Back in Sela's Guesthouse

We flew back to Nuka’lofa and moved back into Sela's guesthouse.  We're rooming with other trainees and it's been a nice change of pace to be with all the trainees again for some ‘palangi’ time.

Two of the IT volunteers put in a lot of work into the slideshow for our swearing in. For those interested in it, send me an email with your address and I’ll send a couple of DVD’s over with all the pictures and video that we’ve captured. The group t-shirt designs are almost finished so if you want a ‘Peace Corps Tonga’ t-shirt with Group 71 in it, let me know as well.

Today we took our 'Emergency Action Plan' test. It tests our knowledge about safety and security in Tonga; it ranged in topics from the correct course of action in natural disasters down to ways to avoid theft. Tomorrow we’ll be tested on our language proficiency test, where we'll be ranked in our proficiency in the Tongan language.

Regardless of the results of the test, we’ll have to get a tutor for at least an hour a week to work on our Tongan. If we are under the Intermediate level, we need to get a tutor for at least two hours a week.

After tomorrow’s test we’ll have a silent auction to look forward to. We’ve been given our settling in allowance and we can use this sum to buy anything from burners to refrigerators. I plan to buy a used refrigerator at the auction and a fishing spear in the fishing store. The interesting part of this auction is that we don’t quite know what our furnishings are in our future homes since most haven’t seen their homes and we just have to make an educated guess.

The King passed away recently and his body is being flown in tomorrow. The country is already preparing by cleaning up the streets, everyone’s wearing black (for at least a month), and entertainment areas (movies, bars, clubs) are all closing for a month. This is definitely an interesting time to be in Tonga; I've never seen an entire economy shut down for such an extended period of time.

Due to this unfortunate event, our swearing in ceremony will have to be a bit low-key and the meeting with our host country counterparts will have to be delayed. I’ll stay around for a few more days after swearing in so I can see the funeral and maybe I’ll crash over at another volunteer’s house for a bit.