The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.
October 24th
This past week was midterm week at school. All last weekend I was up at school preparing my exams for the week. This weekend I decided to stay away from school and school work as much as possible. On Monday and Tuesday we had class as usual. Class became more of review an entire two months worth of material in 50 minutes. Tuesday was very draining for me and I was very glad for it to be done. Wednesday and Thursday were quite nice. We had three midterms each day for an hour a piece, lunch, and then the students left for the day. I had a good four hours after the students left to finish grading the exams. I was able to finish grading my exams before I left each day which made it a mostly stress free week. On Friday, we had “Field Day.” We started off the day with an assembly and then each class was in charge of cleaning a section of campus. The remainder of the afternoon was dedicated to rehearsal. At 11 AM everyone met in the cafeteria for the big production. Each class is in charge of making up some short 5 minute musical type production to perform in front of the school. My class, the sophomore class, did a few scenes from the Lion King. The grand finale was Hakuna Matata which was pretty funny. We were probably the least prepared class, but everyone thought we performed the best. I think it was due to this one kid we have. I don’t have the boy as a student, but he is hilarious. He was in the back kind of acting like a sumo wrestler as he danced, I don’t think I stopped laughing the entire performance. After the performances, there was lunch, and then the students left for the day.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself on Friday. Everyone was off campus by 12:30, the Internet was down, my lessons for Monday and Tuesday were pretty much complete: review midterm exam, and I didn’t feel like doing any school work! To my delight Ben, the secretary, took a couple of us on a ride to Fitiuta to the post office! I haven’t received any birthday presents yet so was hoping something would arrive. Luckily, the two packages my parents sent were in the post office!!!! When we arrived back at school I was able to open my boxes and marvel at my presents! By this time, it is 2 PM and I still don’t want to be up at school. I go and speak with Ula, the vice-principal, and she tells me I can leave for the day if I want. Josh and I put our things together and took the short cut home (straight down a muddy mountain incline). I was glad to just relax and read my book for the afternoon. At 5, I headed over to the elementary school to play basketball. For the past two weeks basketball hasn’t been that great. All the young kids in the village have been playing and so you can’t get a real game together. This Friday was different, all the 20 and 30 year old men were out and we played for a good 40 minutes. The games are played to 7 points, which allows for quick games with rest in between if you lose. If you don’t lose, you are in for a long time. Luckily, my team was on a role so I got to play a long time.
Saturday became a jam packed day of exercise. I decided to go for a run when I woke up that morning. I ran over to the next village and back. When I arrived back to our village I decided to walk home to cool down. As I walked home I stopped to see if Leafa needed help unpacking her things from the boat. As mentioned previously, Leafa is my friend who owns a store a few houses down from me. She did need some help, so I went home, drank some water, and went back to help her. We unloaded soda, chips, and flour from their boxes. Once we completed, she made me brunch for helping. As we unloaded, my clothes were getting washed in her laundry machine. After brunch, I went to change loads and ran back home to put everything on my clothes line. I swept the house and then returned to Leafa’s to get my second load of laundry. Around 2 o'clock I heard that I received another package so I ran over to Tautua and Trish's to pick it up. Ms. Kristen Walker's package arrived with plenty of goodies!! Around 5, I went to go check out the basketball courts. There were some three on three games starting up so I got in the next line up. Without a warm-up and the sun in my eyes, I played like crap. We lost and sat out the next game. I was supposed to go back in with the same people in the next round, but they dropped me from their team since I played so poorly the first game. Luckily, more people showed up and we ended up playing full court four on four. I was in on the first game and our team won so we continued playing. I ended up playing for about 25 minutes straight. At 6, I walked back home to shower and hydrate myself. Josh and I laid low for the night, made some pasta and just talked for a while.
This morning we had church and then you can’t really do anything else since it is a Sunday so I am relaxing at home reading. I am excited to walk over to the next village around 4 to buy some of their cinnamon bread though!!
Love,
Gretchen
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Ofu
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.
October 11th
Instead of boring you with more negativity about the school I will share about my wonderful weekend.
