Prizegiving 2010

Amanda, me, Tafale.

Standing room only in the Great Hall.

Me with a couple of year 12s.

Suasami and Bernie are also leaving after this year.

Me with a bunch of 11.1s.

A couple of year 11s stopped me outside the hall and requested I take their picture.

Colleen wins best in computers for year 11.

A bunch of the 11.2s.

Staff meeting after clean-up.

Mufti

The closest I ever came to wearing a uniform to school in The States was sophomore year of high school when our water polo coach required us to wear ties to school on the day of one of our post-season regional championship games. And that doesn’t really count. I still wore jeans. Our starting defensive hole set Will wore a clip-on tie on the collar of his T-shirt. So I make no claims to knowing the joys and pitfalls of wearing a uniform to school, but I can assume that free-dress days are an exciting treat.

I vaguely remember friends of mine who went to private school talking about free-dress days as rewards in some sort of scholastic or behavioral incentive scheme. Here in Samoa free-dress days come at a different price: literally a price. On occasion schools will use free-dress days as a fundraiser. From what I hear, the fee tends to be nominal—the one my school had last week was $10—though some students’ families have a harder time paying for this than others, of course.

The free-dress fundraiser is referred to as a Mufti. Since this is definitely not a Samoan word (two consecutive consonants is a linguistic impossibility in Samoan), I can only assume the term comes from Kiwi influence. Oh good. As it turns out, Wikipedia has an insightful article about the Mufti’s etymology. Apparently the term is Arabic.

In any case, I have to say from what I hear from other volunteers, my school deals with financing really well. School staff runs a small profit off the student canteen, and that tends to cover nearly all extracurricular expenses. This is a rare arrangement in this country, and it explains why in all the time I’ve been here, last week’s Mufti (to subsidize school magazine printing costs) was my first. In fact, when Koa texted me about a Mufti at his school back in February of this year, I had no idea what the term meant. Blakey had to explain it to me.

Free-dress comes with all the excitement one would expect. Girls wear earrings and make-up. Boys find their own ways to accessorize—hats, sunglasses, and for some, make-up.

The event seemed like a bigger deal for the lower levels. The 9s and 10s were all about it. The older kids, particularly the student prefects, seemed rattled with adolescent indifference and shrugged off the day as though it simply meant they didn’t have to worry about ironing that morning. By nature of their position, student prefects are on campus outside the normal school day pretty often, and much of that time is spent out of uniform.

And now that I think about it, my year 12 computer class was a bit of a fashion show. One girl Taeone, the pebble in my teaching sandals, was dressed to the nines with vinyl gold sandals and designer sunglasses. Legalo wore her hair down. Vincent, who tries his best to channel Michael Jackson, was in top form. It was a crack up.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Fautamara and Taeone.

Fanua and Eddie (who wore Vincent's sunglasses for this picture).

Boys from my year 10 English class. Vailima (in the middle) wore eye-liner. It was so punk rock.

Girls in my year 9 science class.

Akari from year 10. I have no idea what the 74 means.

Camp

It’s 10:35 p.m., and I’m sitting in the computer lab listening to a barrage of Rhianna, Justin Bieber, and Glee. All the year 13 students are camping here on campus for the next two weeks in order to cram for the Congregationalist school common exams in early October. For the next 2 weeks I’ll be teaching an extra 75-minute period Monday through Thursday. Yup. Year 13 Camp is on once more, and I’ve decide to embrace the teeny-bopper music aspect.

In effect, it’s the beginning of the end: 2 weeks of camp, 2 weeks of tests, 2 more weeks of camp, 2 more weeks of tests. From there it’s a short trot to Prizegiving. There’s that feeling in the air I vaguely remember from my last semesters of high school and college, where one suddenly realizes things aren’t going to last forever.

It’s true: I’m probably more in tune with that feeling because my year 13s’ end is my end too. Let’s not dwell too much on this.

Camp is exciting. Everything about it seems new. Some things feel like breaking the rules: the students wear street clothes rather than uniforms, I wear shorts and a t-shirt rather than my typical Hawaiian shirt and ’ie faitaga. It feels like rules are being broken; like we’ve gone behind the scenes a little. I went running tonight, and I admit I thought a little more about walking past everyone to get off campus. They’re going to see me go running, I thought. That’s weird.

