Friday morning we went to the Floral Parade in Apia before classes. As I understand it the culmination of the Teuila Festival is the Miss Samoa pageant on Saturday night and the parade was a chance for the contestants to drive through the town on their floats. The floats were quite interesting. They were sponsored by different villages that were also responsible for decorating them. All of them were very beautiful, and were decorated with greenery and flowers. Most of them also had some aspect of Samoan culture incorporated in them. For example one of them had a hut where a man was actually being tattooed during the parade. Many of the floats were also decorated with turtles since this year is dedicated to the turtles. One of the floats was actually shaped as a turtle. I think the thing that really surprised me the most was that all of the girls were very tall and skinny. We watched some of the pageant on TV last night and they weren’t all models but they definitely seemed to confirm more to the American standard of “beauty.”
Later that afternoon, after our classes were finished we took a driving tour of Apia and stopped by the Bahai Temple. Apparently there are only seven or eight in the entire world so it’s interesting that they have chosen to build one here. The grounds were beautifully kept. Even though people say that this is a very religious place I almost feel like it’s more of a habit than a conviction. Perhaps though I’m over-generalizing or assuming incorrectly based on cultural differences.
Saturday all of us plus a few other students and some friends we’ve made here in the past week went up to Sliding Rocks, which was about a mile away. It’s a series of small waterfalls that double as a natural water park. The smallest one is probably two feet tall and surprisingly enough is the most painful. Another one was about ten feet and had a bump at the end that sent you flying through the air before landing in the water. The tallest one was probably around fifteen to twenty feet high and was much steeper and faster than the others. I was surprised because everyone in the group went off all of them. Honestly I think the hardest part was figuring a way to climb up the slippery rocks to go down again.