On Friday, school finished at noon and I waited anxiously for the call that the boat was ready. Around 1:30, I was tired of waiting up at the school and decided to start walking home. While halfway through the village, Tautua drove by in his truck and picked me up. The boat was ready! We grabbed my luggage and drove to the docks. The boat ride lasted about an hour and a half. In about 20 minutes I realized that even in American Samoa I get sea sick! I think the men on the boat felt sorry for me, they just kept staring and smiling. About two to three weeks ago I was over visiting Tautua and Trish talking about my birthday. Tautua offered that I should go to Ofu and Olosega during the three day weekend to celebrate. Since that time I kept thinking about it and slowly realized that I might actually be going. Trevor, the JROTC instructor from school, is from Olosega so I stayed with him at his hotel throughout the weekend. For the first time since I have been in Manu’a, I slept with air conditioning!
The hotel is perfectly located next to the bridge connecting Ofu and Olosega. Trevor’s house is located in Ofu, but he considers himself in Olosega because the village is a lot closer. It was nice to get away from village life where everyone is watching you for the weekend. Matt and Felicia, two WorldTeach volunteers, live in Ofu so I did get a little village life when I visited them. They are about a 25 minute drive away, so it proved to be a little difficult to visit them the entire time. Trevor’s daughter, Celesty, became a good friend over the weekend and she brought me all over the place. On Friday night, she gave me an island tour. We even stopped to talk to Felicia and Matt for a bit before they had White Sunday practice. Celesty is the 8th grade teacher at the elementary school so she happened to know Matt and Felicia and didn’t mind driving over to see them on the tour. I believe Tautua was paying for me to stay at the hotel and I came over with Trevor so I felt bad leaving him to stay at Matt and Felicia’s. After the tour, Celesty went back to make some dinner for us and I just laid low for the night enjoying my air-conditioned room with my king sized bed.
On Saturday, I woke up a little late and waited around for breakfast. Felicia and Matt had White Sunday practice in the morning, so Celesty and I waited for them to jump off the bridge. After our short hike, we jumped in the van to go pick them up. When we arrived, we found out that their practice time was changed to 4 PM. I was pretty disappointed since we didn’t get to their place until noon. Celesty had to run over to the community center for a bit so sat around for an hour until she came back. In that time, we found out that practice was switched to 2 PM. By this point I began to think I would just be hanging out with Celesty for the weekend. When Celesty arrived back at Matt and Felicia’s at 1 PM, Matt ran over to speak with the pastor. The pastor gave them the okay to miss practice, so we had the afternoon to ourselves! Arriving back at the hotel, we were all eager to jump in the water. By this point, it started to heat up and we desperately wanted to cool down. I was the first to make the 20 foot jump! I was too excited to even worry and just jumped. Felicia and Matt slowly followed about twenty minutes later. In the mean time, I swam around looking at all the fish. This happened to be the first sand beach I have swam in since arriving in American Samoa. It wasn’t just coral, but there was actual sand on the beach!!! I have only been on the dry coral beaches thus far. This beach was awesome to swim in, the drag wasn’t too strong, it was deep enough to swim in, and it wasn’t too cold. For the rest of the afternoon, we just swam and hung out.
I wanted to go to church with Matt and Felicia on Sunday so I spent Saturday night at their house. We were up for a while but sleep got the better of me and I was the first to go to bed. At 7:30 AM, I was awake and ready for church. I previously mentioned Matt and Felicia were going to practice for White Sunday. This past Sunday was White Sunday. Every Sunday it is typical to see the kids wait on the parents. The kids help prepare the food, eat after their parents eat brunch, and don’t get involved with the Sunday church service. On White Sunday, (which happens only once a year) the kids are in charge. And by kid I mean anyone not married. For two weeks or more there is practice every night for White Sunday. The kids have speaking roles, dance routines, and songs that they need to prepare for. I have been watching the kids in my village and they are endlessly practicing. Felicia and Matt were asked to be a part of White Sunday and I had the privilege of watching them and being their photographer. It was a long service to sit through. After 2.5 hours I realized it would be a better experience to see my students performing and not these kids from Ofu that I don’t know. Since Ofu is a much younger village, I got to see all the young kids perform.
