We had a 4th of July party last Saturday night (actually was my Kazak friend's idea to celebrate!). It was great, I found overpriced sparklers at a toy store in town, we lit them all at the same time in the courtyard of Borromeo while listening to American Pie (oddly no one had Stars and Stripes Forever on their computers). And it's funny because my friends here are from all over the world, but many of them come from countries that also had to gain independence from Britain, and nearly all who had to gain independence from some other colonial power (except for the few western europeans present...sorry guys)...so really it is a day for (almost) everyone to celebrate...the beginning of the end of colonialism!


We ended the evening by playing Spud...a traditional game in my family often played at 4th of July celebrations where you essentially have to try to avoid getting hit with the ball or missing people with the ball. If you get hit or miss someone you get a letter and if you get four letters, spelling Spud, you have to go through the spanking machine. And this July 4th I was witness to the most multicultural spanking machine in the history of the world, unfortunately no photos were taken so we will probably not be accepted into the Guinness Book of World Records. Next time.

Happy belated Independence Day!


A few random interesting things I've learned during my stay here that are not related to the ground shaking:

1) In the former Soviet Union they REALLY wanted everyone to be the same so they required all left handed people to write with their right hand. My friend from Kazakstan said someone she knows who is older used to write with her right hand at school, and her left hand at home, and that is how she can now write with both.

2) All Vanuatu school children are required to bring a machete to school because every friday - "territories day" - they are required to share the chore of cleaning up the school grounds.

3) All my Iranian friends, coming from a place where religion is forced upon them, are way less religious than my Pakistani friends where how they practice their religion is more or less a choice.

4) Whenever my friend from Palestine tries to tell me "funny" stories from his childhood I never find them funny because they usually involve bullets coming through his windows or being woken up at night to Israeli raids and standing in the street in pajamas.

5) In Italy they say if you walk around in bare feet you will become deathly ill and you must finish one kind of food before you start another, no mixing!

6) According to at least one mother in Nepal, if you tuck the ends of an onion behind your ears, you won't cry while cutting the rest of it (or you make everyone else cry from laughing at you)

7) My Indian friend grew up in a village where there is only 2 hours of electricity per day. In this same village of 500 people, they often have two day weddings where up to 2000 people might attend.

8) Costa Rica was delivered its independence in a letter and the letter didn't arrive until one month after they were granted independence.

9) At an island near Vanuatu, it is an honor to eat the maggots from the corpse of the deceased...and a brother at my friends church was given one, then afterwards found out what it was and secretly spewed it up.

10) In Europe, and possibly the world, McDonald's and Coca Cola seem to be more popular than they are in the US

I have many more interesting things I've learned from my frineds here and from observations, but my memory is limited so stay tuned for more updates as things come back to me.