It’s the other side of that teacher mystique. I remember thinking it bizarre to imagine my teachers going home and performing menial tasks. Buying groceries, washing the car on Saturday, feeding the dog. Weird.

But now, as I said, I’m on the other side. I can’t have students know that I go running. Or that I occasionally wear the same t-shirt 3 days in a row. Or that I can’t help singing along to “Don’t Stop Believing” in my own terrible, shrill voice. Oh well.

I’m not wholly convinced that Camp makes much of a difference in the kids’ performance on the tests. Right now I can hear several playing Mavis Beacon and two looking at pictures from someone’s flash drive and giggling. But it’s hard to believe the alternative is better necessarily.

Staying at home has its own distractions with feaus and TV and little brothers and sisters to look after. At least staying here offers a quiet place to study. Provided you’re not in earshot of whichever Beyoncé song is on right now.

Although tonight is the first night, which means everyone’s going to stay up until at least 3 o’clock in the morning, and then show up to my class exhausted tomorrow.

Meh. Whatever. It’s camp.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

My year 13s wanted to take a class photo after tonight's session. I really like this picture. I almost printed it tonight.

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Okay. So these next photos are so creepy, I've decided to link to them rather than display them. If you want to take a peek, you're going to have to click. That way I'm not to blame. Proceed with caution.

Last night before I went to meet up with some guys at the movies, I went to use the bathroom before I left, and I noticed the floor in front of my shower was covered in ants. Covered. I'm estimating well over 20,000 ants. I sprayed them with Mortein and headed to the movies to clean up the mess later.

Photo 1

This is the carnage 24 hours after the fact. The edges of the floor are still dense with ants.

Photo 2

This is a slightly closer view of that density.

Photo 3

Even closer.

Photo 4

The pile of ant cadavers after sweeping. My estimate of >20,000 ants comes from the size of this pile. Gross.

Yearbook Committee

I didn’t do yearbook in high school. My senior year I was in the yearbook an awful lot, but I was never on the committee. In middle school I had friends who did it, and they were constantly pulling out Kodak disposable cameras to capture the moment. I was never that guy—until the blog. The blog is a hungry mistress; it may not be real journalism, but there’s certainly a demand for new content. So I learned early on to always carry my camera with me. So even though I never set out to make a school magazine, I luckily have a wealth of material at my disposal.

That said, the job is still slow-going. Part of the problem is I almost have too much to work with. At this point it appears I’ve taken over 10,000 photos in Samoa, which is approximately 35 gigabytes. Even when I take out the photos of Peace Corps events and host village visits, there are still a huge amount of photos of staff and students.

And they’re not organized at all beyond sheer chronology, and even then, it gets confusing because at certain points during my Peace Corps tenure for various reasons I’ve had 2 cameras in rotation at the same time. Also, chronology helps in finding pictures of particular events, but if I am looking for a memorable picture of the year 10 girls hanging outside the door to the computer lab, it could be anywhere. So I end up spending hours scrolling through thumbnails looking for a needle in a haystack.

Another yearbook skill I have yet to develop—and I think even seasoned yearbook-ers have a tough time with this—is varying the people in the layout. Some people have more prominent personalities than others, and they end up getting their picture taken more often. Some are just so darn photogenic, they take too many good pictures, and it’s difficult to leave them on the cutting room floor.

And then there’s the whole issue of how all the pictures come from my collection, which means there are stunning gaps in places (netball), and certain events have a rather homogenous feel to them. For example, a great majority of my pictures from last year’s Culture Day are of the Savai’i house. So there are a bunch of students in my pictures, but they make up only a quarter of the entire student body. When I took pictures at that event, it was less about encapsulating the entire event for collective posterity; it was about capturing my own experience.

But all in all, production is going well, albeit slowly. And the more I put the book together, the more I’m excited to take home my own copy. It will provide a nice bookend for my own time here, and it will be just the way I want it since I’m the one putting it together.

Mostly I want it to be finished.

I hope you’re well. More sample page layouts below.

