Talofa! So yesterday was spent on three different planes sleeping, watching a few movies, and reading about 300 pages. It was really exhausting. I met Kelly during my layover in Phoenix and AJ during our layover in Honolulu (the other two interns through the Hollings scholarship; they’re great! Anyway, we landed in Pago Pago, American Samoa at their adorable mostly outdoor airport with some pretty sweaty customs lines and then picked up our bags (none of them were lost! My bags always get lost, especially when I bring that oversized duffel that looks like I have a body in it to carry my hiking backpack but none got lost going pretty much half way around the world). Then we met Nika who works at our office for her to give us our car keys (we’re renting a 2003 Toyota Camry for our first month and a half from a family presently traveling off the island and paying about $1,000 a month for it…which is definitely crazy, but cars are in short supply, and they’re pretty much the only way to get around the island easily. The buses are inconsistent and only come about once an hour, not on weekends, and stop at 6 pm, there’s a pretty bad dog problem so no one bikes).

                  Nika then lead us to our house (maximum speed limit anywhere here is 25 and under and traffic is kind of nuts-people signal to each other to let them go and such with a series of light flashes and honking, and they’re actually so nice about letting you go. Nothing like NJ driving, let me tell you, and there are no real rules of the road). The house has a really nice porch and banana and papaya trees out front, and we live in the main part and a couple lives in the upstairs apartment which is completely separate from our part of the house. The house is new with 2 bedrooms (Kelly and I share one and AJ gets the other) one bathroom and a decent sized living area and kitchen which has a fridge, stove, oven and microwave. Air conditioning is really expensive here so even though it is insanely hot and humid here the houses don’t have it. But I’m used to that, and there are fans! We were so delirious when we arrived, but we managed to unpack and shower (only cold water but it felt AWESOME), and I realized that I perpetually over pack. If I have a certain amount of luggage, I for some reason feel obligated to fill it to the brim. They had confiscated by huge jar of healthy peanut butter that I for some reason tried to put in my carry on, but I still brought my other weird food which Kelly and AJ definitely eyed a bit suspiciously.

                  We were left with a car rental agreement and a house rental agreement, and we passed out. Our internal clocks made us feel really weird, and since we got to the house at about 11 pm last night which was 6 am our time, waking up at 7 am felt really strange. I’m basically on another planet right now. Since we got in so late and had to be in the office at 8 am today, eating breakfast this morning was interesting. I only had some nuts and dried fruit to eat, and the only place to go to was McDonalds (which here people eat about 3 times a day. It used to be the highest grossing McDonalds internationally, and there is an 80% obesity rate here. If American Samoa was a country it would have the highest obesity rate). Anyway, after my nuts and dried fruit I was starving, and I had to take Kelly and AJ to McDonalds so I got a hash brown and an orange juice, feeling terrible about doing it but without another option. We then drove to work. It’s Oceans Week here so we’re helping out with some of the educational events they have going on, and I’m working on contacting people for information on the new NOAA office to work on my Green Project Plan to cut carbon emissions within the facilities and through people’s interactions with it. We are kind of taking each day as it comes; our main mentor is off of the island for our first two weeks. We have one phone to share among the three of us for now, and our only internet is in the office. I am so excited for this adventure and want more than anything to appreciate a slower pace of life, learn patience, appreciate simplicity, and be easy going. I am in one of the most beautiful places on earth-just looking out onto the Pacific that hugs the road or the mountains that surround us gives me peace. Anyway, sorry I probably didn’t make any sense in this post. I promise it’ll get better.