The Grand Opening

These are just a few photos from the Wednesday. There is a new building that the Americans funded opening at Delap that will be used for fourth and fifth grade classes, I think. So there was a huge ceremony: the American ambassador came, and lots of other probably important people were there. A few days ago, Sumiko asked me if I knew how to sew a dress. I told her I did not, so she had her aunt make me a dress, which was the same dress all of the ladies at the school wore for that day. So I got my first veritable Marshallese mumu, and all of the kids loved it. The other ladies at the school kept coming up to me and grabbing my sleeve and saying "eman, eman" which means "good! good!" It was a really fun day. There was lots of dancing, including the Delap group IDK [5th/6th grade], who dress up in bandanas and long sleeve shirts and low hats and perform ridiculous....I don't even know the term I'm looking for. I was going to say "street dances" but that sounds really stupid. And if I say, stuff like on "America's Best Dance Crew" you will know I have watched that show. Whatever-- either way, they were really funny and very good dancers. 

That afternoon I started my career as assistant volleyball coach for the 6th grade girls. Our season is looking promising so far. The girls are actually really, really good. Much better than me. We have our first game on Tuesday, so that should be pretty exciting. 

Here are some pictures from the day--

The kindergarteners doing their dance for the ceremony. 

The staff picture from the grand opening of the new building. I do not need to tell you who I am because I still look really pale even after 2 months spent near the equator (someone said, "you're like a blinding white beacon.") I'm wearing a Marshallese mumu, which is basically a dress which is worn by most of the older women on the island. 

3C Class, DES

Finally got a picture of my class. There is one where they are all standing still, but I thought this would be more true to their actual nature... lots of hitting going on and gangsta signs being flashed

Sorry for the delay. I have fallen off my usual once a week schedule of updating because the internet and the power up on our part of the island have been really bad lately. And also I have become a little lazy. I’m not sure what has been going on with our power. It’s gone off every day for the past few days, and it’s bad because it gets really hot inside our trailers, and we have lots of food inside the refrigerators.

So. I am trying to think of new and exciting things that have happened to me. Last weekend, it was Peter’s birthday, so on Saturday we went to his favorite place, Dar, to eat. Dar is this little Marshallese restaurant with really good Marshallese and American food. It is also the best bargain deal ever. Sometimes I am surprised that things are just about as expensive on this island as they are back in the states. I think minimum wage here is something like a dollar an hour, so I’m not sure how people afford most things. I think they generally just eat a ton of rice, which is really cheap. The grocery we shop at, Payless, is a little expensive—people I think get most of their food from these little corner stores …the Marshallese version of peripteros in Greece. Like the peripteros, they are everywhere, and sell mostly junk food. The stores are run by the Chinese and the stuff they sell is really cheap—I’ve heard some of it is smuggled in, but I’m not really sure. 

On Saturday night we went out for the first time. Edie, Kyle and I, and also 2 other teachers from the high school—one World Teach and one Dartmouth grad—got a ride down to the resort, where they had karaoke. It was pretty deserted, but we were treated to a stirring rendition of “We Are The World” by one of the really flamboyant Fijian barbers who works on the island (someone said that this was Peanut Delicious, the most notorious of the barbers, but I am not really sure). Then I decided to select Jingle Bell Rock and the atmosphere sort of declined from there.

Anyway on Sunday we went out to this island called Enemanit with a man named Kirk Pino. He is a Hawai’ian guy who Eric and Kyle had met in Tide Table one evening. Eric and Kyle have a really good talent for meeting people which I utterly lack. So for 10$ a person, he took us out to this little island on the outer part of the atoll. Enemanit is like a public beach (I think) but of course you have to have the means—a boat—to get out there. It was a pretty fun day—there was a downed fighter plane in the lagoon, and a dock for swimming, and some of the biggest pigs I have ever seen. On the way back, our boat broke down so it took awhile to get home.

This week has been going pretty well. The class is settling into a routine, and teaching has become much easier. Granted, the kids are still really poorly behaved for me, but I still have some good leverage with the stickers. They are endlessly fascinated by the stickers… the only hitch I’ve ran into so far was when I tried to give Iverson, one of the boys, a Dora the Explorer sticker. You have to picture a really tiny cute eight year old with a long rat-tail saying this, but when I tried to give him Dora, he got really upset, and yelled “NOT DORA!!!,” which was actually his best use of English in the 7 weeks I have been here so far.  So I gave him Dora’s weird monkey-friend instead.

