Happy Catastrophy has gone international. Like, 31 countries international. Which, is..

COMPLETELY FREAKING AWESOME!!

THANK YOU!!

US, UK, Canada, Brazil, New Zealand, Israel (Hello Tel Aviv!) Germany, Finland and more…SO many wonderful new international friends!

i was jumping up and down in excitement when i got to the bottom of the list.

Vanuatu?

At first i assumed it was a misspelling of Xanadu. Because THAT i had heard of before.

Then, i remembered that Xanadu is not actually a real country but a magical mystery place in a magical mystery movie starting magically mysterious Olivia Newton John (and Gene Kelly!)  i can’t quite remember anything other than the name so i looked it up on the internets. And if you look it up on IMDb, you too will see the totality of the synopsis is this:

“The story of a girl who makes dreams come true.”

Wow. Even the description of the most forgettable movie ever made is forgettable.

But, as i suspected (eventually) Vanuatu is NOT Xanadu misspelled.

It’s actually a thing and it’s clear across the planet from the US.

In fact, once again consulting the all-knowing internets, i learn that Vanuatu is a cluster of islands, kind of northeast of Australia – kind of west of Fiji – just sort of out there in the middle of a lot of blue. It was first inhabited by the Melanesian people, but then like any beautiful idyllic paradise, it was forcibly taken over by a series of different nations and colonized  – Portuguese, Spanish, French, UK. Finally, in 1980, the Vanuatuians? Vanetians? gained independence and became the Republic of Vanuatu.

There are several active volcanoes, which makes life interesting in paradise, but the biggest threat to the islands is humans. The islands have been heavily logged and therefore, clean water is becoming scarce. The waters near villages are becoming over-fished so food is also becoming difficult to find. And human waste isn’t being disposed of properly so.. there’s that.

Enter my good friend, the toilet-digger.

My dear, sweet friend and her husband are Christian missionaries, of the good kind. The kind that fly for days clear across the world to visit a tropical paradise with a potty problem to dig toilets and help villages get the clean water they need. Not the historical kind that went into villages and imposed Western culture, took children to re-educate as “white”  and brought illnesses that tribes had no immune systems for. Nope. i doubt any of those folks would get knee deep in the mud and dig a toilet for a village in need. My girl is DA BOMB.

My girl is also a reader of Happy Catastrophy.

So, when i ecstatically posted on Facebook that HC had gone international – even all the way to Vanuatu/Xanadu – my sweet friend posted a supportive, enthusiastic comment and then added that she had just been in Vanuatu and that she had read my blog post while she was there and wondered if Google Analytics had captured that?

Why, yes. Yes it had.

My one reader in Vanuatu, is in fact, my very American friend who lives in a nearby state and has a LOT of frequent flyer miles.

S0 – yay that my adventurous explorer friend would actually take the time to read my blog while digging toilets in the South Pacific islands!

But wow – this brings up a really good question?

Do i have followers in 31 countries?

Or 31 followers who like to travel?

You tell me – are there any real Germans reading this? Brazilians? Fins? Vanuatuies?

and if is IS 31 dear friends who like to travel –

THANK YOU!

and..

TAKE ME WITH YOU!!! i’ve seen pics of Vanuatu and i WANT TO GO! (see header image at the top of this page)

 

(And Gene Kelly on roller-skates for Xanadu’s grand finale !?! Does it get any better than this?)