After church, we were invited to the pastor’s house for brunch. Since it was White Sunday, the students were served first and there was a massive feast. The parent’s provided the food and cleaned up at the end. The community is in charge of feeding the pastor each Sunday, and they provided a whole lot of food! We had pig, coconut crab, chicken, duck, potato salad, bread fruit, and taro. I thought I was eating chicken until I was told later to try the duck…tastes just like chicken though! After we stuffed our faces with food, it was time for dessert! The pastor’s wife brought out some cones and started serving the strawberry ice cream! It is the first time I had a Samoan meal with dessert! While eating ice cream, cake and jello arrived. It was way too much to eat.
After dessert Felicia, Matt, and I went to their house to rest. Unfortunately, it is Sunday, the day of rest, and you are not allowed to do anything in the village. In Ofu you aren’t even allowed to walk around the village! In Faleasao I am allowed to walk around on a Sunday, so decided I was going to walk in Ofu as well. I really needed to walk off the mounds of food I consumed. I walked along their beach, picked up a few shells, and got chased by the dogs. The dogs in Ta’u are a lot nicer!!! After being followed by a few of Felicia’s students for a while I headed home to read and rest. While reading, I fell asleep for a half an hour to wake up and read some more. Around 6 PM, Celesty arrived to bring me back to the hotel for the night. After making some dinner, Celesty and I walked on the beach in front of her house and then spent the night watching the stars. It was a great night, not too many mosquitoes.
I decided since we were leaving early this morning, 10 AM, that I should wake up extra early to go swimming. At 6 AM, I woke up and Celesty and I went hiking to the most gorgeous beach. We walked to one of the top ten beaches in the world. As Celesty laid on the beach, I snorkeled in the water all by myself. It was amazing. There was beautiful coral, lively fish, and nice warm water! The coral was more amazing then the millions of fish, I have yet to see blue or yellow coral so I was definitely excited. We stayed for about two hours and then we headed back to the hotel to eat breakfast. Around 9 AM, we arrived back to find Trevor yelling that the boat was waiting for us. I took a quick shower and we jumped in the car. Matt and Felicia escorted us to the boat and we made the 1.5 hour trip back to Ta’u. Fabulous and much needed weekend. Now for the big birthday tomorrow!!!!
Love,
Gretchen
Friday, October 8, 2010
past due
October 2nd
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.
Okay so for the most exciting news: I just saw a whale! I didn’t think I would be so excited when I saw one, but this one was about a football field length away! I was just sitting out on one of the rocks in the ocean and all of a sudden the whale jumps out of the water…I screamed! Luckily, I had my camera with me and quickly took it out to snap some photos. The whale didn’t come nearly as high out of water after that, but I did capture him!!
It has reached the point where I have been here long enough that I am ready to have a weekend away. Next weekend I am planning on going over to Ofu and Olesega. Due to Columbus Day we have a three day weekend, so I think it would be perfect to getaway. The JROTC lieutenant, Trevor, has family in Olesega and invited me to ride over with him kind of as a birthday present. For a while I was debating on whether or not I should go, but at the end of the school day yesterday I decided I need to get away for the weekend. To keep any hope of sanity left, I should get away.
Let’s rewind back to my last blog post about me finding out Tala cut herself and all my bad luck that followed. On Saturday night there was choir practice in the village. During the choir practice, there was an announcement about Tala cutting herself. There was also an announcement about my late night intruder the previous night. What came out of the meeting was that after 9 PM no student, grades K-12, are allowed outside their homes or they will be fined $100. At the same time, if a visitor is found outside of any white person’s house, then they are fined $100 by the high chief. And that’s how the village deals with a problem. :-) As you can probably imagine, I was pretty upset with how this girl was being treated and knew the only thing I could do is apologize to her for all the crap she had to go through. The rest of the weekend I didn’t see her around so I waited until school began. Monday morning there was an assembly. Towards the end the principal spoke about girls’ cutting themselves and that it is bad because “When you get older and have grandchildren you are still going to have those scars on your arms and you will have to tell them why you have them.” And thus began the week. I sat down with Tala and let her know that I was available if she ever needed to talk. She has yet to come seek me out but I hope she does if she needs it.
