birthday

My birthday weekend.
I should have known…Rachel is jinxed when it comes to diving. If you want to plan a dive trip, be sure to not include her….Not because Rachel isn’t totally amazing, because she is. It is just that the diving gods must be against her or something. She has been trying to get her diving certification for many years and something has always come up. This year we have had a hurricane scare and a tsunami scare the two times she was supposed to dive.
I thought it was about time for her luck to change so we planned a dive trip for my birthday weekend. However, strong winds prevented the dive trip as the shop was worried about their boat.
That didn’t bug us because we still had our plans for dinner, an awesome grilled cheese night. The night did not fail us as it was just as delicious as we were hoping.
Rachel gave me a watermelon for a gift....which was amazing! We have been trying to figure out for the past few months how we can grow watermelons on trees. We planted the seeds, so hopefully they will sprout soon!
The night was full of food singing, and merriment. It was such a good night.
The next day we hopped on the bus and headed towards Salelologa to continue our merriment. We headed to the Peace Corps office and was completely disappointed because the door was locked and we could not get in.
Ali was with me and we took turns punching the code in the door. We heard the sound of the click, however with it still not unlocking, it got us nervous that someone played a nasty trick on us and locked the office with a key that we do not possess. We also tried the trick of in case someone was inside ensureing them that we would not tell the police of their wrongdoings, if a dead body was inside. Nothing was working.
We really wanted to have our central place where we can place our items from the market and just enjoy the luxury of air conditioning for a little bit. Across the street from our office is the Digicel store and we decided to head there to learn about their new promotions.
They just installed two computers and if you buy a phone card you are able to use them. Since there is talk about them closing our beloved office, at least there is a place where they play fun dancing music, have amazing air conditioning, and lets us use their internet.
The people in the Digicel store are so amazing that if you request a different song, they actually will assist you. Needless to say I will be gladly returning to our new office because it is full of good times!
After our fun in the store/new office we went swimming and had a jolly good time. I was rocking my swim cap to avoid any more ear infections. We were all diving off a dock into the water splashing every which way.
On Sunday, I went to a river and gave swim lessons to a group of children. It was a lot of fun and made me miss being in the water as much as I used to be!
Since my birthday is midweek, I am sure the birthday fun is sure to continue and I am looking forward to it, especially since so far it is one of the best birthday celebrations.

bus accident

Saved by the hair on my little chin chin!
On Friday I was heading for my amazing birthday weekend which was to start with fabulous grilled cheese at Rachel’s house. Being the amazing school system that Samoa has, my classes were cancelled for Friday for tests, singing and sports. I had an awesome lesson planned, but I guess that’s fa’aSamoa!
Since there were no classes for me to teach, and I had already probably doubled the teaching hours I was supposed to do, I decided to go off for an adventure. It was either going to be to see the amazing sports day for the kolisi kids, or send in paperwork to the Peace Corps office that was already overdue from not having internet.
My desire to be responsible won and I headed to Salelologa to use the internet. Since I was not going to be in school I decided that I would be prompt with my visit to the city and head there early. I left my house at 5:45 to ensure that I did not miss the bus at all. Of course with my luck with busses, I had to wait a long time. After about 45 minutes, in which I got to talk to a lot of the girls headed to the games to participate in netball (still not sure what exactly that game is) and volleyball. The busses towards the event were packed with children crammed in there worse than a can of eleni (or I guess most people would say sardines…)
I have been on my share of busses that were four to a seat with people standing, but this was taking it to a new extreme! There were so many people on these busses that it was hard to imagine!
So there I was waiting for the pink bus to come when a teacher from Sagone pulls up to offer me a ride. I gladly accept and off we were on our ride to Salelologa.
Little did I know that that teacher saved me from a car accident.
I don’t know if the bus drivers from the north shore aren’t used to the roads on my side of the island or if they were just tired. But they were riding on the wrong side of the road worse than normal! Our car had to swerve off the road a few times in order to avoid an accident. That should have been my warning that something was about to happen.
I made it to the city and did my computer business before heading on the bus to Rachel’s.
I was beginning to hear rumors of a bus crash. But did not hear all the details until later. (Not that I still know all the deltails.) But the pink bus that I was supposed to be on collided with a bus from the north shore. The busses were driving too close to each other and touched going at a fast speed. (35 miles per hour can be considered fast for some people!)
The major problem with this is that it can get hot on busses, especially crowded ones, so some people lean out the windows. There can be arms, heads and other body parts out of the windows. Sadly at least one person was leaning their arm outside the window, and lost their arm.
In my life I have just missed being at a lot of scary events, and I am happy this is another one that I missed.

