Catch-up

Sorry for all the blogging delays. Getting internet installed has been… interesting to say the least. I can’t tell you the number of times that I have heard the word “tomorrow.” The Samoan tomorrow, by the way, is a special term, used to indicate a future event with no actual definable timeframe. It feels reassuring, but is deviously ambiguous, and the Samoans use it for everything. Anyway. I know there is a lot to catch up on, and I may miss some things, so I am sorry for that. Let’s see. I think I left off with the new house.

There are no longer five people living here, which is somewhat of a relief, although it was fun for the time it lasted… I am just glad, now that school is starting, that there is a sense of personal space again. Drew and Bret moved in to their house, which is approximately two feet away, after a long ordeal of flooding and cleaning and Kaleo (the landlord) promising they would move in “tomorrow.” Once it was cleaned from the flood waters, it turned out (I think) to be pretty nice, and they seem happy. It is also great that they are so close- nightly spades games have become a tradition, and we are all constantly in and out of each other’s houses. Felicia, the fifth roommate who was staying at our house, left yesterday for Manu’a ( the outer islands) where she will be teaching elementary school. It is especially quiet around here without her. Even more, her departure is yet another sign that the real reason we are all here is upon us…. Tomorrow, August 16^th, school starts.

So backing up a bit, and going back to last week. We finished orientation on Wednesday, and for the first time actually had some free days in which to explore. Thursday, a group of us (Mark, Eric, April, Felicia, Brenden, and I) decided to try to find the elusive Fagatele Bay (pronounced Fahng-ah-tell-eh). It is a small bay, protected by Park Services under federal law as a marine sanctuary… it is, in fact, the only marine sanctuary possessed by the U.S. below the equator. We all had heard about the Bay from a number of people- at the NOAA event we went to, it was constantly talked about, and the National Park Services guys had mentioned it as well. Oddly enough though, none of the local seemed to have any idea about it. When we got on the standard mode of transport, an aiga (pronounced ai-IN-ga) bus, the driver looked very confused at our request to be dropped off there- Optimistically, I announced that there was a sign- and he nodded. He had no idea. Luckily, I had remembered passing it a couple times on the way to visit friends in the Leone house, and so was able to pull the cord in time. I can’t really blame the driver though- for something so lauded, it was only marked by a sign about 4’x5’ on the side of the road- and only directions from someone who actually knew where it was could have led us to go down the street which was across the road from where the sign actually was. From there it didn’t get any easier to find. We walked down a street, which eventually turned from cement to dirt, and passed a landfill, a rock quarry, and a very nice Samoan lady, hanging her laundry out to dry, who gave us wrong directions. Instead of going to the right, where we could see an orange gate with a homemade sign saying [sic] PRIVAT, we took the left path, which as we would find out twenty minutes later, would lead us on a trek through the jungle on iffy paths to….. right behind the orange gate. As we later found out, the owners of the land and the orange gate are used to people coming to see the Bay, and will always unlock the gate for you if asked. Lesson learned. Once past the gate however, it was about twenty minutes more hiking, 15 of which were on wide grassy paths. The last five were on a very steep, stony paths which had some crudely hewn steps, and finally to a very… interesting set of wooden stairs (which luckily did in fact turn out to be very stable) leading down to the beach.

It was completely worth it when we got there. Though the sand area of the beach was small, it overlooked a ridiculous view of blue water, steep black cliffs and dense jungle. It was also completely secluded. With the exception of one random Samoan spear-fisher (who we later found out was not allowed to be spear fishing there) we were completely alone the entire day. As soon as the girls realized this, we all stripped down to our… swimsuits! Not a victory anywhere else, but in AmSam, girls are supposed to wear non-short shorts (like basketball shorts) and either a t shirt or a wide strap tank top to swim in. Compared to that, swimsuits felt both scandalous and amazing.

To the left of the “Small Beach” which is its official name, was another 20 foot beach, this one of coral. I renamed it the Hermit Crab beach, which, though not imaginative, was apt. There were literally hundreds of them, ranging in size from a fingernail to a baseball. There were also a range of shells, among which I found a gorgeous conch shell about the size of my palm. On the right side of Small Beach, there was a mini freshwater waterfall, as well as some climbable areas of lava rock leading up into the jungle. All this was great, but the best part was yet to come. As it turns out, Fagatele Bay contains more types of corals than any other reef in American Samoa, as well as the healthiest. This of course, leads to an incredible array of tropical fishes. At one point, at about 4 o clock, as we were making our last snorkel run, we ran into the middle of a school of over 400 iridescent yellow, black striped fish. Over the course of the day we probably saw over 50 or more different kinds of reef fish, including Picasso fish, angel fish, needlefish and many many more that I am not versed enough to know the names of yet. Even though the hike back was all uphill and pretty brutal on us (we had probably done too much snorkeling) it was one of the best days of the trip so far, and probably one of the coolest days I have had, period.