Page 25. Netball. This page is a little sketch. The white space at top right is because I don't know how to label the team pictured there; not in terms of student names, but I just don't know what division this team is. Or even how netball divisions work. Also, all the pictures on the page are from last year. Unclear on whether people will notice.

Page 27. Athletics. This page works for me. The one facing it will have an article. Supposedly.

Page 31. Samoan IA. Article is also to be written. I'm happy with the way it came out though.

Rolling Out the Red Carpet

I slept through most of first period, as I am wont to do most Wednesdays. I don’t have a first period class on Wednesday, and since I literally live a stone’s throw from school, I can afford to wake up 20 minutes before second period and still get to work on time. When I opened my eyes, the cat’s eyes looked directly back at mine from not more than 4 inches away. The cat, as she is wont to do, wakes up most mornings around 6 a.m. and waits (im)patiently for me to feed her. But this particular morning, something was different: there was noise.

On Mondays, I listen for singing. When I wake up to the sound of one cohesive song, it means all of the students are gathered in the assembly hall, and I can take an extra snooze on account of first period starting a half-hour late. Most other mornings I awake to the quiet murmur of students in the schoolyard awaiting the first bell.

But today, there was more than a murmur. It was more than a stir. The sound was that of students jovially enjoying the morning, excited about a long day free of school. And that’s exactly what they were in store for.

Term 2 is finished. Tahiti’s Oceania Games Rugby Team arrives this Saturday at 4:00 a.m., and the rest of this week is officially devoted to rolling out the red carpet. Walking across campus this morning, I saw students bleaching walls and floors, sweeping, mopping, painting, carting desks, weeding, burning trash, raking grass clippings, et cetera. The art students were hard at work, half of them finishing assembly hall murals, while the rest worked on a welcome banner for the Tahiti team.

Over the last year and a half, I’ve seen my school put in a pretty good effort on so-called cleaning days, but nothing has compared to today. Later in the morning locksmiths came in to replace the doorknobs on several of the classroom doors—including the computer lab. As you may recall, the computer lab has been without a working doorknob ever since my year 13s and I were trapped inside last year. I’ve been lobbying for a new doorknob ever since to no avail, but one lousy rugby team comes out of the woodwork, and I get a new doorknob, no questions asked.

With all of this shipshape intensity, I find it difficult to find a good place to apply myself, so I’ve decided to work on my own small projects. There’s been a small backlog of student IDs I’ve been meaning to print, so I used some time this morning to get those in order. I was also able to print sample photos of each form class, which I passed out to teachers so they can give me a detailed list of which student is in which row.

On the whole, it was a rather productive day. And no more teaching for three and a half weeks. Sweet.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Bananas hang outside the classrooms that will host the team.

Students scrubbing.

Students weeding.

Students taking a break from cleaning and banana-hanging to lean over the 2nd-floor balcony.

The year 12/year 11 building with students all over the place.

Magazine Progress

A month ago, this school magazine thing had me losing sleep. In fact, just last week (two weeks ago?) I ranked it number one on my to-do list because it was wreaking so much anxiety on my life. Who knew that meetings were such a good way of getting work done? In fact, I’d say that informal meeting we had at Apong’s house was the catalyst in this whole process. Last Friday’s Picture Day came out of that, and today’s meeting today was an even bigger step forward.

For lack of knowing what to do next, I made a storyboard this morning. I made a tiny page-by-page version of the magazine, mapping out the sequence of content: year 13s through year 9 then staff, etc. I drew up half the magazine on the computer, and then printed out a page of blank pages to pen over tea in the staffroom. But then I figured, why make this a visual thing? Why not just make a list?

The entire magazine is only set to be 40 pages, and it wasn’t all that difficult to list the contents of each page:

1. Title page
   
2. Candid photos
   
3. Message from Pule
   
4. 13.1 Class
   
5. 13.2 Class
   
6. Et cetera

So I did that, including an extra carriage return to denote which pages would face each other. 40 pages, 20 leaves.

I also took the liberty this afternoon of employing 9 year 12 and 13 students to write short 100-word articles for a slew of school events that are slated to get magazine coverage: Rugby, Athletics, Netball, the Field Trip to Mt. Vaea, Culture Day 2009, English Day 2010.