After school, I’ve been walking home with all of my kids who live in the Delap area. Behind the main street there is like a little side road that curves around and then meets the main road once again, and a lot of my students live back there. So it’s been fun to walk with them every day. Conversationally we still can’t get really far, but my favorite student, Robson (note: different from the Bobson who wrote me a valentine) has pretty good English, so he can translate sometimes.

Also this week we were learning about farms and I decided to show my kids a slideshow of Jason’s farm. They really liked it, and then we wrote him a letter. I was trying to get them to think of questions to ask him, but it was a little hard. Some of the rejected submissions included: “Do you have monkeys?” and “Do you grow carrots?” because that question was suggested at least 15 times. I think this might be because carrots are the only vegetable they know. The other day I was trying to teach likes and dislikes—having them say “I like ____. I don’t like _______.” Everyone kept telling me they didn’t like rice, which definitely is not true, so I after trying to explain that things you don’t like are things you think are bad, pretty much all 32 of them told me they don’t like carrots. 

Other happenings in the class… today I showed The Lion King and a few kids started crying when Mustafa died. We had to turn off the movie right around that point and I felt really bad. Not related, but one of my kids is moving to Arizona, so I decided to show him the pictures of Arizona I had on my computer, which were just of the Grand Canyon. So I think I convinced him that all of Arizona looks exactly like the Grand Canyon, which was not what I intended. And then again on the topic of misleading kids, I was trying to explain to the class what a “unicorn” was, and I drew one on the board, then had them draw me one for a bonus point on their quiz. After I collected the quizzes, I said to them, “so you know that a unicorn isn’t real, right?” and just got lots of blank stares.

This weekend we have plans to rent a golf cart and take it out to Laura, the edge of the atoll. There are some Dartmouth grads who are part of the year-long program who live out there. I think it’s only about 30 or so miles from town, but it takes about 2 hours to get there, because there’s only one road, and traffic can get really slow. We also are not sure how fast the golf cart goes. But we plan to go out there, eat some lunch, relax, then head back for dinner. It’s a bit crazy to think that after this, we only have one more free weekend, then it’s the dress rehearsal for the play.

I managed to upload some photos a few days ago. All photo credits go to Eric as usual. Also I finally took some pictures of my class so I'll try to get those up soon. 

The first one is: Kirk forcing us to dance on the boat ride home. 

Second: the trees on Enemanit 

Third: Ben, me and Robyn on the boat out to Enemanit

Fourth: Assembly day at Delap. The guy speaking is Baldwin, the principal 

Happy Valentine's Day

I really hope this is readable... a valentine given to me by Bobson, one of Eric's students. 

Update to come soon. 

Finally loaded some older pictures from our trip out to Bikirin a few weeks ago. 

Robyn, Ben and I on the boat out to Bikirin 
View of Bikirin coming in on the boat
 From left: Mr. Domnick, a friend of Senator DeBrum's, Eric, Derek, Kyle, Me, Anna, Robyn, Ben, and Senator DeBrum

Pics from this week:

Anna and I sitting on a tree at Laura beach

Swimming at Laura beach. I am the tiny person in blue shorts. You can see the other side of the atoll on the left. 

Some of the Delap kids (in yellow) playing rugby

Sorry I still haven’t figured out how I can upload photos on here. The internet has been too slow in general lately, but I’ll try to get some up this week.

Anyway…this week. We have reached the halfway point, which is strange, because it feels like no time has gone by, but then at the same time, I feel like I’ve been here forever. There were not too many exciting events this week. My class is doing well. Teaching has become easier, though as some of us were talking about the other day, there is no such thing as having a so-so day here. Either I feel like I’ve been the Best Teacher Ever all day long, or I feel like the children have terrible behavior and nothing I have tried to teach them has stuck. I do have a lot more Best Teacher Ever than hating-the-kids days, so that is good. And even when I get angry at the kids, I never stay angry with them. On my walk home from the high school, I inevitably see one of them, and they are so happy to see me, I forget all about how they hit each other and never listen to me.

My biggest problem in the classroom  (besides the givens of general classroom management and their overall lack of English comprehension) is probably cheating. I guess because of cultural differences, cheating just isn’t as big of a deal. Marshallese culture is more community/family oriented than American culture, and I think because of that fact, it doesn’t seem like a bad thing for them to help each other out. People in our group have varying levels of comfort with this idea. It’s a bit strange because cheating is considered really bad in America— a serious violation of honor. So when I see my kids cheating off of each other right in front of me during a spelling test, I get angry, but I hold myself back. I know some people wouldn’t agree with this, but I feel like it’s a pointless battle. When I see them cheating, I tell them to stop, and I let them know that I think it is wrong. But I also know realistically that they probably think about cheating differently than I do, and so it doesn’t make sense to yell at them. And they are also nine years old and I am not really the scream at little kids type of person. 