Last weekend I received some troubling news and it made for the beginning of a bad week. Fortunately, the week wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. On Sunday night, I was walking around the village and ran into one of my students, Jedi. Jedi is the kind of kid who thinks he is a genius and likes to rub it into everyone’s face. At first I didn’t care for him much, but he actually has common sense which everyone else out here is lacking so it is nice to have that in a student. Jedi and I talked for about a half an hour about the village and specifically about the students in the village. The girl, Tala, that I found cutting herself the week prior is one of Jedi’s good friends. I thought he would be a good person to talk to because he seems to be trusted by a lot of people. There are five females that attend the high school from my village. Jedi is 100% positive that four of them are cutting themselves. The other girl is a sister to a girl cutting herself so she might also be doing it. There are also two eighth graders in the village who have been cutting themselves. This is obviously much larger a problem then I initially thought. My first thought was that these girls are doing this together, sort of like a cult or something. It seems like they don’t all know each other are doing it. Jedi said that a lot of people come to him when they have problems. The worse part is that I found out one of my students from a separate village tried killing herself this summer by drinking two bottles of shampoo. Obviously, there are major issues with the way people are living their lives out here! Right now, I am trying my best just to be someone that people can come talk to if they have problems. This week I have had a lot of conversations with students so hopefully I am being a good listener.
On Wednesday, September 29th we had no school due to the one year anniversary of the tsunami. On Tuesday, we had a service after lunch where all the grades performed a song or two and we prayed. I felt like the service was just one big joke. I really don’t understand why they were laughing though because they do have a lot of family over on the main island where the tsunami hit. Just one more thing that I will never understand about Samoans. On Wednesday, Josh and I went to the 6 AM church service for the tsunami victims. It was a nice one hour church service in which we had a moment of silence at 6:49, the time the tsunami hit last year. After church we went home and went right to bed. At 9 AM, I woke up for the second time and made myself some breakfast. Josh woke up shortly after to tell me that an earthquake hit on the main island at around 7:15 that morning. Fortunately, there was not a tsunami following this earthquake and we didn’t feel a thing. Josh’s girlfriend from WorldTeach, Holly, is living off the main island on a little island called Aunu’u. She called him and told him she was running up the hill to higher ground. As the day wore on she kept calling and updating him. Basically not a single Samoan reacted to the earthquake. You would think a magnitude 5 earthquake would be something to take seriously, especially if it happened on the year anniversary of a tsunami! Another reason why I will never understand the people of American Samoa.
Thursday began what felt like a Monday all over again. Thursday was actually a decent day but Friday was so annoying that it didn’t matter if I had one decent day out of two. On Friday, we received a bulletin in the morning that during the second half of lunch we will have a meeting in the cafeteria. The lunch period is 45 minutes and the students only eat for about ten or fifteen of those minutes so it really isn’t hard to have a meeting there. As I was finishing up grading, the principal walked by to tell me the meeting was about to start. I left my room a few minutes later to find a group of students standing around the office area. I stopped a student to find out two girls had just been in a fight. The computer teacher, Lofi, had one of the girls and so I went to find the other who had disappeared. I brought Jasmine to the office where I thought Lofi brought Trina. I reached the office door to find that it was locked. Instead, we all met at the back of the building. I began saying, “Okay, what is going on? Let’s talk this out.” After no one spoke, Lofi proceeded to talk to them in Samoan. I have no idea what was being said, but at the end she had Jasmine apologize. I did have a problem with her apology though as it wasn’t very sincere and neither of them would even look at each other.
While this was going on, Crystal went to go get the principal from the cafeteria. Crystal came back with no principal. She told me later that she went and told him and he said, “Oh, ok.” As we continue to stand out there, we keep getting students come up and tell us that we need to go to the meeting. We were getting yelled at for trying to remedy the situation. And so we leave the girls to do whatever they want and go to this damn meeting. We got there and the entire thing was in Samoan. Obviously I was quite angry, and still am, about everything that came about in that half an hour. For the first half of the meeting it was the entire staff and then it became just the instructors. For about half the time he spoke to just the instructors he spoke in English. Luckily he asked if there were any comments or questions in English in which I raised my hand. I explained that I was disgusted that two girls were fighting prior to this meeting and Lofi and I were trying to take care of it and were yelled at because we weren’t in the meeting. Now the girls are just running free around campus and can pick another fight at any moment. The principal responded that this meeting was scheduled since the morning and a fight wasn’t going to change that. He also told me to let them fight, it is good for them. When he leaves here he can go pick them up and drive them to the hospital. I didn’t speak the rest of the meeting. Once we were leaving he grabbed me and said, “Oh Gretchen, I didn’t mean what I said. Of course I don’t want them fighting.” I kind of chuckled and walked away. I am glad he cared so much about saving his ass.
