What is that Smell?

I was cleaning out my refrigerator one day and it was awful because the smell that was coming from it was horrid. I wasn’t sure what it could have been. All that was in there was bottle water, chocolate and some apples and oranges. I bleached the crap out of the inside and scrubbed away all the gunk. When I finished I stood up to wipe the sweat of my face with my shirt sleeve and then realized the smell was not from the refrigerator….

            It is a very special smell. It’s like a mixture of sour milk, sweat, and mildew. It’s the peace corps Samoa fragrance. We all have it, and we are all used to it. I have yet to find a cure for the odor. I wash my clothes with quality soap and I am even using softener. Never fails though, after about two hours in a t-shirt it starts to creep up on ya. Then it finally takes over and the worst part is, you become immune to it and the smell become tolerable. Changing would be ridiculous because the smell would undoubtedly find its way to the new shirt as well.

            Moral of the story is thank your washing machines, air conditioning and febreez…show them a little love people.

Until next time….still smelly in Samoa

Peace and Love

Tutti-Ta...

My Year 8 Divas

Dont Mess with Da Best

JV boys getting ready

Samauga Soccer moms are the best

ENELIKO....Star Varsity player...if you couldnt tell just by looking at him

Uma A'oga

Coco Samoa anyone?

6 Months

            I remember the night before I left. I was still packing, which isn’t unusual for a procrastinator like me. Packing for two years seems pretty unrealistic. It was like things kept popping into my head that I thought I had to have. I look back now and realize how different I would have done the whole packing thing. That last day was painful, saying goodbye to my family and best friends, thinking that for most of them it will be two years before I see them again. That last night I sat there just thinking I can’t believe it’s actually here. It was my parents, Kenny, and Steph who took me to the airport the next morning. We had Starbucks coffee and sat there making sure I didn’t forget anything and pretending like this wasn’t one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. We didn’t leave time for a big dramatic goodbye. When it was time everyone slipped on their sunglasses and we gave our hugs and I gave my words of love and they gave their words of encouragement. No turning back…

            6 months….that was all 6 months ago. It feels like a lifetime ago. If I could sum up these past six months in one word it would be”rollercoaster”. Emotionally, mentally, physically this whole experience has been a rollercoaster ride. You are away from the people that mean most to you, slowly you feel disconnected from your life at home and all while you’re in a foreign country with complete strangers. Group 83 quickly built a relationship and it grows stronger every day, and now I couldn’t imagine this experience or my life without them. These people are my support system. There are just some things that we aren’t able to write home about and are lucky to have one another for that. Each one of us is so unique and different, all having different stories and different reasons for being here.

            I look back over the past six months and remember my reasons for doing this. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to not just travel but live in a different country. I wanted to do something completely on my own and climb the ladder of independence. Well check, check, and check.

So what new things have I learned or done in the past six months?

1.      Made 20 amazing new relationships

2.      How to kill a chicken and pluck it

3.      Some of the Samoan language

4.      How to ride a bus when its doubled its maximum capacity

5.      I have mastered the art of eating with your hands

6.      Eating a fish still accompanied by its scales, head, and bones

7.      I am a certified scuba diver

8.      I have learned that food can sit out way longer than 4 hours…J…I still haven’t gotten any stomach problems…knock on wood

9.      Living on your own gives you way too much time to think and ponder your past and your future and that very moment

10.  Everything tastes better with coconut cream

11.  Other volunteers will refute this but palagi chicken is a million times better than Moa Samoa…

12.  How to make coconut cream

13.  Roosters do not just make noise when the sunrises. Actually I have yet to find a time when there not making noise

14.  Punctuality is extremely overrated

15.  Air conditioning is extremely underrated

16.  How to successfully do laundry in a bucket

17.  Reading has become a favorite hobby

18.  Cold showers have become tolerable

19.  Not lost my camera

20.  This is new as of today…have my first infected wound! Don’t worry its no big deal…

Fun and silly as those things may seem above, there are a lot more, but those are the ones off the top of my head. This experience has made me confront different emotions and problems that I haven’t experienced. I do think I am a different person from the girl that left home on October 4. There is a lot more to learn, a lot more to do, a lot more to see, and a lot more to become. Looking forward to the next year and a half.

