To the main island we go!

We finally made it to Friday! After a busy week in the classroom we decided to head over to the main island to do a few errands on Friday. We left school a little early just so we could catch the bus in time to make it to the post office. Virginia had to mail a package home and we needed to make it to the post office before it closed. On our way to town we saw dophins on the boat ride. They were swimming and jumping right beside the boat. I have never see dolphins in the ocean before and it was so awesome.

We arrived to the main island and headed towards the post office. We walked inside the post office and about froze. They have air conditioning on really high in there and none of us are used to having air conditioning anymore. I remember Dana and I were standing waiting for Virginia and we were just cold. After the post office we had to meet Shivaun to pick up a few packages. She was running a little late so we decided we should eat somewhere while we are in town. Dana and I are trying to try all the different places to eat so we know which ones we should take our parents to when they come. We found this café and decided we were going to try it out. After living with each other for three months this is the first time we went out to eat at a restaurant together! How crazy is that! We felt so out of place at the restaurant I mean I haven’t been to a nice place to eat since arriving here. The food was great and it was nice not having to prepare the meal for once. I sound so adult…

We met up with Shivaun and got our packages. We had 10 packages and we had to take them all on the bus back to the island with us. Thank goodness Lucy offered to help us with them. So we had some help catching a bus. While waiting for the bus it started to rain. We had no place to go undercover so now our boxes were all wet and starting to break. It was quite an experience getting back to the island. The locals all helped us get the packages back to our house. I am really going to miss that when I get home.

We had the Mormon church dance tonight. We had no idea what to expect at the dance. We knew that it was a Halloween party for the kids. We were really bored and decided to put make up since we never wear it here. I don’t think I have worn any since I was back home. So we put some make up and headed to the party. The kids looked so adorable. Oh my goodness. Sometimes when I see them I feel like a Mom because we just point at them and talk about how cute they are. I mean they are adorable. Of course the second we got there they wanted us to dance so we got up and danced with kids. Let me tell you these kids can dance and I have NO dancing skills. I may have looked like a fool but seeing how excited the kids got about it made it all worth it in the end. At the party we just ate food, played games, and danced. It was a lot of fun and we were all glad that we decided to attend the dance.

With Love,

Abby

Spirit Week

Its only Tuesday… That is what we were talking about when we got to our house after school today. Spirit week is living up to its name. The kids have been bouncing off the walls this week with excitement. At the school we do not have any volleyball nets or basketball courts until recently the school got a donation for volleyball net and a basketball hoop. Let me tell you. They had decided to put up the brand new volleyball net and basketball hoop in the middle of my vocabulary lesson. I remember at one point I looked over and everyone of my students eyes were out the window. I could just see the excitement in their eyes and I couldn’t help but get excited for them. All of my kids had smiles ear to ear and they kept saying, “Teacher, teacher, we can’t focus this is so exciting.” Finally I gave in and told them to just go outside and play. They all immediately sprinted to the courts to play.

The problem with letting them play in the morning meant that they had built up all this energy. My students were taking a test or at least I was attempting to have them take a test. When they had finally got quiet I heard Virginia just yelling at here students. I couldn’t help but giggle and talk to her about her morning. Usually one of three of us has a really rough morning and we also laugh about it at lunch and compare who had the worst morning.

Aside from the kids being extremely excited in the classroom we had our own problems to deal with at the house. So our power here is a pay as you go. It is very similar to having a pre-paid phone. Sometimes we forget about our power and we realize that it is really low and we need some more. Last night we went over to the store and found out that they were out of power and would not have anymore power until tomorrow after school. We were at 4.4 units of power and we all knew that it would not make it through the night if we ran our fans all night long. We also knew that once the power went out our fridge would no longer be running and we did not want all of our food in the fridge to spoil. So we decided to all take one for the team and not run our fans while we were sleeping to save our food in the fridge. It was a long night in the heat but we all survived and were very thankful when we got our power card after school yesterday.

