Odds and Ends Thursday 73

Since the Year 12s and 13s are all in SchoolC and PSSC exams this week and the 9s, 10s, and 11s are off until Monday, this week has been pretty slow. I’ve been rolling into school around 9:30 every morning, and those morning hours have been spent preparing for Prizegiving, even though it’s 4 weeks away. The Indian missionaries are leaving for India on 22 November, and they want to have everything in its place before they go. So I’ve been compiling grades for the upper levels and printing trophy labels. Keeping busy. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• I took the cat up to the vet yesterday to start preparations for her to fly back to America next month. I paid $10 for a taxi ride up the mountain only to find out they’re out of whatever vaccine that cat’s going to need. It may arrive tomorrow. I paid another $10 to get home.
  
• Not to beat a dead horse... but how about those San Francisco Giants?
  
• In the World Series / Halloween craziness of last weekend, I forgot to mention I spent Friday night in the host village. Everything there is good. It’s my host mother’s 70th birthday next month, and there are lots of celebration plans in the works.
  
• The SchoolC exam for computers was this afternoon. Here are some of the more inane questions:
  • The printer that actually throws ink onto paper to produce the intended characters is known as a/an...
    
  • What can Simon and Uili have on their computer that wll help them speed up communication with local and overseas customers and suppliers?
    
  • Underline the printer that would cost you more.
    laser printer inkjet printer
• I’m not really interested in any World Series stuff. I just want a Buster Posey jersey. That kid’s brilliant. And he looks like a batboy.
  
• I’ve started watching Six Feet Under. Black humor is great.
  
• How about Chris and AJ’s Avatar couple’s costume? It was elaborate. Did you see the ears?
  
• I got called up to the girls’ college up the hill from me to fix the computer in their front office. Windows wasn’t recognizing the modem. After a half hour of tinkering, I plugged the modem into a different expansion slot on the motherboard. Windows found the modem, the college staff thinks I’m a genius. I fooled them.
  
• My host sister Asolima rode the bus with me into town Saturday morning, where I helped her shop for Sunday to’ona’i. At Frankie Molesi I picked up some Colgate Herbal Whitening toothpaste for $2, which I proceeded to leave in the shopping bag that Asolima took back to Fausaga. At Lucky Foodtown tonight, I picked up an identical box of Colgate Herbal Whitening toothpaste... for $4.30. Oh well.
  
• The fluorescent light bulb over my dining room table burned out. I’m living in this house for 4.5 more weeks. Do I throw down the money to replace it?
  
• I’m ready to not be bald anymore.
  
• I sewed my monk’s hood myself out of a brown ’ie. This was impressive because I’ve never sewn a hood before, and risky because I didn’t start sewing until after I shaved my head. But it all worked out.
  
• The best part of the Saint Francis costume came on Sunday morning when Kaelin 82 texted me with, "Make me a channel of your peace." It was worth shaving my head, if only for that.

That’s all I got for this week. I hope you’re well.

Birds flying in the staffroom. It's Birds! It walked on my pillow!

School secretary Faalau and me sharing an impromptu lunch after it was discovered we'd ordered too much for the exam proctors.

Scout trying to get in on the Jim Beam.

For my host mom's 70th birthday, the guys tore down the garage to build a new large faleo'o.