So this week was the week of visitors. We don't get off-island visitors that often so when we do it is usually a lot of fun to show them the work we do here. Drew, our area engineer came down last week. We showed him some of our sites and Jorge and I were relieved to hear his approval of us and the work we do. Not gonna lie, was a little nervous we were going to be raked over the coals. We took him out to the piggeries and showed him the systems.
Over the weekend Jorge, Amy, Hobie, Prem, Captain Noonan and I went to Larsen's Beach. My area resource conservationist came down a couple years back and totally fell in love with this cove. It really is quite nice, see some of my earlier postings for pics. He loves it so much its his desktop picture at his office in Honolulu. Drew enjoyed it and it was really nice that Captain Noonan of the Coast Guard got to tag a long. She is just an awesome awesome human being. Smart, tough and very friendly, everything you need in a Captain if you ask me. We went snorkeling, sunbathed (it started raining so it was brief). The next day, Drew and I went to the Vatia tide pools. I love this place because it is so easy to get to and provides such a huge reward for your effort. Its a great place to take people to see the marine life because its like this little microcosm of fish and other creatures all wrapped in a couple tiny pools. I love having guests visit here, its so easy to entertain in such a beautiful location.
The work week was busy. Drew brought us a brand new lazer level for surveying so we spent a lot of time on Monday doing training for that. This thing is pretty nifty and i think it will be a great asset to us in the field. We also had spot checks. Spot checks are my agencies version of quality assurance checks. Each year, every office gets 5% of our vegetative and 5% of our engineering contracts checked. They are randomly selected and they only tell us 24 hours in advance which ones they will be reviewing. Drew reviewed three and found them all to be complete and compliant which was a total relief. No corrective actions....thank god.
My boss's boss Donna arrived on Monday. She is new to the job in Hawaii and hadn't been to American Samoa before. She was also here to do the 5% vegetative spot checks. I was a little nervous but she also found no corrective actions which was also very reassuring to me. Its nice to know that your hard work pays off. Unfortunately she was only here from Tuesday thru Thursday so she didn't get a lot of time to see much stuff. I made her promise me that next time she comes down, she come for at least a weekend that way i can show her some of the cool stuff we have here.
Both Drew and Donna left last night. Diego (my supervisor here) also left last night for 6 weeks! So its me and Jorge until June when i leave for Cambodia. I've been working with Prem to brush up my Khmer. We've started speaking only in Khmer to each other and we've both noticed that it gets better each day we do it. I'm hoping to get back to some reasonable understanding before i leave in June.
Almost done with my second semester of grad school, just have my final test and then i need to finish a research paper for this leadership class i am in through work. 8 pages single spaced....ugggg.
On the plus side, last night i picked up Becca Bolks (Andrea's sister) and her friend Katie who on a complete whim, decided to trek down to American Samoa. They're flight attendants so they were able to get here cheap ($80 which is ridiculous considering it would cost me at minimum $1400). They will be staying for 2 weeks. Its a good thing i bought a motorcycle so they can use the car.
Alright, I'll leave you with some pictures from the tide pools.
Peace
No comments:
Post a Comment