An eventful weekend

After my last blog post my life seemed to get kind of crazy. Early on Friday morning about one a.m I got a call saying that Lusi’s grandma had passed away. I quickly got up and headed down the mountain. Seeing the way Samoan’s doing funerals is quite different than we do it in the states.  When we arrived at the house we had a short family service. Since we do not have a hospital on our island. The men in the family helped carry the body. They put the body into the back of the truck and then we headed to the wharf. We then all piled on the boat and headed across to meet the ambulance. We then took the forty-minute drive over to the hospital. At the hospital we had a service at the chapel. After that we headed for home for the day by the time I arrived back on island it was six thirty and time for me to get ready and go to school. While I was walking through the village my students were already walking to school. It was a long day at school but I survived. After school I headed over to Lusi’s house for another family service to discuss the funeral. Since a lot of people fly in for the funeral they usually wait a month to hold the funeral. On Sunday after church his family had another meeting at the house. When attending the meetings we have to sit on the floor of the house cross-legged. For Samoan’s they grew up doing this but my body is not quite used of sitting like that for a long period of time.

            With all of this going on the events just continued to roll on in. On Friday night I fell asleep very early because I was so tired from the day. I then got a phone call at about eleven from a panicked friend. She was a world teacher last year and is now a contract teacher just like me. She asked me if I felt the earthquake. I was like no I was sleeping. She continued to tell me that we just had a 6.8 earthquake about 50 miles from the island. We were put into a Tsunami watch. Me never experiencing a tsunami or earthquake, I was a little nervous. I had no idea what to expect and there is really no way to prepare for one. Luckily, we had no Tsunami and only a few after shocks, which I also did not feel. I must have been really tired.

            After all of the commotion over the weekend I was ready to head back to school and have some normal in my life. Little did I know I was in for a treat. I got to school on Sunday morning and I was informed that on Tuesday I was getting observed by the DOE, on Wednesday we had parent teacher conferences and on Thursday we were having more people from the DOE coming in. So much for a nice relaxing week, I am really hoping that this weekend will be nice and calm.