First Day of Work, Play, and Eatin' at the Stapleton's home

Wow, it’s going to feel great to climb into bed tonight! Today was filled with a bunch of cement work, a bit of play, a bunch of food, and two runs! Halfway through this morning’s run (along the beach!) I ran into a group of children running towards the beach. They watched me from a distance and waved back when I waved. Then I decided to join them and we played soccer – it was a lot of fun playing on their mini court! I have no clue what they’re saying usually but it’s still a lot of fun. Then I had to run back home after awhile and they wanted to run with me. So about 10 of them (ages 5 to 11 maybe) ran about a mile back with me. It was a lot of fun because we could communicate a little in Bislama and we also all shared our names (or more like they each excitedly told me their name). Oh it was so funny! – Earlier during the soccer game someone asked my name and I told him it was Jacob. Well one little boy piped up in English “My name is David!” It was great and really funny because all the kids could tell he was practicing his best English on me and he did a great job too! Oh that brings up something I love about the culture here. Laughing and giggling is the typical emotion to many things. They laugh when they’re having fun or they see something new or even when something surprises them or just whenever. And it so much fun because it’s like a language I can speak also! Anyways, after the run I learned how to make bricks with a few men from the village and that was really neat to learn how to mix the cement, water, sands, and rocks. That job didn’t take too long cause they only had one bag left (about 17 bricks), but it was good learning. Then Michelle drove some of us kids down to the beach to get more sand coral mixture for cement later. After several trips we had enough (the beach is about a mile away down a nice hill, which will always be a tough last mile of every run!). Then from about 1 to 6 this afternoon Erik and I worked on the beginnings of an extension to their house. After preparing the ground and leveling using 2x4 boards and getting them cut and in place, we mixed cement and poured it in to create a footer for pouring the cement slab tomorrow. So I learned a lot about cement today it seems! (And my back is telling me it did a lot of work that it isn’t used to doing, i.e. I’m tired, hehe – always good to know something’s getting stronger along with useful work being accomplished). Above is pictured before we started work and below is the result of today's work)
In the middle of all that hubbub I probably ate 3 passion fruits, 4 bananas, 7 mandarins, some lemonade, some sour sop (another neat fruit), and carrots in addition to the normal meals! Erik went out of his way to make sure they had plenty of fruit stocked up for me and I love it all! It’s so yummy! And also one of the men from the village brought a huge bundle of bananas thinking of me (he saw I liked them) so that was exciting! Bananas happen to be a favorite of mine over here the fruit is so great because it’s fresh!
Something that’s really neat about the people here is that they’re so generous – both with their time and food. They often give food to others and it’s neat to see. It’s just a normal thing for them to do and I can’t count how many plates of this or that I’ve received while on Tanna. And often it happens to be something I’ve never seen before. In addition to being generous with their food, if they see a building project going on they jump right in and willingly help without being asked at all. Today Seth (sounds like Zed) helped out a lot with the cement and getting the sand from the beach. He’s a 14 year old boy from the village here and knows a bit of English. We spent a little bit of time on the beach collecting shells and climbed up into an abandoned house (meaning a bamboo hut without walls 8 feet above the sand) and talked for a bit.
Time for bed now!