Finishing out the last class of the day helped me relax and calm down a bit. At the end of the day, every staff member jetted off campus when the bell rang. That means that the keys to JROTC where my laundry was was also taken. As I walked home, I ran into Tautua and he told me we could go back up to school later as he didn’t have his keys on him. At 8 PM, after not hearing from him, I walked over to him and Trish’s house to see if we could go get my things. Tautua didn’t really feel like going so I ran around trying to find the secretary, Ben, to drive me up there. Really not making me like the principal any better. Once I finally got my laundry and went home, I realized I left all my whites in the washing machine.
Another week done, another week to go. Hopefully I will update you before I leave for Olesega next weekend!
Love,
Gretchen
The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.
Okay so for the most exciting news: I just saw a whale! I didn’t think I would be so excited when I saw one, but this one was about a football field length away! I was just sitting out on one of the rocks in the ocean and all of a sudden the whale jumps out of the water…I screamed! Luckily, I had my camera with me and quickly took it out to snap some photos. The whale didn’t come nearly as high out of water after that, but I did capture him!!
It has reached the point where I have been here long enough that I am ready to have a weekend away. Next weekend I am planning on going over to Ofu and Olesega. Due to Columbus Day we have a three day weekend, so I think it would be perfect to getaway. The JROTC lieutenant, Trevor, has family in Olesega and invited me to ride over with him kind of as a birthday present. For a while I was debating on whether or not I should go, but at the end of the school day yesterday I decided I need to get away for the weekend. To keep any hope of sanity left, I should get away.
Let’s rewind back to my last blog post about me finding out Tala cut herself and all my bad luck that followed. On Saturday night there was choir practice in the village. During the choir practice, there was an announcement about Tala cutting herself. There was also an announcement about my late night intruder the previous night. What came out of the meeting was that after 9 PM no student, grades K-12, are allowed outside their homes or they will be fined $100. At the same time, if a visitor is found outside of any white person’s house, then they are fined $100 by the high chief. And that’s how the village deals with a problem. :-) As you can probably imagine, I was pretty upset with how this girl was being treated and knew the only thing I could do is apologize to her for all the crap she had to go through. The rest of the weekend I didn’t see her around so I waited until school began. Monday morning there was an assembly. Towards the end the principal spoke about girls’ cutting themselves and that it is bad because “When you get older and have grandchildren you are still going to have those scars on your arms and you will have to tell them why you have them.” And thus began the week. I sat down with Tala and let her know that I was available if she ever needed to talk. She has yet to come seek me out but I hope she does if she needs it.
Last weekend I received some troubling news and it made for the beginning of a bad week. Fortunately, the week wasn’t as awful as I was expecting. On Sunday night, I was walking around the village and ran into one of my students, Jedi. Jedi is the kind of kid who thinks he is a genius and likes to rub it into everyone’s face. At first I didn’t care for him much, but he actually has common sense which everyone else out here is lacking so it is nice to have that in a student. Jedi and I talked for about a half an hour about the village and specifically about the students in the village. The girl, Tala, that I found cutting herself the week prior is one of Jedi’s good friends. I thought he would be a good person to talk to because he seems to be trusted by a lot of people. There are five females that attend the high school from my village. Jedi is 100% positive that four of them are cutting themselves. The other girl is a sister to a girl cutting herself so she might also be doing it. There are also two eighth graders in the village who have been cutting themselves. This is obviously much larger a problem then I initially thought. My first thought was that these girls are doing this together, sort of like a cult or something. It seems like they don’t all know each other are doing it. Jedi said that a lot of people come to him when they have problems. The worse part is that I found out one of my students from a separate village tried killing herself this summer by drinking two bottles of shampoo. Obviously, there are major issues with the way people are living their lives out here! Right now, I am trying my best just to be someone that people can come talk to if they have problems. This week I have had a lot of conversations with students so hopefully I am being a good listener.
