Testing...

 Testing..

Do you ever feel like God is testing you? Like how many wrenches in the road can I throw before you give up? Whenever I have a bad week I also tell myself he is testing you. God wants to see how far he can push you. He is trying to make you stronger. Well I would like to declare this week a testing week for me. All in all I just wished I had more hours in the week.

White Sunday is upon us. I say White Sunday is comparable to a big holiday we celebrate in the states. The day is completely dedicated to the kids. The parents cook whatever food the kids want for after church. The kids get all new white church clothes and shoes. The girls get white pearls necklaces and earrings. Some of the girls even get little crowns with veils attached to them. The kids spend long hours preparing, songs, dances, memory verses, and skits. The day before people start decorating at 6 am and continue late into the night. The church is covered from head to toe in balloons and flowers all for this day. Preparing for this day can be a little on stressful side for the adults. Lots of time and money go into this day. As I am turning more Samoan I get more involved in these things. As I have said previously I am very involved with Lusi’s family and spend a lot of time with them. I also get to contribute to days like this one. One thing you should know about Samoa they eat A LOT. They prepare a lot of food. I made four boxes of cake, bought three gallons of ice cream, and a twenty-four pack of soda to prepare for the big day. Can’t wait for all the island treats.

My car finally got fixed. After a couple of weeks waiting for the parts and it to get fixed its finally finished. When we picked the car up from the shop I noticed the back tire was low and said we should get air in it. So we start driving down the road and I hear this clicking noise. I didn’t even have to look I knew it was a nail in the tire. Oh joy…. We bring it to the tire shop and he goes you got a nail in your front tire too. So two patches later and we are back in business.

School was good this week we started after school tutoring which lead to an hour longer of teaching for me! I like my kids so far but they really lack English skills so I am going to have to be super patient with that in the future. I have to remind my self to talk slow and use easy words to help them.

Hope all is well!

With Love,

Abby

Sorry

I know that is has been a little while since I last posted a blog. I have been super busy these last couple of weeks and after this week it should calm down again! Here’s a little recap of my last couple of days. On Saturday we went across super early. I think we left the house at like 6:30. I like to go shopping early, one to beat the crowds and two to beat the heat. It gets pretty toasty in the afternoon. Once we got to town we remembered that the revival game between Lusi’s high school and the top rated team played on at 9. I also know a couple of the players because they used to be at the elementary school. So after we finished buying all our stuff and frozen stuff Lusi then says lets go. Mom and dad you might cringe at this. No, I do not have a cooler in my car. Yes, I left all my frozen stuff in the car for four plus hours in ninety-degree weather.  We ate the food and seem to be fine!

After the game we made a quick stop to get some food. You can’t go to town and not go out to eat. I have officially changed Lusi’s eating habits. Here they tend to eat really greasy food. Which for me is no fun because it gives me a terrible stomachache. Since he has been eating my cooking and such he now gets a stomachache too. Which means we go to the places that I think taste better! Anyway. They are doing a mass drug administration on island for Lymphatic Filerisis. I spelt it wrong but I am not sure how to spell it. Anyway it is when a mosquito bites you and transfers a worm into your body. It can cause some health conditions that have no cure. So all over the island they have tents sent up so you can take your pills to prevent it for free. I was dreading taking it. They determine how many pills you have to take by your weight. Lusi dragged me over to the station to get our pills. Well nine pills later for me and I did not feel good. The side affects hit me pretty good. It makes you extremely sleepy and dizzy. Lusi had to take more pills and got hit even harder by it. He didn’t feel good for a good twenty hours after it. Mine only lasted about four hours. Well neither of us thought it would make us sick. Nor did we think about the fact that we still had to drive home. The drive home was a little rough for me. All my ways of keeping me awake while I am sleepy in the states don’t work here. I usually make myself really cold. But that was not possible.

On Sunday we continued with our White Sunday practice. It is now a week until White Sunday. Low key really excited for it to be over so I can spend more time at home. We have one song where we have to speak in an African language. So I am currently speaking three languages at White Sunday. The pastor also moved me to front row. My back row days have now ended. I tried.

Today we had the day off from school. Thank goodnesss!!! It is finals week for my first set of master’s classes. I had a ton of homework today. It reminded me of the days in college where I would do homework all day long. I spent about six hours on homework and sadly am not finished but I have a good start. Now I am off to White Sunday practice and tomorrow I start after school tutoring! I remember when I was a world teacher and I would be so bored. Man how it has changed in the last couple of years.

With Love,

Abby

Guilty...

Guilty..

 As an adult I have noticed that I feel guilt all the time. I feel guilty for not spending enough time doing my classes. I feel guilty for eating certain foods. I feel guilty for not keeping in contact with all my friends back home all the time. I feel guilty for my students that I am not spending enough time with each of them. I feel guilty for my students for telling them we are going to do something and simply running out of time. Guilt can eat away at you. As all of these thoughts go tumbling through my mind I keep telling myself its not your fault (most of the time). As long as you are giving your best effort there is not a whole lot more that you can do for it.