Last night when we went to volleyball we decided that we wanted to go swimming after. We had told a bunch of people that we were going to go swimming but we were not expecting them to come with us. We were swimming with a bunch of local kids when half the people from volleyball showed up to go swimming. We have a big ramp that goes into the water where we go swimming. I know I have talked about this ramp before but this ramp is so slippery. All of the locals were standing at the ramp sliding down it into the water. They kept trying to get us to do it. They make walking up this ramp look so easy. Virginia and I decided that we wanted to try and attempt climbing up the ramp. We finally were sitting on the ramp when they go just stand up and walk up the ramp. We were literally clawing our way up this ramp as we watched little kids just gracefully climb up the ramp. When we finally got to the top of the ramp they told us to just slide down. As we were at the top I seriously contemplating going down this ramp. Everyone was telling me try it so I went for it. As I start sliding down the ramp someone yells, “Just please don’t fall and crack your head open it will take a while to get to the hospital.” We all made it down the ramp safely and nobody got hurt!

Last night we got invited to dance at the church on Friday night. We have no idea what a church dance is like but it will be interesting to see what it is like.

With Love,

Abby

Volleyball and Heat

This week has been one of our longest weeks since arriving on the island. Our students had an extreme amount of energy this week. Usually my class is the calmest out of the three of us. Mostly because I have less students and my students are older and little bit more mature. With the insane amount of energy that the students brought to the classroom we were also dealing with the heat. We had an early out this week due to the fact that it was too hot in the classrooms. I remember on one day I was getting frustrated with the day mostly because I was hot. One of my students looked at me and goes, “Teacher, why are you mad?” I responded, “ I am not mad I am just really hot and sometimes being hot makes me crabby.”

My student goes, “Everyone shut up. Teacher is hot and crabby lets not make her more upset.”

After the student had said that they all sat down quietly and did there work and said sorry teacher we didn’t mean to upset you. It moments like that that remind me of why I came here to teach.

On Thursday we headed over to the main island to watch the high school volleyball championships. Once students graduate from the Elementary school they go to high school on the main island. The high school that the Aunuu kids go to was in the championship game. A couple girls from the island play on the team so we decided to go to the game. We rode along with some of our friends from the island. My students were all jealous because I was going to the game. The atmosphere at the game is a little different than what we have in the states. People were yelling and screaming at the refs the whole game. We were all crowded into the stands just sweating because we had no breeze in the “gym” we were at. The gym is like a machine shed without any walls. After the game we headed straight back to the island because after games apparently they have a lot of fights and people throw rocks everywhere. Fighting is very typical here at least once a week I see students getting into fights. After the game we also got to ride the boat for the first time at night. It was one of the most relaxing experiences I have had. The stars in the sky were absolutely breathtaking and you could see them lighting up the sky as we were riding back to our island.

On Wednesday morning we had our first assembly at the school. They had a professional table tennis athlete from Europe come and teach the kids the basics of table tennis. It was interesting watching him try and teach our kids about table tennis. Since we don’t have paddles anywhere or at least I have yet to see one. He told the kids to just use their flip-flops as paddles. Surprisingly it works pretty well for them.

This week we are preparing for one busy week. We were just told that it was end of the first quarter on Friday. This means that grades are due and we have to start preparing report cards for the parents. This also means that we are going to be having parent teacher conferences in the upcoming week. We were told at the meeting on Friday that we were having parent teacher conferences this week. They didn’t tell us what day the conference would be held. They also have the conferences during the school day during class. So I will be holding class and conducting parent teacher conferences. We also have spirit week this week so I am sure the students are going to be all excited about that.

With Love,

Abby

Werewolf

We spend a lot of time with the kids on this island. Sometimes I think of these kids are more like my family then my students. We usually spend some time at night with the students. The things we do with them sometimes gets a little interesting its kinda funny what entertains us now. So last week we were at volleyball and one of the kids thought they saw Dana talking to a ghost. Dana went along with it and told the students that she talks to ghosts all the time. She told them she does it at night when Virginia and I are sleeping. She also told them that I was a werewolf and on full moons I will turn into a black werewolf at night so they better watch out. We also told them that Virginia was a vampire.

