A Day in the Life of Lillian

A Day In The Life of Lillian
I wake up early to make sure I arrive on time to school. Put on my pulatasi, unlock my bike and head for the gate off of our family compound. The gate is broken, so I have to move the huge log and the piece of log that holds it closed. I then open the gate and ride my bike through, ringing the bell every time I pass someone on the road. I head downhill, then uphill again to the start of my neighboring village where my school is.
I hop off my bike, and walk it through the the gate of the school. I am greeted by several kids and adults welcoming me. The adults are selling bags of popcorn, pancakes, chips, noodles, and pork cakes (Believe it or not I did not misspell that). The kids are playing with each other before they have to do their duties of cleaning up the school.
My bike is locked next to the year 8 classroom and head to the teacher’s office. I do a little quick preparation work for the day and the kids head to class after cleaning.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the kids have an assembly. In the assembly, the kids sing songs, and have a little spiritual time before the teachers’ give the announcements. The assembly is in the last two rooms of the school. Rooms where the walls have fallen down so they connect easily to one another.
I then head over to my first class, year 5. Some days the teachers are busy, and I start with both year 5 and 6 together. Those days are usually fun, because we start off with songs and some games. We sometimes review the things I know both classes are needing help with.
After singing many songs, the year 6 class leaves, and I am left with my lovely year 5 class. We do reading, speech practice, English, and essay writing. We are so busy for the hour we have together and have a good time.
Next stop is back to the year 6 in their classroom. The year 6 classroom is full of the brightest students ever. They are always a lot of fun. We work on reading during the time we have together. My favorite part of the week is when we get to act out the stories. The kids have become real good at turning text into dialogue to create a readers theatre.
My next group of kids is with little kids. On Mondays and Wednesdays I get to year 3. Year 3 is full of the sweetest most polite kids ever. We sometimes work of speech and spelling, but usually our fun is singing. The kids prefer the 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed song, as they are amazing at acting it out.
The other days I go to a combined class of years 1 and 2. As long as one of the teachers is in the classroom with me it is a good time. We sing a lot of songs, and practice naming the parts of the body. It can be rough some days since the kids can amount to about to about 70 kids. We still can get a lot of work though with writing, and drawing. My favorite part is doing the Macerena dance to the alphabet. I use so much energy with the kids that after class I usually gulp down whatever is left in my water bottle right away.
Break time! Interval, or what we call in America, recess. Most of the days, I spend hanging out with the kids on the porch. We talk, we sing, and we just enjoy each other’s company.
After interval, I go to year 7. The kids have been cheeky this term so we haven’t had as much time to play games or sing songs. We have an hour together, so we get a lot of work done in spelling, writing, English, and essay writing. It is amazing how much work we can get done. Every week, we have testing, and I have been impressed at their improvement.
Year 4 is my next stop. The kids are always full of energy and I use that energy to get a lof of work done. Today we played charades to practice verbs and adverbs. Last week we played sentence games, and we also spend a lot of time singing songs.
My last stop at my primary school is year 8. In year 8 we alternate between writing, reading and spelling. We have pen pals at Rachel’s school, and Rachel and I giggle at the silly things the kids write back and forth to each other, since we also write silly things to each other.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have to rush out of school since I have one more stop to go to before my school day is over. I am helping out at the kolisi in the computer room. So I hop on my bike and head to the next village as fast as I can pedal, quickly climb up the stairs and open the door where about two dozen kids are. I assist them with their homework, and any computer questions that they have. I also help the computer teacher with any questions she may have about her lessons.
Finally it is time to go home and relax for a little bit, but my day is far from over. After my hour break in which I read, take a nap, write , or enjoy a little bit of a movie, I’m ready to start exercising. I am really trying to take the race next month seriously, so I make sure every week day (there is no exercising for the Sabbath of any religion, so Saturdays and Sundays are both out) I am out of my house between 5 and 5:30 with my sneakers tied, and an I’e over my shorts. I have been running between 15-30 minutes uphill towards other villages, and then enjoy a nice walk back. Because of being able to walk one way, I am able to connect with more people in my neighboring villages. I have learned that running is a difficult activity, especially when your legs are constricted by something like a skirt.
I usually find amazing people to walk with on my way home, like today I got to walk most of the way with two women from my village. They re-introduced me to every man we encountered, told me which ones had jobs, and which ones I should date/marry. We joked a bit as we walked and I said fa pe’u (goodbye boyfriend) to every man that we passed, to give us all a laugh.
They then told me that part of becoming Samoan was climbing trees, and told me I needed to practice. I tried for several minutes while a crowd of about a dozen people laughed and cheered me on. But sadly, I failed. They told me it was because I had my sneakers on and I had to do it barefoot, but I was not about to do that…today. We then had to walk through the village grooming me as I was now covered in these little prickly things. I had about four girls helping to get them out of my hair, while two people helped get the prickly things off my clothes.
When I finally make it home I drink about 64 ounces of much needed water, as even though I am exercising at the coolest part of the day, I am still really hot. Then it is time to shower.
After showering, I spend some time with my family, and then we have dinner together. Between 8 and 9:30, I am ready for bed and enjoy a nice slumber.
Although there is little variety from this schedule, I still love every waking moment of my days.