The past two weeks were full of activities. I conducted a series interviews with the people to obtain a better understanding of the culture and guidelines for my research, including professionals in stress and mental health, as well as people who work at healthy food promotion, obesity control, agriculture, and other various areas. After summarizing my findings, I did a presentation to inform my fellows working at land grant, American Samoa Community College, to get the staff involved with this program. The relation between stress and obesity is a novel concept to most of them. Even in Samoan language, there is not a direct word for stress, and they do not conceive of the tremendous influence of stress on health. Therefore, it is of great significance for land grant to incorporate this stress management program for the American Samoa Community College’s Wellness Center when it officially opens later this year.

Communicating with the local community made me aware of the friendly and hospitable characters of the local people. Gradually, I felt myself getting more and more used to the local culture and passionate about corresponding with the locals. Due to the culture difference, the reasons for stress and obesity of the local people vary from those in the United States. Designing tailored questionnaires for the local people provides better understanding of our research.

Diet is extremely important for obesity and stress management, especially for the population which over-consumes food. Every Sunday, Samoan people wake up very early to prepare the umu-- a traditional cooking method in Samoa. The foods from the umu are tasty and served in large amounts. Cooking food in the umu demands time and effort, so people usually overeat after they spend so much effort in preparing it. Last weekend, we had a health affair to promote healthy food and introduce the way to produce healthy food. In our venders, we made healthy smoothies and showed people the method to make it with milk, fruits, cereal, and oats. In addition, we encouraged people to get more involved with physical activities, so we held a dance contest in which people danced and had fun together and at the same time gained the knowledge of healthy behaviors. 

Next week, after finishing our tailored questionnaire, we plan to spread our survey to the target population to collect data.