As my mom would call it a God thing, my devotions hit this one pretty hard. It was talking about putting your whole effort into the work you do. As long as you show that you are a hard working and doing everything for him. Do not worry. It’s easy to read the words and actually think about them. But to actually apply them to yourself can be a challenge. Those thoughts can come rolling into your mind so fast that sometimes it can be hard to push them away.

Update on my crazy week! School is going pretty well as we are getting farther and farther into the year my students get more comfortable.This means they see how far they can push the teacher before making me break. Good luck children I am on year three and have caught onto your tricks.On Tuesday my fan broke and sent sparks flying through our classroom. My students went screaming poor little things were so scared. Teacher was shaking because I was scared someone got hit by a spark. Luckily no injuries were encountered and we only had to endure one day without a fan. Not having a fan is about the worst thing to happen here. Students get extremely crabby and don't listen at all.  I’ve had a week full of meetings and hopefully next week I wont have them anymore! Just made a whole bunch of cookie dough tonight to go and sell tomorrow lets hope all goes well again!

Pray for calm students

With Love,

Abby

Bingo and Cookies

There are two things that you should know about Samoa they love bingo and they love food! Everybody here gets paid on the same day every two weeks. So we all get to celebrate the joys of getting paid on the same day. One of the fundraisers our church does on pay week is hold bingo.(Now the one thing I don’t get is they are gambling at church but one does not ask questions). They only have bingo on pay week because by the second week people are usually out of money. Now bingo here is nothing like bingo in the states. Its very intense and honestly I don’t understand it. They don’t play four corners or four in a row like us. They have four bingo cards sitting in front of them at one time. They all have their dabbers and are dabbing away. I really tried to play a couple of times but for one they say it in samoan and by the time I figure out what number they have, and then dabbed all four cards they have moved on to a new number. So I rarely play unless someone really wants me to play with them.

The real reason I go to bingo is for the pepsi. So pepsi is like my all time favorite drink and you can’t buy it on our island and I don’t want to buy a case of it because its so expensive. So I only allow myself to buy it on bingo nights because a family sells soda at bingo. Another family sells sandwiches. Which brought me to my rather brilliant idea to get a little extra money. I decided to sell cookies. Not many people have ovens in their and even fewer know how to make homemade cookies. Now I have made my cookies a few times and everyone kept asking for more. So I decided why not take a shot at making cookies and selling them at bingo. I made a double batch of cookie dough and had Lusi bake them while I was at school. We made around 110 cookies. We decided to start a little small just in case they didn’t sell. For one I didn’t want a hundred extra cookies laying around and two have you ever tried making a double batch of cookies without a mixer? My arms were shaking after trying to stir in all that flour!

Well we bagged up all our cookies and brought them to Bingo for our trial run. Bingo hadn’t even started and we were straight out of cookies. We were walking up to bingo and people were like running to us for cookies. I think I was maybe out of the house for twenty minutes.

So we have decided we might successful in a cookie business on island…. Friday we are going to attempt making them again only with double of what we made today!

With Love,

Abby

One Month Down

I have officially been in American Samoa for a month and have almost completed my first month of school. Once the school year starts my year just seems to fly by with all the things that I have to do. We have some major praises in my classroom this past month. First of we have almost tackled word form for place value with decimals. Let me tell you having English Language Learners write out a math problem in words can be very difficult and we are almost done. My kids are troopers. Secondly, they have written complete paragraphs using seven words in each sentence. This was also a task but they are getting the hang of it.  Lastly, we have made improvements in our reading. I really work on fluency with my students because they just don’t know the words all of my kids were way below average when school started and some have already made it to grade level. Yay!! I was so excited to see that. We celebrated by playing games for the last hour of school today.

Next week will be a week of craziness for me. I have White Sunday practice every day. I just got asked to be a tutor after school so I have training for that across next week, master’s classes, and school. I have decided that once White Sunday is finished I will be so happy I have my nights free again! Some days I wish I could go back to the summer where I did absolutely nothing.

Through all of this craziness it finally does feel like I got my life back to normal. After a summer of moving around visiting people and trying to spend as much time as possible with everyone. Then I came back to the island and tried to clean my house and classroom before the school year began. Now as I reach the one-month mark I feel like I am back to normal. As this is my last year of being here I tend to get a little nostalgic about every thing. Lusi and I have been trying to really enjoy the island before all too soon we will be gone. One night we spent a couple of hours sitting on the rocks listening to the ocean waves and looking at the stars. If I could capture this moment for you guys I would. It is my absolute favorite. Whenever I have a bad week I go sit on the rocks and watch the waves roll in and from a distance I can see the kids playing and running around. I am really trying to take these things in before I won’t have a chance anymore.

*If anyone has books sitting around at home and has no idea what to do with them. I would love to take them off of your hands. My students love reading this year and are going through the small amount of books that I have quite fast. You can send them to

Abby Drenth

P.O. Box 2219

Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799

With Love,

Abby

P.s. I really love getting mail! ;)