Day Time Activities

The Pacific Arts Festival has been unbelievable. The main festival village is located right outside my office building so every day at lunch I go watch dance performances on the beach and negotiate with the nice man from Papua New Guinea to sell me this beautiful woven basket (large enough for me to fit into comfortably) at a quarter of his asking price...

Anyhow here are some highlights from the festival:

Some dancers from Papua New Guinea before they went on stage. The women are all topless and there was some concern about crowd response. Apparently when the festival was held in Western Samoa 8 years ago some people threw rocks and trash on stage to protest the nudity. Since both Western Samoa and American Samoa are very religious, festival organizers anticipated the same would happen here and ran a radio campaign for a month before the festival reminding people to respect other cultures. It seemed to work because everyone was very respectful!


Barbara, Eric, and Melissa taking a break from work to enjoy the festival.


Posing with some of the guys from fiji.


The guys from Rapa Nui (Easter Island) are definitely a crowd favorite. The guy on the right told me I was very beautiful and asked me if I would marry him and move back to easter island. If you don't hear from me for a while...there is a good chance you can find me there!