Did you notice a pattern there? Yeah, I think this entire process would be a lot more challenging content-wise if I didn’t have the blog. Really, what is a yearbook, but a less frequent blog with a narrower scope?

In any case, with a working outline and a tentatively abled staff, I’m feeling much more confident about the prospects of the school magazine. I’m pretty sure I can have a good draft finished by mid-September. Things could be worse.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Unbeknownst to me, the staffroom floor was re-tiled on Saturday. No doubt in preparation for the team from the Oceania Games that flies in Saturday morning.

This one's going up a little late. This is Erica, K8, and Erin posing with the soccer trophy we briefly stole from the Australians. Yeah. We lost to the Aussies. Embarrassing, I know.

Photographer

The picture that won me a blue ribbon at the Alameda County Faire my senior year of high school was taken by accident. I had enrolled in a photography class, and I brought my camera on a hike up Mission Peak. Coming around one particularly nice bend, I brought out my camera to get a shot of the sun low in the sky overlooking a bluff. I adjusted the F-stop, and between the moment my brain sent the message and moment my finger received that message and hit the shutter button, my friend Julius walked into the frame. Julius was wearing a beanie with a small brim that gave him a soldier’s silhouette, and with the sun low in the sky, he cast a long melancholy shadow. It’s a good photo, but it was taken by chance.

Taking photos to post on the blog, I’d say my eye has become a little more practiced, but on the whole, I am by no means a professional photographer. I say all this because it’s been interesting leading the charge in taking the class photos for my school’s yearbook.

The photos, all like the one above, are in my experience more reminiscent of tee-ball team photos rather than class photos. And when photos like this are taken in The States, there’s usually bleachers or risers or stools or something to help stagger the rows of faces—especially when there are give-or-take 45 people in each picture. Also, I don’t have much in the way of camera equipment. My camera equipment consists of a camera—and not even a very good camera. It’s a Sony CyberShot DSC-S950.

The process is a little bare-boned.

So I’ve been relying on the basics. I try not to take photos in cloudy weather, I have the kids face the sun, I try and fill the frame. I’ve been trying to use the same spot in the field to capture the Samoan flag and the school building in the background, but my school has stopped raising the flag lately (I think it’s too tattered?), so that feels a little pointless now.

It would serve me well to get one of those big curtains to block out the sun so I can see the image on the viewfinder—either that or get one of those weird little booths American football referees use to watch instant replays.

As far as posing goes, I’ve been relying on form teachers to whip the kids into 3 or 4 rows. Some have used chairs, some haven’t. I’m a little ambivalent about the whole thing, in part because there’s been no particular method that I have really liked.

I try my best to get the rows to look somewhat uniform, to get the boys sitting in front to cover their shorts with their ’ies, to keep oblivious wanderers out of the background. But mostly, if these pictures turn out any good, it will be a lucky accident.

I hope you’re well. More class photos below.

That's Thanpuii and 9.1 above the fold. This is Talapusi and 10.4.

Lapalapa and 10.2. This one has the flag nicely billowing in the wind.

Badges?! We Don't Need No...

I lost my ID so many times growing up. I loved getting a new ID at the beginning of the year, and I’d stick it in my pocket and carry it around for no particular reason, and then it would be gone. In high school our high school had to be visible on our person so it was a bigger problem then, but in middle school I think it was so easy to lose my ID because it never had much use. What was the point? I was reminded of those halcyon days while making IDs this morning.

I’m pretty sure my pule woke up in the middle of the night, sat straight up, and epiphanically screamed, “IDs!” As I mentioned in Odds and Ends yesterday, he was giddy as he guided me through his big presentation of this ID card business. “They can use it to check out library books! They can use it like a passport!” I don’t know what he meant by that second part—or the first part for that matter—but he was clearly excited about the idea, and I don’t want to rain on that parade.

So I took ID photos of the prefects after school yesterday. I positioned the chairs at a ~15° angle and had them turn their head to face the camera as I’ve been taught to do.

