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.