Peace and Love

           

Its Been a While...Sorry

I will try to catch you all up on this month events. It’s been quite a rollercoaster of a month…

 I look forward to March every year. On the 5^th of this month every year since 1988 I and loved ones get to celebrate the day I came into this wonderful world. Steph was the first one to call me. She realized it was still the 4^th over here but followed it up by saying “hey, it’s your birthday here in your homeland”. The next day I woke up to many texts from my “homeland” all saying the same message “Happy Birthday. Miss and Love You”. Thanks for all the birthday wishes! Twenty three is usually one of those unexciting birthdays…but I got to spend my 23^rd birthday on an Island and I was getting scuba certified. Which bring me to my first topic…..

Scuba Diving

I am unfortunately still not certified. Due to weather conditions our schedule was pushed back a day which left us with two dives to come back and do another time. I however, still have three dives to do before I get my certification. Don’t dive when you have a head cold. Your ears won’t equalize and you will come up to the surface with your French instructor, Fabian, saying “don’t worry but you have blood coming out of your nose”. I attempted to do dive number two after my first dive but my ears didn’t want to. So I hung out on the boat with the two Samoan mates and had to endure through the standard fesilis by samoan tama (questions from samoan boys). Where you come from? You like Samoa? How long will you be here? (which is always followed up by a wow that’s long time) and then you will get asked one of the following…or all of the following: You like Samoan boys? Do you have a boyfriend? You want a Samoan friend?....and then they laugh really hard with their friends for 15 minutes. By the age of 13 these boys know these questions and will ask any palagi girl. I make up different answers every time now.

Anyways…so the diving I did do was great. It was really awkward at first and I kept confusing the signal for going up (thumbs up) with the okay signal (could also be mistaken for a bad word in some countries). I use the thumbs up every day, it signals “all good” or “yes” never do I use it to say I am going to ascend. Fabian became frustrated with me but the best part about scuba is you can’t talk, so he couldn’t yell at me.

            I live two villages away from the dive place so I should be able to finish up  my certification by the end of April.

Next Order of business…”Your Birthday is not until next Friday”

My great friends were very concerned that we couldn’t celebrate my birthday together. So we designated the following weekend to be my Birthday. My dear friend Rachel didn’t even call me on my birthday, her response was “your birthday is not until next Friday”. If you knew Rachel then you know its nothing to be offended by. My birthday on March 11 was amazing. A group of us got together and had a wonderful time catching up and talking/venting about village life.

 I hear everything everything is good in three’s. Me Rachael and Lindsey have become close and sometimes it sucks having them on the other Island. But Digicel is so great and I will usually use my  30 free texts on them. I also didn’t get their permission to write their names on my blogs, but I hear they have been talking about me too.

And now lets talk about the Aoga….School

I finally feel like I am getting through to the students…well that’s how I feel today. It truly is hard work trying to figure out what works. So far my list of what doesn’t work trumps the list of what does. I think I am handling it well though, I realize that this semester is all about trial and error. Well hopefully it is just this semester. I have finally taken over year seven English. The teacher was a little confused as to why I wasn’t using the curriculum. But uh  I can’t say the things I want on here about that. My first goal was classroom management, my first and hardest goal to achieve. It’s hard to find something that works for students who are used to getting hit when they do something wrong or when they don’t do something wrong. I am still a bit confused at times when I see the punishments going on. But for me,I have found that embarrassment works. Sometimes I make the year 8 boys come up and hold my hand while I’m teaching. The worst is if I kick you out. No one wants to leave let alone be kicked out of the “cool” teacher’s class. The good news is, I am finding things that work.