When I was a manager for Union City Leisure Services, I was the ID photographer, and on occasion someone would slide into the chair and mug for the camera. They’d try to be all stone-faced and hard, and I’d chuckle a little and say, “That is the lamest mug I’ve ever seen,” and if my timing was right I could get the person to laugh at me making fun and during that laugh I’d snap the picture. I was a natural.

But yesterday I was flustered and in a rush, and I let the muggers mug. In fact, I was pretty skeptical of the pictures I took yesterday, but for the most part I was able to take care of everything in post-production. With some strategic cropping and some manipulation of contrast and hue, I was happy with the photos.

I slapped the school crest on there, and my pule had asked for Date of Birth (says Maengi, “I don’t want to walk around with my date of birth for everyone to see!”.

We printed the first sheet of badges in my pule’s office this morning. I’d designed them so they’d print to exactly the right size, but I didn’t tell my pule this. It made for a slick moment when I slid it into the badge holder and it fit exactly. “Awww! Seki a!” he cried.

His satisfaction can hardly be overstated. As far as job execution goes, I think the final product I put out was pretty darn close to his vision. And it always feels good to have an idea come to tangible fruition.

We laminated the cards. I assumed I’d be doing this with the school secretary, but instead my pule followed me to the school library, where he rolled up his sleeves and went to work with the laminator.

I’ve definitely had that moment of stationery euphoria at Kinko’s. I know the feeling.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

Our school librarian and pule put together laminating sheets.

English Day

Did you know the French have their own version of “The Office”? The Germans too. America’s got its own, and of course there’s the original British version. Why so many versions of the same show? Because humor is local. Perhaps certain things are universally funny, but so much of humor depends on cultural nuance; you have to know things really well to keep a crowd happy. I didn’t consider this when I agreed to be the emcee for English Day today.

I’m no stand-up comedian, but I can tell a joke and I can punch up dry material. I think my greatest performance was when I was a Resident Advisor in college and I held my “First Floor Meeting”. The meeting was mandatory for all RAs across campus, and we used it to discuss building rules and housing policies and the disciplinary code and consequences and fire safety and blah blah blah. I figured I could a few wisecracks would keep the meeting moving. My entire spiel was extemporaneous, and thus I have no recollection of what I actually said. But I remember I had the room in stitches. I can be funny.

But Samoan humor is not one that comes naturally to me. My sense of humor is dry and subtle. My general perception of Samoan humor is it tends more toward over-the-top slapstick. And as much as I’ve lived here for 19 months and I’ve got a handle on the culture, I’m certainly not fluent enough to make references, cultural or otherwise.

Thanpuii asked me if I’d emcee during the morning assembly on Monday. I readily agreed, not having any specific notion of what the job would entail, but I figured I could wing it. But the more I thought about it, the more I had no idea what I’d do. Peace Corps make plenty of jokes about the parts of Samoa we find bizarre—the way guys in the village would borrow a guitar and arbitrarily twist and turn the tuning pegs, the way it’s often clear I’m standing in line but someone will cruise in right in front of me, the way older men roll up their shirts on hot days bearing their large bellies. But it’s difficult to know which things would translate and which would come across as me whining xenophobically.

I began to feel desperate, so I started telling anyone and everyone about my assignment. The guys at Rotaract, the bartender, students who’d texted me because they wanted to know their final grade. “You got an 86. Do you know any jokes?” I’d ask in the same breath. Just about everyone looked at me, thought for a moment, and then shrugged.

So this morning I was standing backstage listening to the faifeau lead the opening prayer, and I still had no idea what I would say. I had made peace with cutting my losses and not even trying to be funny. But it was still expected that I say something.

The time came. I sauntered up to the podium. I began by welcoming the faifeau, the judges, various dignitaries, parents, students, staff. I took my time; one might argue I was stalling.

I talked about how the only reason I was up there on stage was because I speak English, but that my Samoan is pretty terrible. I talked about how the first thing I learned when I came to Samoa was the song “Savalivali”, which is a bilingual song in which each line is effectively the translation from English to Samoan or vice versa. I talked about how music helps us understand and remember. And it’s fun. And that was why English Day was full of singing and dancing and music.

Then I introduced the first act.

It wasn’t incredible or even slightly memorable, but it got the job done. Whatever.

