered her living room through the doorway where double doors had once hung, found the refrigerator on its side and the kitchen stove lying in the backyard. Not needing our help seemed questionable, but she told us that she had to wait for FEMA to evaluate the damage before the clean-up effort could begin. On the morning of the tsunami, she was running late for work and at home when it hit. She ran to the back bedroom to check on her mother as the water tore through the door, shattered the windows and began to gush toward the bedrooms. We talked to her for a while and promised to offer her what limited support we could provide. Despite our best effort to help, we weren’t able to truly make ourselves feel useful. Finally, we decided to call it quits and give it another shot at the Red Cross the next day.

Friday, feeling confident, we caught a ride with one of the teachers back to the Red Cross. We got there just in time to catch the end of the morning briefing and be broken into teams to be sent out to shelters. We were assigned to assess the Leone shelter and get information from the people staying there. We were told to collect contact information, the number of people displaced, check the water and food supplies, and assess the health and hygiene of those who were staying there.

The shelter was well maintained and, while we there, staff from the department of public health were giving each of the shelter residents a check-up. I spoke with the head of the shelter and some of the people who were staying there to put together a list of things that the residents said that they needed. The list I’ve put together at the top of the e-mail is based on what I was told by shelter residents. They told me that most of the people staying there were infants, that the children could use games to play, and that many of the people staying there were sleeping on the floor.

After leaving the shelter, we drove back to the Red Cross to check on the available supplies in the warehouse and see what we could offer. We loaded up a puttering diesel truck with 100 floor mats for the shelter and 50 cots to set up at a new housing sight for the Red Cross volunteers that were due to arrive from the mainland.

With the truck loaded, I jumped in the driver seat as a Samoan named Sam ambled into the cab next to me. Sam had lived in various parts of the U.S., but had recently relocated back to the American Samoa. Several other Samoans piled into the back of the truck to help secure our cargo and for the short ride to drop it off. We left the mats at the shelter and then spent the next two hours setting up cots in a Catholic school’s outdoor gymnasium.

One of the most poignant moments from my day came at the very end. I was driving back from setting up the last cots at the high school gymnasium when one of the Samoans asked me to stop so that he could get out. A guy I’d been working with all day and whose name I never caught was from the village of Poloa.

Poloa is the village on the westernmost tip of the island. It’s a remote village and, even on good days, there are only two buses a day that run that far west. The village is split with half of it on low flat land and the other half built into the side of the mountain chain that stretches across American Samoa. The people who live on the mountain were fine, but nearly the entire low lying area was washed away – including an elementary school where one of the WorldTeach volunteers was placed. Luckily, the casualty rate in was relatively low because most people made it to higher ground, but there was still tremendous destruction.

This guy had left his village and trekked it for nearly two hours to get to the Red Cross shelter to see how he could help other people who may have been in even greater need than the people of his village. What caught me was, that despite all of this and his long road home, he said, “I’ll see you again tomorrow.”

I’m inspired by the way that people, like this guy, are able to think beyond themselves and offer what little they can to help others. Over the last few days, I’ve experienced frustrations with finding a productive means to volunteer, confusing organizational structures, jurisdiction disputes between the Red Cross and the local government, and reports in the paper of homes and businesses being looted and yet, I still find hope.

Many of you have offered to collect donations or send relief supplies. I hope that you will and sincerely thank you for your support.

Have a great weekend and know that I miss you all,

Steve

Tsunami in American Samoa

Good Morning,

Thank you for your warm wishes and concern. It’s been an interesting two days here in American Samoa. I spent a good portion of the day remarking how strange it is to be in such a small portion of the world that is suddenly rocketed to international recognition, especially given the circumstance.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a unit on plate tectonics with my science classes. For my fifth graders, we have been talking about volcanoes, but for seventh and eighth, we have been discussing earthquakes and tsunamis.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting in my living room, eating a bowl of LIFE cereal on our surfboard, turned make-shift table, and looking over the answers to an earthquake crossword puzzle that I had given to my students the previous day. I started for feel low vibrations shake the house. The bus driver lives behind our house and usually leaves for work about this time and I assumed that he had to bass turned up unusually loud this morning.

As the vibrations continued and intensified, I looked down at my worksheet, over at my textbook and realized that this was too forceful to coming from the bus’ subwoofer. I went to the front door and opened it to look out into the yard. I watched some high school kids stop in the street and look around the village. My roommate, Alex, came out of the bathroom and stood in the doorway as we watched our neighbors dog stammer around the front yard both confused and scared.

