Apia, Samoa, was a key stop on the JSES Pacific Rim Tour. Not only strategically placed in the Pacific Ocean, adding Samoa to the Pacific Rim Tour had a personal reason for JSES Founder, Luca Poutoa Pistor. His Samoan grandmother's parents were born in Samoa. He traveled with his great-grandmother, Lemao Lalomalava, to Savaii, and Upolu where she introduced him to village high chiefs on Upolu and Savaii. Grandma Lemao went to school in the school JSES visited, and her grandfather built the school in 1885.