I hope you’re well.

The Savai'i house dancing.

The Manono house dancing.

Teachers Malele and Suasami. I like this picture.

Waxing Poetic

I admit I still don’t understand iambic pentameter. I’ve understand that it’s “da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH da-DUH,” but I’ve never been able to hear that as natural. But as much as I’m no poetry connoisseur, I know that rhythm and syncopation can be important poetic tools, although I don’t think that specific thought was in my head when I started practicing the poem with the 10.2 class. Mostly I figured having the kids read the poem to a beat would help them stay together. The poem is part of our school-wide English Day competition that will be held Thursday.

In regard to the poem itself, I feel a little ambivalent. Here it is:

Listen Teacher
Listen teacher
Listen to me
Don’t look away
See my eyes they hold messages
That can make you understand me
Hold my hand and your heart
Will warm towards me.
Let me dance and sing you
My own songs which you don’t know,
And you might smile
As you’ve never smiled before
Let me tell you a story
Of my ancient past
And then, maybe, you can see
Another person in me.
- Emma Kruse Va’ai

Bernie was originally going to be in charge of the poem, but he was absent the first day, so I took on the project. The kids had a tough time staying together, so I started clapping a beat. The rhythm we fell into was a staccato “DUH-da DUH-da dutta dutta DUH”. It didn’t work with every line, but we went line by line, and figured out the whole thing. When I heard the finished result, I realized the syncopation was similar to the rhythm we used during training when the guys did the “Slap Dance”, though I didn’t mention this to anyone. I didn’t need to. When another teacher heard it, she said, “Oh. You’re doing a haka.”

The haka is a sort of warrior chant. The Manu Samoa, Samoa’s rugby team, do a haka before each game to psych out the other side. It’s posturing as performance art. “Have them do a haka dance,” she told me.

So I went off with the year 10s to oversee the choreography and coordination of an English haka. Far be it from me to create a dance, so I used the method I learned last year: open up the floor. Students came to the front of the room, suggested a move, and there was a collective decision to incorporate or veto. The result is a weird mix of modern and traditional, but a pretty good haka, if I do say so myself.

I’ve tried to pull out all the stops too. Today I borrowed a pair of sticks from another teacher so I can do the percussion, and I think we’re going to perform it twice through—once normal speed, once fast. The kids really like the fast.

Reception so far has been muted. The other teacher came to rehearsal today, and nodded stoically when the kids finished, but smiled warmly at me when the kids left the room. The kids liked the idea at first, but their pretty over it at this point.

Although there was a telling moment after rehearsal today. We were sitting in the hall while another class was practicing on stage. It turns out they’re performing the same poem. I watched them, but I kept a close eye on my kids to gauge their reaction. The performance was good, but my kids smiled with quiet satisfaction. The other teacher winked at me. Ours is better.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Our "house" learning the song.

Apong playing guitar while the kids sing.

Art School Confidential

During my time at University, I only went to a couple parties at the art school, which is strange considering they seemed to always promise a great time. I’m happy to report they were as stereotypical as an art school party can get: they were full of pretentious hipsters in thick-rimmed glasses and the menus tended to consist of wine and cheese as well as the obligatory Pabst Blue Ribbon. Today my school held the grand opening of the new art building, and the party had a slightly different tone.

Since I had no responsibilities for today’s celebration, I allowed myself to sleep in a little. I showed up at 8:00 a.m. to a campus all abuzz. Students were strewn all over the place, most of them chatting, shooting the breeze. A few occupied the other end of the spectrum; they walked from the teacher’s lounge to the canteen to the great hall with urgent focus.

While students and staff alike seem to enjoy my presence, they all seem hesitant to entrust me with even the most menial of tasks. So with nothing to do and a fair amount of time to kill, I faked my own focused urgency and walked from place to place seeing what everyone was up to.

In preparation for today’s event, students were told to bring gifts to present to the Congregationalist Church’s Education Committee, which in Samoa means bar soap and laundry detergent. The teacher’s lounge was converted to a sorting station where boxes and bars were organized by type and then divvied into individual allotments. While there clearly seemed to be a system for this process, I could not figure it out.

