Meet the Parents...

I'm Mari's Mom, Rudi, and am hosting this blog for Parents of Peace Corps Samoa Group 75 trainees. If your son or daughter (or mom) is in this group and you're not yet a member of the blog, please send me an e-mail and I'll send you an invitation to join. Then you'll be able to post here too.

Mari grew up in Irvine, California, where her dad Al and I live and work at the University of California. We're both biologists and love exotic travel (as does Mari) and are thrilled to be able to experience Samoa through her eyes. We also can't wait to see her new home and meet her new friends and family!

So far, though, we're happy to have so much information from all the Group 75 bloggers (see links on the right) and to talk to her when she's in Apia. If you're looking for a good, relatively inexpensive long distance phone card, I'd recommend the one sold online by tel3advantage (http://www.tel3advantage.com/). I've bought a prepaid $25 card and chosen the automatic recharge option. Whenever the card runs out of time, my account is recharged (even if I'm in the middle of the call) and the interruption is very brief and doesn't require a new call. The rate is $.38 per minute. If you've found a less expensive rate, please let me know.

Please join this blog and post information about yourself and your Samoan parent experiences!