Now for all you teachers out there…I am sure you have heard of co-teaching. For all you non teachers out there; co-teaching is a variety of methods to teach a class with two teachers. I have discovered a new co-teaching method…

Introducing: One Teach One gives a self Mani Pedi

A couple days ago I was doing a English lesson and the other teacher was supposed to be observing me so we could review my lesson and discuss it. Ten minutes in I looked over and she had her foot on her lap and was scraping and filing her toenails. Twenty minutes later I went to ask her a question and she had switched to her finger nails. I think this method came from some grad students doing research at the cosmetology university. I just don’t know why  we didn’t learn about this method in our training.

I love the laid back free spirit attitudes of my fellow teachers. They are so generous as well. They generously made me the soccer coach of the school. Now don’t get me wrong. I am up for competition and I love soccer. However, these kids don’t play soccer, never have. So with my limited Samoan, I must teach these kids how to play. No Problem….especially since I was just informed that the only rules are handball and out of bounds. That makes it easy. These kids should fell honored to have HFS MVP soccer play as their coach. Two weeks until our first competition. Samauga will be number 1.

..now if anyone wants to donate soccer shoes…that would be greatJ

So life is good. I am healthy and well. I will try to update more often. Trips into town have been limited this month.

Enjoy the pictures

Peace and Love

Im Okay!

The Scuba Crew

Our lovely instructor Fabian...likes to look like a mime when he goes for a dive

KPOD

Year 7 doing their English Centers

Year3

Writers Block

I have never been a writer…so my solution to writers block is just closing Microsoft word and hope that I get some kind of motivation to write later.

I need some topics people. Comment on this post with some ideas of what to write about. That would be very helpful. In the mean time I will update you on the past two weeks…

For all you teachers out there who hate sloppy work from a student….come to Samoa. Students spend whole class periods making their paper look perfect. Copying down the notes or format for the assignment (since there are no copy machines at our school the students have to copy down the worksheet by hand) takes FOREVER. Most of the students don’t even do the work. There is a art form to this too. They use their rulers to create the lines for the title, even though they are doing on loose-leaf which as you know already contains lines. The lines are usually in red. Then the heading is in blue and the directions and questions are in black. You should see how concentrated the kids are while doing this. It gets exciting when someone messes up and they run around the room looking for someone who has whiteout to fix their mistake. It’s such a process, one that I can’t stand.

Jenny’s Classroom Rules

NO RULERS

NO WHITEOUT

BLACK PEN ONLY

Sometimes the simplest changes are the biggest….

I got my classroom taken away. I was marking the year 6 books during interval one day and noticed there was a lot of noise, more than usual, outside. I saw all of the desks and table being moved out of all the classrooms. I assumed that they were going to be clean, and another excuse to end school early. When I asked a teacher what was going on she told me that they were switching all of the classrooms, and year two was being split into two classes because it was so big. Its not a big deal, I just have to travel to each classroom instead of them coming to me. The problem with the big move was I had just organized the library, which is now piled in the year 2 room….

On a more positive note I have been working on a reading program with the year 7 and 8’s. It has been going very well. The students are starting to understand the routine, and even the lower students seemed to be getting something out of it. I am happy when the “lazy” boys come into my class excited to do the work! You can usually find this group of boys roaming around school or in the bathroom. They are my favorite and are determined to make me a fluent Samoan speaker.

In a week I will start seeing every class at least two times a week. I will be very busy but it beats observing all day long!

Last  weekend myself and other 83’s went to a beautiful waterfall. We had a great time swimming and jumping into the fresh water. It’s always a fun time when we get together. We sat around talking about school experiences trying to be positive for each other. It’s nice to have a group of people I can relate with and not feel so bad if things aren’t going perfect at my school.

In other news….

Next weekend I will hopefully be getting SCUBA certified. The weather has been wonderfully sunny and hot for the past two weeks. Knock on wood….

Stay tuned for pictures….

Peace and Love

TEVI AND RIVKA

ME AND MY GIRL RACH

CHRIS AND HIS P90X BOD WITH TEV AND MIKA

Pictures

My new kitty Penelope

Walking up on the first day

Kids doing their first assignment of the year

Administration :)

My little sister Sarai on her first day