Oops

Did not realize how long it had been since I had done my last blog! This week has been a busy week again! The biggest thing this week is I made decision to spend my Thanksgiving in Manua. Manua is an outer island of American Samoa. It is about two hundred miles away from where I live. So the only way you can get there is by taking an airplane. Plane fare is about 85 dollars one-way. Not that bad if you ask me. This island rarely has flights going there but over our break they did so we jumped out the opportunity to go. Its supposedly the most beautiful island out of all of them. Manua consist of three islands Ofu, Olesega, and Ta’u we plan on visiting all three. I am going with Taylor and Kate! Lusi said he would never ever go there because of the ghosts. Samoans are very superstitious people and I am not going to argue! I am super excited to see these. Google them it looks so pretty! Ill make sure to take a picture of another National Park dad for your friends. Another one they haven’t been too ;)

This week my students are taking a try at their very first five-paragraph essay. Cross your fingers for me. I still haven’t told them it’s going to be five paragraphs in the end. We are just writing one paragraph every two days. I think if I told them that they would automatically refuse. At the end we will put them all together. Slowly but surely we are making progress. Another thing I have been hitting really hard is their reading fluency. It’s when you time the students to read a passage for one minute. You then count how many words they read correctly in that one-minute. We read the passage timed twice a week and I let them practice read it will me in the afternoons if they would like to. We started making a weekly goal of how many words they can read combined as a class. Last week on their first timing they only got 381 words on Friday we I timed it again we got 581 words. I literally recalculated four times because I thought I had made a mistake.

This week is the WIC week. Which is like food stamps in the states. I was not real familiar with how all of that worked until I moved here. Almost everyone is on food stamps here. This is the week I usually get some free fruits and vegetables. Most of the Samoans know that I really like the fruits and veggies but don’t get them a whole lot because they are pretty expensive. Well if they have extra money left they usually but fruits and veggies and bring them to me! Yay. They also get Honey Bunches of Oats with this program and everyone tells me how much they hate it and I kept telling them don’t throw it away I will eat. I love that cereal. So I am enjoying some grapes and honey bunches of oats tonight J

With Love,

Abby