I walked down to the canteen, where students and staff were assembling lunch plates. Every plate was adorned with 2 orange wedges, one large banana or two small ones, one hot dog sliced down the middle the long way, one corned beef sandwich, and one egg salad sandwich. Once the plate was complete, it was covered with foil and neatly stacked.

The new art room itself was quiet and void of people. Decorative wood carvings, balloons and streamers, and a bright red ribbon across the threshold made the place feel like the dolled up debutant ready to make her grand entrance.

Eventually the bell rang and students arranged themselves—by gender, of course—in front of the podium on the lawn. There was singing and praying and a sermon and more singing and more praying. A line of parents and other spectators sat in the shade of the second floor’s balcony. Finally, the whole crowd moved to the art room for the ceremonial ribbon cutting.

The ribbon-cutting had 2 more formal speeches. There is only a small corridor between the art room and the school, and even though students were toe to toe, many were quite far from the speaker. At one point someone randomly started cheering and because no one could see, everyone started cheering. But the speaker was still mid-speech. And then when he finally went to cut the ribbon, no one cheered, and the whole thing was pretty anticlimactic.

Overall though, the event went over well, and my staff and the Education Committee all seemed satisfied, which was pretty good considering there was no Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The soap sorting crew.

Librarian Sesa and the canteen assembly line.

Ulas ready to be distributed.

The assembly.

The ribbon cutting was so fast I could only get this after-shot. Also, it came out blurry. Sucks.

Science Faire

Every year I entered the Pioneer Elementary School Science Faire, I came in runner up. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. I vaguely remember handwriting the word “hypothesis” in first grade. My parents were pretty good about helping me put together the project, but I remember writing up procedures for making red cabbage litmus tests and comparing gravity’s pull on objects and other stuff like that. Liam came in first place at least one year. I remember him doing something involving magnetism and dryer lint.

In any case, our school hosted the local science faire today. I use the term “local” because the grouping of schools was a little strange. It was a combination of public schools and Congregationalist schools; and of secondary schools and primary schools. There was speculation over whether the science faire would happen at all with the whole Swine Flu break. The Methodists canceled theirs. But ours went forward as planned.

My neighbor Maengi led the charge at our school. She asked me about a month ago if I had an old bike tire the students could use to make some sort of wind turbine. I said I’d check and see if anything was available at the Peace Corps office. There wasn’t, and they decided to find a new topic. So I had absolutely nothing to do with our school’s entries to the faire.Since our school hosted the faire, students and staff were invited to tour the event during interval, which I did.

I expected at least one volcano. We’re on an island in the South Pacific, sitting on the ring of fire. Hell, we had an earthquake on Monday night. And a Paper Mache volcano spewing vinegar and baking soda is such a default science project anyway. On one hand, I felt a little cheated when there turned out to be no volcano. On the other hand, I felt relieved for Samoa’s sake.

Despite the absence of the volcano, students found ways to be culturally pertinent. One group did a study on using elements from the natural world to make fabric dye, which is something that’s been done in Samoa for hundreds of years. Another group presented a study on the different strata of air in the rainforest. Admittedly, that one lacked the crowd-pleasing “Wow!” factor. Oh well.

And, as usual, the exhibits that pleased the crowd were the least scientifically interesting. The one that hooked me was the following:

1. Fill a soda can with rubbing alcohol.
   
2. Place a Styrofoam cup over the top of the can so that it hangs over the sides of the can.
   
3. Stick a lighted match under the cup.

The Styrofoam cup shoots into the air. Whoa! It didn’t really push the boundaries of science, but I could have watched the kid do it over and over.

The awards event was held this afternoon, and it seemed live every school walked away with something. And I felt the need to comfort the runners up. You know, the science faire bridesmaids.

I hope you’re dealing with issues of science. Pictures below.
















Beakers and hydrochloric acid. Good times.
















Beakers of plant-based dye.





















This had something to do with electricity.





















I think JICA had something to do with the organization of the event. In any case, they had a small-but-present contingent.
















Model of a tsunami alert system (not to scale)(haha).





















This was the complementary diagram.
















The lady on the right is a judge.
















The award ceremony.