As the earthquake continued to shake the house, we watched as the papers on our table began to slide to the floor, water in our dish basic sloshed from side to side and a plastic vase fell off the shelf and onto the floor. The earthquake lasted for what felt like a minute, and then things settled back to normal. Not sure what to make of things, Alex headed to school and I continued to ready myself for the day.

I had just put on my uniform when Alex returned triumphantly to the house to inform me that school had been cancelled. He had been informed by one of the student teachers that school was cancelled due to the earthquake. Not sure what to do and failing to recognize the full magnitude of the situation, we watched from the front door as students streamed down the street and back into their houses.

About five minutes later, the town elders began to ring the bells and the call was echoed throughout the village. Alex and I walked to the front yard and began to sense a degree of panic in the air. The pre-kindergarten teacher yelled from her front yard that we were in danger and needed to get to higher ground. At this point, we began to hear an audible slurping sound and watched as the water level in the bay in front of our house began to go down. We scuttled to pack our belongings not sure of what to expect – lap top, iPod, camera, electric toothbrush. Alex ran out the door toward a pick-up truck about 200 feet down the street and I grabbed a fistful of T-shirts.

I stepped from the front porch – the slurping sound had become nearly deafening – and people screamed from the back of the truck to run as fast as I could. I slammed the front door and ran full speed for the truck – still clutching the t-shirts in one hand. I got to the truck and hoisted myself headfirst into its bed.

The driver accelerated out of town as a wave began to rush against the sea wall and cover the road behind us. As we raced up the mountain, we looked over our shoulders to see the road fully submerged and the water beginning to spill into our front yard.

We got to the top of the mountain and found half the village perched on top and looking down over the bay. Together, we spent the morning watching the bay drain and swell and wondering what was left of our village. With limited access to news information, misinformation on the mountain ran rampant with conflicting stories and a wide range of reports regarding the degree of the destruction in our village. There were reports of widespread damage, that the earthquake had destroyed Hawaii, and that there might be impending food shortages. However, despite the news, we felt comforted seeing the smiling faces of our students and hoping that the ones we didn’t see had made it to higher ground elsewhere.

By lunchtime, Alex and I were parched and needed food. We hiked to the next village up the mountain and watched as 25 cases of SPAM, 100 loaves of bread, bag after bag of chips, and countless bottles of water were being loaded into pick-up trucks. We were informed that the Tsunami had hit both sides of the island – our side had received less of the damage – and that there were approximately 1000 people taking refuge in the mountains.

This was the first time we were able to recognize the scope of the disaster. We were informed that 10 people had been killed in Pago Pago and that nearly all of the territories capital had been flattened. Worst yet, there were reports that a larger wave had yet to arrive.

Upon hearing the news, we decided to return to the mountain top with the rest of village and await word that it was safe to return home. During this time, I borrowed Alex’s cell phone – I had left mine on the table – and finally got a signal to call my sister in Hawaii and my mom back in Virginia.

We spent the afternoon, eating Oreo’s and playing with the kids of our village, before returning home to survey the damage. One of the pictures, I’ve attached is of our living room and the other is of Pago Pago. In the end, we were very lucky and damage was limited to a muddy living room and standing water in our kitchen. Pago Pago had is much worse.

Without power or potable drinking water, we sat on the front steps of our neighbor’s house and caught our breath after a long day and were sitting there when the pulled up. I spoke with one of the volunteers who lived further inland and found out that she still had electricity and running water. We caught a ride with our neighbors and headed in that direction. Having heard of total destruction in Pago Pago, we braced ourselves for the worst.

We drove through town and saw mangled cars, overturned buses, torn apart buildings, stone walls reduced to rubble, fences shredded and mangled soccer goals. Numerous small ships had been pushed hundreds of feet inland. Whole stores were gutted, cars pushed horizontally up against buildings, and one drainage ditch was filled with the scraps of dismantled cars. We watched people load bags and bags of buns from the local McDonalds- it had been boarded up – and we stared in awe a forklift slowly made its way down the street.

Alex and I spent the night in relative comfort last night and will shortly begin the trek back through Pago Pago to help repair our village, comfort our students and find ways we can help the clean-up effort in the coming weeks. It was quite a humbling day.

Thank you for your support and God bless.

- Steve Atwell

Impressions - The First E-mail

Talofa!!

Well, I’ve been in American Samoa for about two weeks now and finally have my own pad in the village where I will be teaching. I have some pictures posted at
http://steveatwellamericansamoa.shutterfly.com/.

