When we're not in class......

I know I just told you how academically demanding it is here but I left out the fact that we have gone to some of the worlds most beautiful places. One of my favorites was a natural swimming hole right off the coast and connected to a cave. It was nice to be in fresh water again (lake girl at heart). It was undoubtedly one of the most amazing places I've ever been to. It's located at the Theological college. We had an amazing lecture about Samoan religion and the influence of Colonialism. Christianity is essentially the only religion here. Europeans also brought Samoan written language. There's still a strong foundation in oral story telling though. The only book you could read for a long time was the bible. This played a large part in education as well because the schools were missionary schools so if you wanted an education it meant that you have to be a christian. It's really an interesting balance here. But after that lecture (that we had in a fale on the beach) we go to swim!

i was trying to be a mermaid........ it was worth a shot

everything's just so ugly here.

the colors are unreal. When you swim into the cave your bodie glows a bright blue.

school can just be so hard. This is meg and quinn!

The swimming hole was on the ocean so we got to swim in both.

trying to rock the lavalava dress

We've been a few other cool places too. On an off afternoon a bunch of us went to sliding rocks. Its exactly what it sounds like,a river with small waterfalls you can ride like waterslides. It's so removed from other things and is like a small sanctuary. it's awesome. I was too chicken to slide but I had a great time!

not too shabby eh?

the internet is starting to slow down so i'm going to stop while i'm ahead but i hope you guys like samoa so far! i sure do. :)

MASSIVE UPDATE!!!!!

It's finally happened! I can get Internet access that let's me put up photos!

This is my room at USP! Mickey moved in since this was taken. and it's a lot messier now.... but that was to be expected. fun fact. lizards and cockroaches fit under the door...... we've also added two fans which is nice.

Simple but comfortable!

These are the SIT dorms at USP. we share them with some girls from Fiji which is really fun.

This is the rest of campus essentially. the "workout facilities" to the right,

dining hall some mens dorms and academic buildings behind that. There's a lot more student housing and a few offices in the front but everythings open like this.

Proof we actually do homwork. This is Elsa, Takili (cook Islands) and Catarina.

This is the ocean right off of Apia. Since the cyclone it's been pretty brown I guess. They expect that it'll be tourquoise again before we leave!

I hope you got a good taste of schoo life here! i cant say it's that bad I guess! Usually what we do is have language class for 2 hours a day with Rona and Jackie (our directors/ teachers. Then we do lunch and have a guest lecture in the afternoon for an hour or more. They cover all Samoan topics like education (my favorite thus far) religion, health etc. We get some amazing people to come in who are very influential here. It's really an amazing opportunity. The work is hard. It's not the spring break we all had in mind. We had our first research paper due last week. It wasn't hard in the sense that it was unbelieveably long. We had to use books. Internet wasn't working and all we had was the library. You might laugh but here the library opens at 8, closes and 6 and isn't open on the weekends. This was hard for us to adjust to. It's so far from what research is like at Skidmore. It really showed me how lucky I am to have the academic resources Skidmore provides and the easy accessability of my life at home. But that being said, I did manage to finish a paper with no internet! Who knew it was possible....

Easy as..........