It's been a long time since I last posted here. I'm too lazy to look at the last post to see where I left off, so I'm gonna just go for it.
Just got back from Samoa on sunday night. It was a super crazy epic week. The only dark spot of the trip was that on the last day I had some pretty severe sunburns. Like they were bad enough that some sores opened up on my face and started oozing pus and shit. I think they also got infected. It's all good now though, I'm almost through my bout of antibiotics and my face is starting to look normal again (as close as it gets at least).
While hiding from the world and feeling like a leper, I think I got to the bottom of how this happened to me. I had been doing a real good job of putting tons of sunscreen on everyday, paying special care to my face, neck, shoulders and vitiligo spots, but for some reason I woke up friday morning really fucked up. My reasoning leads me to conclude that I was probably somewhat burnt on my face before the events of thursday, which caused the burn I got thursday to be that much more severe. But so on thursday, our crew went on this waterfall/river hike. We met up with a local guide and hiked upstream a river. Along the way we would encounter these amazing waterfalls, and if you know anything about stream morphology you know that waterfalls create deep pools where they land. Furthermore, if you're into it, you'll note that deep pools are save to jump into. That's exactly what we did. We hiked all the way up this river, stopping at every waterfall to jump off rocks into the water. The highest jump was somewhere around 50 feet (the guide was nice enough to do the conversion for us). It was probably the highlight of my week. The thing is, I think swimming in these pools and jumping off these waterfalls caused the sunscreen I had applied earlier to wash away/rinse off. Then the half hour hike in the sun back to our starting point and the two hours I spent in the sun later took heavy tolls on my face.
Couple this intense UV bombardment with the years and years of skin damaging steroid and cortisone treatment I've done to my skin, the end result, I believe, is a pretty gross face. On my journey home from Samoa, I wore a Vailima (the local Samoan beer) hat to cover my forehead, and sunglasses to cover my eyes. I got the name of a nice pharmacist in the Samoan capitol of Apia from the family we stayed with thursday night, and she gave me some antibiotics since my face really wasn't looking so good, and some cream that would help with the eczema as well as kill the bacteria in the area. Now, roughly 3 days after waking up to that terrible sight in the mirror, my face is almost back 100% and I have a new appreciation for my handsome appearance. ;)
Anyway, sorry to be a buzzkill with that. Mom, Dad, Kristi, if you're gonna worry about me you might as well stop now, because there's nothing you can do from there. It's all taken care of anyway.
Here's a picture of our crew in front a waterfall.
Other than that epic journey chasing waterfalls, most of my time in Samoa was spent on a beach. It is, after all, an island in the tropics. We stayed in a place called Taufua Beach Fales. The fale we slept in was literally feet from the water. The staff that ran the place was on giant extended family and they were super cool. At first they seem a bit cold, but once you start joking around with them and they realize that you have a sense of humor they're super fun to hang out with. I don't think any of the staff were younger than 35 either, so it was all one big party. They would drink with us, play games with us, by the end of our stay there, they were one of us. There were probably around 100 guests there at a time and every night everyone was on the resort deck, speakers blasting having a good time. We met some really cool people at Taufua.
One day, one of the Taufua staff named Tele, challenged us all to a game of rugby. There were about 12 American guys there at this point, so we all took on the 5 staff members who felt like playing. Now, if you know anything about Samoan guys you know they're huge. Long story short, they kicked our asses and everyone was sore the next day. I actually wasn't so sore, though I took some of the biggest hits from these brown buses, I think my Aikido training way back in the day taught me how to fall gracefully. This was the second most awesome thing I did in Samoa (the first obviously being the waterfalls). The Samoans wanted to play again the next day, but my friends all pussied out, citing sore bodies and cut up feet (from beach rocks and shells). I was down to play, but it would've been even worse if the same 5 Samoans showed up and we had half our force. I think I really like rugby a lot, I'm just not real good at it.
A few times at Taufua they had a Fiafia or firedance. Here's some pictures of that. I think this is Tele in the pictures.
I've got a math midterm due this week, and a philosophy essay due next week. I think there's also a couple lab reports I should turn in soon. It's gonna be a busy week, but I had a pretty relaxed on last week, so I can't complain too much.
Love you guys (if you're taking the time to read my ramblings, you deserve my appreciation).
David
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