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