A Family Affair

For the past couple of weeks, I had the amazing opportunity to share my life here in Vanuatu with my America family. We managed to keep busy while they were here, and go on many an adventure in their two-ish weeks here.

Welcome to Vanuatu!

While waiting for my brother to get in, we took advantage of a great opportunity to take a tour of the Pacific Hope, a medical ship that will be coming to Ambae at the end of the month.

And welcome to you too, Andy!

Once everyone had arrived, we spent the rest of our time in Vila diving, allowing Andy to get scuba certified

After a few days of adjustment, it was time to head to Ambae, my new home, and introduce my America family to my Ambae family, and vice versa.
The first night, I'd organized a few friends to make kava for us, and my family was game enough to give it a try.

We spent a lovely few days hanging out in Saratamata, and were lucky enough to go to a custom wedding.

Next up, the bush! We headed North to my family's house, and learned about making laplap, scratching coconuts, sent the boys hunting, and generally just adventured and enjoyed the bush life.

After two nights north, we headed back to town for one last hurrah. We went spearfishing and had a veritable feast of fish for our last night on Ambae.

The last stop on the family tour was Santo. Unfortunately my body gave up on me at this point, and I spent much of the week in the hotel with a stomach issue. We were able to do a few cool things, though! Namely the Millenium cave:

And a couple of blue holes:

I feel so lucky to have gotten the chance to show my family a little bit of what I've been up to this past year, and that they were able to meet the people that have made this year so great.