Hate and love

Hate and Love
The longer I am here the less and less the words hate and love make sense to me. It does not seem like there is any middle ground at all.
For example I was told that I was hated for not texting someone. I was also asked if I hated some of my students because they are cheeky (I wonder if that word will stick with me after I head back to America!) Another time my sister said she hated a girl on American Idol because of her song. Every time I have a talk with the people about how hate is such a strong word. You can dislike something, but hate it really rude to say all the time. I doubt I am getting through to anyone yet….but maybe this will be mission over the next two years.
The word love is tossed around so much as well. If you spend any time with someone you love them. It is a little ridiculous.
Living here is like being in a kindergarten classroom with these words being thrown around so much. Maybe it is because English is the second language (or trying to be) and it is difficult to learn new words that mean something similar.
If Samoans can say that they hate things or people so easily and share their love with everything, why can I not use the word love when I talk about papayas?

School Bus

School Busses
Primary schools are usually made up of one village, however for some smaller villages, they often combine to make one school. My school is just the case. I live in the center village so I see the students all the time. The villages that are furthest away from my school are super careful about going to school. More careful than anyone could even imagine in my mind!
Instead of having a school bus, the students that go to that village line up single file and march over to their village together. There are a few parents that help keep the students in line.
It is hysterical to watch the student train pass by. But I love how the parents take the initiative to keep the children safe.

Chile Earthquake

The earthquake in Chile and Tsunami watch
I learned about the earthquake after midnight after the third text our safety and security officer sent finally woke me up. Around two he was making his rounds calling everyone to inform that they should head to higher grounds by seven in the morning. Living uphill, I wasn’t too worried because I really had no need to evacuate. Still I was anxiously nervous to see what would come out of this. I figured it wasn’t worth waking my family to warn them as we would not need to evacuate. I was in a half sleep slumber the rest of the night, not fully awake and not fully asleep. At four someone called my Samoan parent to let them know about it. So they were awake and loud as they were investigating for answers. I don’t think any of us went back to sleep after that. After I finally left my room around 7 in the morning, the television was on and thankfully Saturday mornings are brought to you by BBC so we were informed of some of the news. Barak Obama was on warning people in Hawaii to evacuate the coasts and I am pretty sure he also made his shout out of Guam and American Samoa to do the same.
In the morning I was still planning on going to my different church activities, since it was Saturday. I headed to the Momona church at 8 o’clock for their event. The Momona church is as close as a house can be to the sea and I was looking forward to having a view of if the tsunami happened while I would still be high enough uphill and safe. However, when I got to the church it was completely deserted.
I headed home to get ready for our own church service. It was more uphill than we lived so I know that our safety and security officer would be proud of my decision! On the way to church a noticed a few people evacuating our village. Now this may seem like a smart idea, however they were evacuating towards the sea. I never understand the Samoan way of thinking.
Thankfully the tsunami never hit here. My sister was giving me updates from the American news which is the only reason I knew that the waves hit Hawaii and Pago Pago. Since it didn’t make the news here, I am hoping it was not bad, and everyone was safe.

School calendar

School
I am starting to settle into my school calendar more and more each day…although that because of teacher shortages it makes everyone’s job harder. One teacher in our school has been out for the past three weeks from being ill, so that means the rest of us have shuffled around to attend his class, which usually means having a class or two unattended. It is very frustrating to see these children just sitting there so I sometimes fill in a class for longer than expected because otherwise there is no teacher. I have been neglecting the younger children in the school. I guess that is okay since I am supposed to focus my time on the upper grades, and I have been enjoying coming up with new English activities to do with my class.

rugby

Rugby
Did you see it? The World Cup of Rugby was just in Las Vegas…I know I never knew much about rugby in the past…and in fact I still do not know much…but I do know the pride Samoa feels for their team. (They also seem to have a lot of respect for the American team…in which I never knew America really had a team…)
I hope you are flying your Samoan flag high in the air since Samoa became the winner of the tournament! If you are wondering what it looks like, it is red white and blue with a star….doesn’t it seem like every flag fits that description?
Go Samoa!