Side note- in an effort to get this blog back to real-time posting, I am skipping some stuff, none of which is hugely enlightening or interesting, don’t worry.

On Monday, all the public high school teachers and administrators gathered at Tafuna high school, for a morning of long speeches and random music intervals. The idea (I think) was to get the teachers together and united for the school year. Since everything was in Samoan, however, that didn’t really happen for me. That afternoon all the teacher went back to their assigned schools- I of course, went to Nu’uuli VocTech, where I was given a promise of an eventual class schedule, and a room key. I was super excited- finally, to see my room! Well, that crashed as soon as I opened my door. Apparently, my room, which is room 103 was the Electrical Repair classroom last year. Translation: It was amazingly dirty and full of junk. I don’t have pictures of the actual starting point, but to give you an idea, there was a garish red and yellow table taking up half the room (I, or rather my clothes, later found out that this paint rubs off), topped with a broken industrial sized A/C unit, a broken microwave, and a broken computer, as well as a bunch of mysterious wires and bits of metal. There were more random metal parts scattered around the room, as well as some table tops that apparently had been converted to big painted billboard-like things with space to screw in lightbulbs. The walls were a gross industrial and very dirty taupe…. All in all, not incredibly uplifting. I couldn’t do anything about it Monday though- that work would come on Tuesday.

Tuesday, for lack of a better word, was hell. Luckily, the electrician teacher this year, Lou, helped me out, but all morning was basically spent on heavy lifting. The afternoon arrived with a bucket of white paint, a roller, and a paintbrush. The roller was only useful on one wall- the others are cinderblock, so the next four hours were spent painting my entire room white with one four inch paintbrush.

Wednesday was another teacher conference at Tafuna. We were split by subject, so I went with all the science teachers. The morning was fine- not incredibly interesting or enlightening, but fine. The afternoon however…. Well, the DOE apparently invited a Creationist to come and talk to all of us- problem was, he wasn’t really a proponent of Creationism. He made such fun statements throughout his 3 hour lecture as… “Evolution takes the God out of our children,” “according to Science, if you didn’t see it happen, you can’t prove it exists,” “Dinosaurs could have just as easily been made extinct from heroin overdoses and smoking…. We weren’t there!” (he was completely serious about that one, unfortunately). After his lecture ended, a bunch of teachers discussed his presentation, away from campus. All of us basically had the same thoughts- it’s not the idea of teaching Creationism as an alternate theory that truly bothers us. It is that his presentation a) deliberately presented data in a false or misleading way to support his points and b) he didn’t really argue for Creationism, only against Evolution. Furthermore, many of the arguments which he stated against evolution also could be turned against Creationism, a fact which he conveniently ignored. Overall, if the DOE had wanted us to introduce creationism as part of the curriculum, they might have been better served by asking.

Thursday was devoted to room preparation again- Mostly lots of cleaning, making decorations, cleaning more, arranging tables, etc. I did spend a truly enjoyable two hours coloring the Sun and eight planets (I am still very depressed that Pluto is no longer a planet), with crayons, a medium I haven’t really touched since middle school at the latest. I couldn’t put any of the decorations up however, because the adhesive things I had bought to everything up around the classroom proved no match for the humidity.

Friday was VocTech’s first staff meeting- and it proved to be quite an experience. It started with one of the teachers having a jam session on his ukulele, which went from traditional Samoan songs to “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music. Then we had the traditional prayer and song, and then breakfast was available. The “continental breakfast” (their words) was actually a pretty impressive spread of food; there was fresh fruit, two different traditional Samoan foods, koko rice, and something made with the jelly from young coconuts and tapioca, as well as boiled eggs, and….. cooked Vienna sausages and Fried Spam. There was also, for an extra element of weirdness, an assortment of Otis Spunkmeyer muffins. I tried everything, although in hindsight, that might have been a mistake… I think either the SPAM or sausages were full of MSG and I got an incredible stomach ache and headache. After breakfast, the staff went around and introduced themselves, and if they wanted to, a talent which they possessed- James, who lives next door to us, sang “Imagine,” by John Lennon. Another woman sang a religious song. After all the introductions were done, Ms. Kava (our principal) gave a speech, then decided we were all too low energy for her liking… her solution? Making a room full of thirty adults full of SPAM and eggs to do the Hokey Pokey! No lie though, it was both fun and hilarious. There were more speeches by the administrators, then a minor verbal spat between one of the teachers and the head of Administration- for a second I thought that someone was going to get fired… but luckily that didn’t happen. There was some more administrative stuff, then we were done… I went on a mission to buy tape, which was successful, and I was finally able to finish my classroom…. And begin to prepare myself for the much maligned and anticipated first week of school.

Pictures tomorrow!