Teuila Festival (Written 9/5/06)

This week is a very special week in Samoa – it's the annual Teuila Festival. I guess the best way to describe it is like a country fair for the island of Samoa where they have basket weaving, food and clothes to buy. For those of you who hail from the Chicago area, it's very much like the taste of Chicago only smaller. That's right – even though this event is representing the entire country, it's actually a smaller event then 'The Taste'. But I've been looking forward to this event ever since I heard about it during training because it's our first real big event during my time here – something that showcase all that Samoa has to offer.

So today I took a break from working in the computer lab all day yesterday and biked down Mount Doom to hang out in Apia for the day. I left my bike at the Peace Corps Office and walked back to where the booths were for the Festival. There were booths all over the place selling mats, barbeque, hot dogs, shirts, handicrafts, etc. Basically if it had anything to do with Samoa, it was represented there. Even the Peace Corps – well sorta. A lot of the Peace Corps volunteers help out with a NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) called Avanoa Tutusa which does a lot of educational based activities (they run a career fair for College/High School students during the fall on Upolu and Savaii). They were making funnel cakes to help raise money for the organization and I swung by the booth to check out how it was going. They were selling the cakes for $3 tala which was a lot cheaper then a lot of the other food being sold – it was also different from the rest of the food being sold. Those two things combined made it a very good seller – people were just stopping by, curious as to what a funnel cake was. The funny thing was that a lot of the Samoans were not use to getting free samples of a product before they bought (some volunteers were doing that to draw people in) so when one of the volunteers would offer the sample, the Samoans would ask how much and the volunteer would tell them the price, then they would get a little doubtful. It was then we had to tell them that the sample was free and usually once they tried the sample, they bought a whole funnel cake. Josh told me the cakes were selling well today and sold well on Monday, so hopefully it keeps being a good seller for the next 3 days (the festival ends on Friday).

After hanging out at the booth for a bit, Josh and I had to go take care of some business. While we were walking, someone whistled from across the street – I usually ignore the sounds, but today I looked across and I couldn't believe who I saw. Standing across the street from me were Taeao, Isaia and Satuala – my family from Falevao. It had been a while since I last saw them (Mother's Day) so I went over and said hi to them. They were in town for the festival and to watch the boat races. It was a pleasant surprise to see them but it just reminded me how bad my Samoan has become since I don't use it all that often. Ah well.

The break is going well but it feels like I have so much stuff to do that I'm not actually taking a break – as I was talking to Josh, he feels the same way. It's weird – during our first break, it didn't seem like a lot of stuff was going on but I guess now that we're in the full swing of our volunteering there's a lot of stuff trying to pile up on our plate. It's all building up to the climatic 3^rd act of the 2006 school season (or the start of the NFL Season, take your pick). L8r.