In the meantime, I figure I’ll catch you up and share some of my experiences thus far.After a brief orientation in Los Angeles July 20 with the other 33 volunteers, we boarded a plane for Honolulu and from there to American Samoa. While exciting, this was a little unsettling because we still didn’t have any idea where we would be sleeping or exactly what to do when we arrived in American Samoa. We got off the plane and proceeded through customs with the hope that there would be someone waiting for us on the “other side.” We were greeted by a number of the Department of Education (DoE) staff members, our WorldTeach field directors, shell necklaces, and a giant banner that said “Welcome WorldTeach Volunteers!” We loaded our luggage in the back of a truck and boarded a school bus to the near-by vocational high school, which would become our home for the next two weeks. We quickly segregated the guys from the ladies and threw our luggage down on the floor mattresses to establish residency.

We met upstairs in the kitchen to discuss the orientation schedule and enjoy freshly baked chocolate chip cookies!!Over the course of the next two weeks, we would sit through numerous lectures from the DoE, presentations on SPED, the Samoan language, reading programs, an introduction to the local/only library on American Samoa, reef biology, an education non-profit, public safety, and public health. Dispersed throughout the schedule, we had an island tour, a beach visit, a hike, and free time to explore our respective villages. Some of the most memorable parts of being in American Samoa have come from the limited time we’ve had in between lessons.

After the island tour on the first day, we swam in the lagoon in front of the vocational high school. There were about 20 volunteers in the water, throwing the Frisbee and laughing as the sunset over the cascading green mountains on one side and a full end-to-end rainbow bookended the lagoon on the other side. It was a truly warm welcome to American Samoa. During the course of orientation, we went snorkeling out by the airport where we saw a sting ray and a full spectrum of tropical fish, went on group runs, explored the town, and played tennis at the local tennis club. But, our Thursday night toga party may have topped all of that. Our group was looking for something new when we decided to throw a toga party. I woke up from a nap at 8:30 p.m., took my bed sheet, threw it over my shoulder and tied it off with a belt. I convinced my roommate to do the same and we ventured upstairs to try to convince others to join in. We quickly hit critical mass and, by the end of the night, about 25 people were in togas, and dancing around the kitchen. The next morning, we had a meeting with the principals of our schools. I think we managed to pull overselves together pretty well - especially after a little coffee!!

Exhausted, slightly overwhelmed and with pounds upon pounds of handouts, training wrapped up this past Saturday. We said goodbye to each other and headed out for our respective villages.My village, Vatia, has 300 people living in it and is isolated on the north side of the island – which is narrow north to south and wide east to west. It’s about a 45 minute bus ride over the mountain ridge and down the other side from, Pago Pago, the main city in American Samoa.

When I got into Vatia, I met Marx, an 18 year old who is studying pre-law at the island’s community college and a guy who works for the National Park Service. Marx has been tremendously helpful and the guy from the NPS promised to show us some hiking trails and good fishing spots. I’ll be teaching at Mt Alava Elementary School which is pre-K through eighth grade with each grade comprised of one classroom and each classroom is its own building. School starts next week and they are still working on renovating some of the buildings. There was a big district-wide meeting this morning and I finally found out what I am teaching ... I'll be the entire science department at the elementary school and I'll teach seventh grade. I have 10 kids in my class and will teach reading and writing to my seventh graders and then have the sixth and eighth graders come to my class as I send mine to learn history and math.

I’m living with another WorldTeach volunteer named Alex who also is at Mt Alava Elementary and teaching history. Alex just graduated from the University of Texas, but has lived in Singapore and London before moving with his family to Texas. Our house is the guest house on the property of a local family. We’ve got a small kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, and a large common space. The best part is that we have two giant trees in out front yard for shade, a log to sit on and a giant lagoon about 30 yards from our door – we went snorkeling the first night we moved in. We’ve had another volunteer named Matt staying with us as he waits for his landlord the finish renovating a house on the West side of the island.Today, Matt and I hiked from Vatia up the ridge to Mt. Alava.

It was a rugged, steep hike that took almost two hours and had steps and ropes at certain points. When we got to the top there was spectacular view and we could look out on Pago Pago Harbor to the south on one side and see across the island to Vatia on the other side. We sat up on a patch of grass and watched a ship navigate through the harbor, fruit bats gliding up and down on air currents, and the clouds breaking on the mountains to the west of us. We made plans to camp up on the ridge for night and then hiked back down to Vatia as the sun was beginning to set. Back in town, we were stopped on the road as the evening bell rang and everyone stopped what they were doing to observe 30 minutes prayer.

Matt and I sat on a concrete step catching our breath and remarking on the strange and wonderful place that we will call home for the next year. I hope that you are doing well, enjoying your summer and finding the time to do something you enjoy.

Best wishes and tropical thoughts,

Steve Atwell

P.S. Here's how to contact me address & phone:
Address:
P.O. Box 5411
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799
Phone: 1-684-258-0101