On Wednesday, September 29th we had no school due to the one year anniversary of the tsunami. On Tuesday, we had a service after lunch where all the grades performed a song or two and we prayed. I felt like the service was just one big joke. I really don’t understand why they were laughing though because they do have a lot of family over on the main island where the tsunami hit. Just one more thing that I will never understand about Samoans. On Wednesday, Josh and I went to the 6 AM church service for the tsunami victims. It was a nice one hour church service in which we had a moment of silence at 6:49, the time the tsunami hit last year. After church we went home and went right to bed. At 9 AM, I woke up for the second time and made myself some breakfast. Josh woke up shortly after to tell me that an earthquake hit on the main island at around 7:15 that morning. Fortunately, there was not a tsunami following this earthquake and we didn’t feel a thing. Josh’s girlfriend from WorldTeach, Holly, is living off the main island on a little island called Aunu’u. She called him and told him she was running up the hill to higher ground. As the day wore on she kept calling and updating him. Basically not a single Samoan reacted to the earthquake. You would think a magnitude 5 earthquake would be something to take seriously, especially if it happened on the year anniversary of a tsunami! Another reason why I will never understand the people of American Samoa.
Thursday began what felt like a Monday all over again. Thursday was actually a decent day but Friday was so annoying that it didn’t matter if I had one decent day out of two. On Friday, we received a bulletin in the morning that during the second half of lunch we will have a meeting in the cafeteria. The lunch period is 45 minutes and the students only eat for about ten or fifteen of those minutes so it really isn’t hard to have a meeting there. As I was finishing up grading, the principal walked by to tell me the meeting was about to start. I left my room a few minutes later to find a group of students standing around the office area. I stopped a student to find out two girls had just been in a fight. The computer teacher, Lofi, had one of the girls and so I went to find the other who had disappeared. I brought Jasmine to the office where I thought Lofi brought Trina. I reached the office door to find that it was locked. Instead, we all met at the back of the building. I began saying, “Okay, what is going on? Let’s talk this out.” After no one spoke, Lofi proceeded to talk to them in Samoan. I have no idea what was being said, but at the end she had Jasmine apologize. I did have a problem with her apology though as it wasn’t very sincere and neither of them would even look at each other.
While this was going on, Crystal went to go get the principal from the cafeteria. Crystal came back with no principal. She told me later that she went and told him and he said, “Oh, ok.” As we continue to stand out there, we keep getting students come up and tell us that we need to go to the meeting. We were getting yelled at for trying to remedy the situation. And so we leave the girls to do whatever they want and go to this damn meeting. We got there and the entire thing was in Samoan. Obviously I was quite angry, and still am, about everything that came about in that half an hour. For the first half of the meeting it was the entire staff and then it became just the instructors. For about half the time he spoke to just the instructors he spoke in English. Luckily he asked if there were any comments or questions in English in which I raised my hand. I explained that I was disgusted that two girls were fighting prior to this meeting and Lofi and I were trying to take care of it and were yelled at because we weren’t in the meeting. Now the girls are just running free around campus and can pick another fight at any moment. The principal responded that this meeting was scheduled since the morning and a fight wasn’t going to change that. He also told me to let them fight, it is good for them. When he leaves here he can go pick them up and drive them to the hospital. I didn’t speak the rest of the meeting. Once we were leaving he grabbed me and said, “Oh Gretchen, I didn’t mean what I said. Of course I don’t want them fighting.” I kind of chuckled and walked away. I am glad he cared so much about saving his ass.
Finishing out the last class of the day helped me relax and calm down a bit. At the end of the day, every staff member jetted off campus when the bell rang. That means that the keys to JROTC where my laundry was was also taken. As I walked home, I ran into Tautua and he told me we could go back up to school later as he didn’t have his keys on him. At 8 PM, after not hearing from him, I walked over to him and Trish’s house to see if we could go get my things. Tautua didn’t really feel like going so I ran around trying to find the secretary, Ben, to drive me up there. Really not making me like the principal any better. Once I finally got my laundry and went home, I realized I left all my whites in the washing machine.
Another week done, another week to go. Hopefully I will update you before I leave for Olesega next weekend!
Love,
Gretchen
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