babies come out of your butt

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this blog are my own and do not represent those of the WorldTeach organization.

December 5th (part two)

On Sunday, November 28th I decided to skip church and head to the airport with Josh and Holly. I am still not sure if it was the best decision. I ended up staying there for three hours!!!!! Since it was Holly, we couldn’t just drop her off and leave! The only reason I went was to make a reservation to go to Tutuila during winter break. I actually called one of the WorldTeach volunteers and I think I will stay with them for a week and then they will come back to Manu’a with me for the second week of vacation. That would be nice as Josh is going to Tutuila on the same date as me to go hang out with Holly and then coming back to Manu’a the day before me.

Saunoa left on Monday, November 29th for an extended trip. He was planning on going to Hawaii and California to see his wife and kids. He wanted me to come up on Sunday for a bit. He is lending me some chisels to do some carving and wanted to give them to me before he left. Josh arrived around 6 after he finished with his lesson plans up at the school and then we stayed for another two hours before Saunoa drove us home. At 8 PM, we arrived home and I went right to bed. I needed my beauty sleep for the first full week back to school in a long time.

After school on Monday I had a tutorial with a group of five students. This tutorial program is called Upward Bound. It is through the local community college for aspiring high school students. For three hours a week, I tutor in English or math. For this specific week, I chose to talk about child abuse. The kids out here don’t know anything. I have heard that child abuse is prevalent in many Samoan households so I thought it would be a good topic to introduce. Some interesting things came out of this tutorial. As we were reading the article, we came across some statistics on STD’s among abused children. 14% of victims of child abuse are infected with a STD. I asked what STD stood for…no response so I said, “sexually transmitted disease, can you give me an example of a sexually transmitted disease?” Their answers were: a bruise, a cold, and the flu. I decided to say how about AIDS/HIV, anyone hear of that before? Some said yes but then couldn’t tell me what it was. We moved on from there. Later it got on to the topic of pregnancy and one girl said, “Don’t babies come out of your mom’s butt?” She was completely serious. She is a senior at Manu’a High School.

The rest of the day drug on like the first week back from a holiday does. On Thursday, I woke up a little ill. Something just wasn’t right. I went to bed early the night before and when I arrived up to school, I was feeling nauseous, had an upset stomach, and kept sweating profusely. Our principal, vice principal, and English teacher were all absent on this day so I mentioned something to Donna, the social studies teacher, who was in charge that I wasn’t feeling well. Ten minutes into my first class, Donna came by and said, “We have teachers watching over your class for the remainder of the day and we have someone bringing you home after this period.” I was a little surprised and didn’t really know what to think of the situation. I wanted to stay home and rest, but didn’t feel like it was life threatening that I had to leave school. I ended up going home and it sounds like I missed a good day at school.

Josh came home later that night to share with me the festivities of the day. The agriculture teacher had a hard day with his students (very typical). During one of his periods, a boy Matt was yelling into Doug’s classroom, “Hey Roseman, why don’t you come suck my c***!” Doug told the students not to let him into the classroom and to try to ignore him. One of the students decided it would be funny to let him in. When Doug turned around, the student ran and opened the door. Matt came into the room, grabbed Doug by the face and punched him in the gut. Doug pushed him out of the room and locked the door. Donna had to come by and take care of the situation. In a completely unrelated incident, Crystal had one of her students absent during her last period class. The kids in her class told her he was in the JROTC room and that she should go get him. For some reason she played into this and went over to find him. He wasn’t there so she went back to her room. One student left to go to the bathroom and check on Frances. He arrived back and let Crystal know that he really is in JROTC. So Crystal goes back with Donna and finds the boy in the back office on top of the rafters sleeping! Donna gets him down and brings him into the office. In general, the kids were rowdy and out of control all day so I am glad I was home sick!

On Friday, I woke up feeling better so I decided to go to school. The day was long; I had a headache the entire time and was just ready to go home. My headache eventually got better as the day progressed. After school, I had another Upward Bound tutorial, but with a new group of five students. This group actually said HIV/AIDS as their first response to name a STD, but then I quickly lost hope with them when WD-40 was their next answer.

Since I missed Thursday my SAT Prep after school class was cancelled and so they didn’t take their quiz. On Friday, I went to the teacher that teaches SAT Prep English and asked if they could take the quiz during class time. Since Trish was absent, the librarian didn’t have anything planned and accepted. After my Upward Bound tutorial I ran to find the quizzes to start grading them. Astonishingly the grades were amazing. Almost all the grades were 100% or just one question off from them. What was even more amazing if that the last time these students took a quiz the highest grade was a 73%. Also, my best student scored the lowest grade. Let’s just say I was pretty livid about this. These are the National Honors Society students and they think cheating is completely acceptable. After complaining and discussing the matter with Josh, I think I have a great way to approach…stay tuned to the next post!

Yesterday, I spent the morning cleaning. I washed the dishes, the kitchen, swept the house, did my laundry, and picked up trash in my yard. After lunch, I went into our front fale (house) and carved out one of the coral rocks for my sea glass design. I broke the first one and was a little upset, but then realized my mistake and started work on the second one. It took me until 5:30 that night, but I was happy with what I accomplished. That night, I put the rock in some bleach water to make it a little whiter and to get rid of the fish smell. Later that night, Josh and I decided to go for a swim along with Doug. We went out around 7:30 and stayed out for about an hour. I was the first to come out as I wasn’t feeling quite right. That night, my eye started swelling and itching. Oh how I love pink eye. No one shares my mask with me, so it is possible that something in the water irritated my eye.

Today, I have been staying up at school working on my lesson plans for the week. On Wednesday, Tautua is sitting in on my Geometry class so I wanted to figure out what I was going to do in there. Hopefully my eye will be better tomorrow!

Love,

Gretchen