Uneventful events

Not much happening in these parts lately. It's been raining...a lot. When it rains here, it rains hard. Before I moved here I lived in San Diego and I think it rained more in the first month I was here than it did the entire 3.5 years I lived in San Diego...seriously. So when it rains, one tends to stay in doors.

The sun did peak through last weekend for a little bit though, which was nice since we had a 3-day weekend to celebrate Veteran's Day. Last weekend was also the big palolo weekend. The annual palolo hunt is a Samoan event that occurs once or twice a year (read more about palolo here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1029_041029_palolo_worms.html). It usually occurs about a week after the full moon in October and November. It is quite an event in the Samoan islands with nearly every village participating in the hunt. A group of us were in Sa'ileilei last weekend enjoying a nice beach cove while villagers were installing lights out over the water in preparation for palolo hunting. They basically ran an extension cord from someone's house out to the lights that were installed on a couple of poles sticking out of the water. As they were doing this we all wondered how far salt water could conduct electricity. We thought we were safe at about 50 yards away, but not surprisingly we didn't stay much longer after their lights were installed.

I'm involved in an international tennis tournament this weekend hosted by our Lion's Park Tennis Club. This event occurs twice a year, November here in American Samoa and February in Apia, Samoa. It's quite fun, and the real competition is who can provide the nicest spread of food. I must say that the folks from Apia set the bar pretty high back in February. We'll see what we can come up with this weekend. There's also a soccer tournament that starts this Saturday. This is typical for the island, nothing happens for several weeks and then one weekend will be jam packed with events. Decisions, decisions.

Cynthia will be dancing at the community college tonight in support of the Big Man On Campus competition. Can't wait to post photos of that next week! She's also going out on her second diving excursion for her SCUBA class on Saturday. Should be a fun weekend, hopefully the weather will cooperate. I hope to have photos of all these activities posted soon. Have a good weekend!