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