The next couple of days at school we heard all about it. I had kids just staring at me going are you really a werewolf? Do you really turn into one at midnight? Of course we went along with it since it was a full moon. You could see that some of the kids were completely falling for it and were starting to get scared of us. I think within twenty-four hours the whole village knew about this. This has been going on for about a week and some kids believe us and some don’t.

Last night we were sitting inside the house watching One Tree Hill and we could here all the kids outside our house sitting on the grave. I was like guys we should put some creepy music on our speakers and flicker the lights just to freak the kids out a little bit. We had to be really careful doing this because the kids had a laser pointer and if they pointed it just right they could see us. Virginia and I were sitting under a window right by the grave so they could here the creepy music. Dana was on light duty flickering the lights to the music. We were trying to be as quiet as possible. I remember at one point we were all three just laying on the floor laughing because they were all freaking out about it. I know we played a mean trick on them.

We took our trick even a little farther by crawling out the window of my room. The window in my room is tiny we had to crawl out of it sideways because it was so small. So we all crawled out the window and took a path so that we can get behind the kids. We were telling them that we went to the mart to get some snacks. So we come from behind talking like normal and acting like nothing had happened. You should have seen their faces. My students were all creeped out. They were like teacher didn’t you see the lights in the house? You guys are in your house right? We were all trying to keep a straight face and be like no we were out at the mart the whole time. I am a horrible liar so this was really hard but I kept a straight face about it for a while. I can’t wait to here what the students have to say about this today.

Also next week is our spirit week. We have dress up days for each of the days in preparation for Halloween! If anyone has any Disney character dress up ideas we could use some! We have very limited wardrobe options!

With Love,

Abby

It's the weekend

I have such a love hate relationship with the weekends. I love the fact that we have the weekend and a couple of days to relax and do whatever. I also am not a fan of weekend because I like to keep myself busy and sometimes that can be a little hard here. The lifestyle out here is very relaxed and you just do whatever you want whenever you want. I can’t remember the last time that I was actually this relaxed. Saturday mornings are always my favorite because I get the opportunity to face time with my mom. I really don’t think I could make it throughout the week some weeks if I didn’t get the opportunity to talk with them. Especially since I was so used to talking with here everyday when I was back in the states.

This Saturday one of the world teach volunteers from the main island came over to visit us. She really wanted to see the island and come see us. So we had our first ever visitor on the island. Once she got here we decided to take her out to the harbor to go swimming. This is literally one of my favorite things to do here. I take my little floaty and just float around the harbor for a little while. The view is amazing because you can see mountains and the crystal clear ocean. While swimming we had a few kids come and join us for our swim. The little boy that decided to swim with me thought it was so funny because he got me flipped off my floaty. He then pretended that I was a boat and my feet were his steering wheel and he drove me all around the harbor.

I can tell we are becoming more and more like locals the longer we are here. For instance today I heard a lot of noise coming from outside. So I went outside to see what was going on. Here all the guys were trying to move a boat into the water. We don’t have any boat trailers on island. So they took some PVC pipe and rolled the boat. It was very interesting way of doing it. Of course we all sat on a rock and watched this happen.

On Saturday night we got to experience first hand what the locals meant when the power goes out in the middle of the night. We have had people warn us that sometimes the power goes out in the middle of the night and that we need to get used to sleeping without fans. Well I woke up in the middle of the night and I could not figure out what was wrong. For one my room was really quiet and I remember touching my stomach and it feeling like I just got out of the shower. I am guessing it took about two hours to get the power back on and I was so hot. Hopefully this doesn’t happen often.

If you ever have the opportunity to go night swimming you have to do it! We tried it out after volleyball on Friday night. The water is still warm and it almost cools you off because it is cool enough outside. I love floating on my back in the water and looking up at all the stars in the sky. It was a relaxing way to end our busy week in the classroom.

With Love,

Abby