Salad in Samoa! It’s Contagious

The most incredible thing has happened… My family is eating salad. This sound absolutely ridiculous I know. In Samoa vegetable are very rare and the once that do appear are always totally boiled to death in soaps. There are definitely no native Samoan dishes that include raw vegetables. I have now been in Samoa for nine months and have slowly been bringing new foods and different ways to prepare foods into my house. The salad has been a bit of a slow process but recently it has been appearing at least three times a week. I don’t have a lot of control over my meals as they are prepared by my host sister, but I do a little shopping once a week and bring back things that I like to eat mostly fruit and vegetables. In the beginning this just translated into a lot of cucumber, cabbage, and carrots in my chicken soap, but after a lot of dropped hints things are turning around. Salad! The coolest part is once I talked about how healthy vegetable are my host family started eating it too. I am super grateful for all that my family does for me especially that they feed me and take the time to prepare food for me. I know they make an effort to cook things for me that I will like and want me to be as comfortable and happy as possible. I can’t imagine my experience here without them and if exposing them to vegetable or listening to me talk about healthy foods mean they will be around a little long I couldn’t be happier.