Been a while since the last post, I'd better catch up!
A few weeks ago, Peace Corps got together with a few of the other volunteer organizations (JICA, AYA) in Samoa for a softball game. Lots of fun! Almost enough people came to make four teams, although we had to take turns anyway due to equipment shortages (we all agreed to make each game last only 5 innings to keep the time on field short).
The first game was Peace Corps vs. JICA (Japan International) and it was a pretty intense game; their team had a guy who played softball professionally and we were caught completely off guard for the fast balls he was pitching. After the first inning the score was 0-4 and several of our guys had bruises on their legs from those fast pitches!
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The second inning we got serious and didn't let any more runs get through, and by the bottom of the 5th inning we'd managed to catch up on runs and at last managed one final point to put us over the top! Since we only played to five innings we won with the score 5-4.
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The second game was much more relaxed. Since AYA (Australian Youth) didn't quite have enough people for a full team, we mixed up the players and had some of that lovely cross-cultural exchange everyone always gets so excited about. Since it wasn't such an 'us against them' type of game, everyone was much more relaxed; I'm not even sure if anyone was keeping score (I sure wasn't).
Toward the end of the game, we were all really starting to look forward to lunch! Since it was a cross-cultural event, the brains behind the scenes requested everyone to bring some food to share. People brought everything from barbequed chicken to brownies to spaghetti, and the JICA guys who volunteer at the Agricultural station brought a wonderful mushroom rice dish made from mushrooms grown in Samoa! That dish was to me the highlight of the day; fresh mushrooms are a treat beyond compare as they aren't sold in any of the stores in the entire country. I hope the agricultural project they are working on will start to benefit the rest of the country soon, I would love to try my hand at that mushroom rice recipe!
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Well that's about it; I've been averaging abuot one post a month so we'll see what next time will bring!!!