 

Another problem I have is the “red fingers” problem. For whatever reason, a favorite Marshallese snack is uncooked ramen noodles crushed up in a bag and then mixed with red kool-aid powder. So the kids eat this every day at lunch and then when they come back their fingers are all red and sticky and their papers are covered with red fingerprints. Obviously this is not a serious issue but I am sort of perplexed by the food combination, and would rather not that their papers not look like they are covered in bloody fingerprints.

Overall, though, I do not want you to get the impression I am having a lot of problems. I really love the kids and every day something really funny happens. Even though I can’t exactly carry on a conversation with many of them, I still really enjoy being around the kids. I eat lunch with them in the room every day, and a lot of them walk home with me from school.

I have been walking home in the afternoons, but it’s a longer distance now that we have moved—probably about an hour. So I take a taxi in the morning because I don’t want to get up absurdly early. The taxis are a little bit of an adventure because there is no telling how long it will take to get to Delap. The taxis here are ride-share, so that means the taxi will stop alongside the road after one person has gotten in and pick up more people. Then along the way to your destination, they will stop, drop off people, pick up more people, and probably get gas or run into a convenience store to buy something.  Some days it takes 10 minutes, and some days it takes 30 minutes. There is really only one road, but there are a few side streets, so going down one of those can take up time, too. 

On Wednesday, we had another conference at the ICC (international conference center). This time it was for the science curriculum, which for me was more applicable because I’m actually teaching science. Overall, it was a very strange conference. The woman came from the US and was a representative of the textbook company. However, she seemed not to have spent any time in a Marshallese classroom, because she was under the impression that most of the kids could actually read the material in the textbook. The textbooks are really nice—they are pretty new, and take a good approach to teaching. But in all honesty, I would probably use the Kindergarten level to teach my kids—not because my kids couldn’t understand the science content, but because the English is too complicated for them in the books that we have right now. There’s also tons of experiments involving microscopes, pond water, slides of onion cells, etc. and we obviously don’t have any of that equipment. The whole thing just seemed very out-of-touch with the actual situation here. Furthermore, the conferences at the ICC are a curse upon our group because after the first one I got very sick and then after this one Eric got strep throat. So hopefully this will be the last one we have.

This weekend, we did the usual—dinner at the resort on Friday, then a movie. I am pretty sure every single DVD for sale here is pirated, so we have already seen lots of movies that have not come out on DVD yet in the States. On Saturday, I went to see some of the Delap kids play in a rugby tournament, which was really fun. It was mostly Eric’s kids (older kids—6^th grade) but his kids are really funny and sometimes come to my room during lunch. Then I walked home, did my laundry, and went to the talent show at Assumption (the Catholic Church) where the gospel choir was performing. The talent show was packed—way more packed than the STI thing we went to a few weeks ago. It started about an hour and a half late, and then there was a solid 45 min of Kindergarten / first grade dances—the best one was to Tiffany’s “I Think We’re Alone Now”…I can’t figure out if it was done ironically, or if the choreographer really made a serious choice. The gospel choir went on finally, but we could hardly hear them, and the audience wasn’t exactly engaged. Some guy asked me to move my chair so he could see, and when I apologized he told me to “throw my sorry out the window” and then asked if I had any Pepsi.

We left after, and walked home, stopping at Formosa (the Chinese grocery) to get the worst ice cream I have ever had in my entire life. Then we walked home, taking the scenic route through “Demon-town” (the back road… not really that many demons, and less vicious dogs actually than the main road)

Sunday we all went out to Laura, which is on the edge of the atoll. It is really beautiful out there—green, and a lot of space. The field director drove us out there in her truck, and despite a treacherous ride sitting in the back, we made it out, and got to enjoy some great swimming and relaxing.

I do have some pictures, but the internet is really not cooperating, so I guess I’ll have to wait until I go to the resort or something, which I might actually do tomorrow to catch some of the Superbowl (my lunchtime falls right when kickoff starts). Oh I forgot to mention my great t-shirt sightings of the week. The first was at the gospel choir concert at Assumption when some kid was wearing a shirt with Saddam Hussein’s face on it that said “We Got Him! Dictator Deposed: Operation Enduring Freedom.” The other great t-shirt sighting is one that says “WHO DAT? Marshall Islands 2010” with a Saints logo. I might have to bring Assaf back a present.