Odds and Ends Thursday 37

School’s been out for a week now, but things have been busy nonetheless. Between the LSAT and the Christmas party today, I’ve had enough reasons to get out of my house and avoid the lazy boredom of summer. But I’ve kinda been looking forward to the lazy boredom of summer. There’s still 6 or 7 weeks left of summer break though, so I guess I’ve still got time. Here are some other odds and ends from the past week:

• I was sitting having a beer with Sarah’s uncle after the LSAT, and his son walked over and introduced himself, and then asked me, “Are you Filipino?”
  
• The event today was pretty fun. It was like guerilla food preparation assembling sausage dogs for 900 children, but once we refined our system, we reached a decent level of efficiency.
  
• I didn’t write captions for the pictures in last Friday’s blog, so I didn’t point out that the brooms people are using in the bottom picture are actually teuila flowers. It seemed so wrong.
  
• Dustin emailed me. The plane I took to American Samoa and back is a De-Havilland Twin Otter. I’m sure that means something to you.
  
• I wanted to listen to the theme song from the hit TV show “Wings” during the plane ride, but I think the version I have on my computer is a WAV file, and my iPod recognizes it, but refuses to play it. So I had to settle for singing it in my head. It’s good flying music.
  
• Then I listened to a This American Life podcast about infidelity. It was not good flying music. It was quite depressing, in fact.
  
• I heard the Peace Corps Inspector General didn’t like us holding our Swearing In ceremonies in the host village, and that all future Swearing Ins (Swearings In?) will be held in Apia. It seems a little strange and counterintuitive to me, but whatever. I’ll roll with it.
  
• Koa was gleeful about “scooping” my blog by posting pictures from the Swearing In before me. But then the poor guy forgot the connector cable for his camera. Maybe next time, Koa. Maybe next time.
  
• My favorite new Christmas recording is Mason Jennings’ cover of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.
  
• Reason # 6,452 it’s lame to not have a constant Internet connection: When uploading a CD into iTunes you have to manually enter in the song titles and album information. Lame.
  
• Paul is adamant about listening an entire song on iTunes so it will be tallied in the “Play Count”. I have inexplicably adopted Paul’s rule. Maybe I can sleep better knowing my play count is accurate?
  
• There was nasty rain this morning as I trudged across town to get my ride to the Head of State’s house.
  
• The rainy season is in full effect. I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and it doesn’t sound like rain; it sounds like an ocean of water is being dumped on my roof—like I live under a waterfall.
  
• The “Harry and the Hendersons” episode of 30 Rock was great. John Lithgow traumatized me as a child playing the bad guy in “Santa Claus: The Movie,” but ever since 3rd Rock from the Sun, the man can do no wrong.
  
• I swear my stress level in regards to the LSAT leading up to the test and during the test itself was extremely low, mostly because I’m not completely convinced that I want to go to law school. But waiting 31 days to get my results is painful.
  
• I think we were administered a different test than was given to test takers in the lower 48. So most of the commentary I can find online doesn’t pertain to my test. 25 more days.
  
• For no reason I can understand, the LSAT includes an essay section that isn’t graded or scored. The whole thing seems pretty pointless, but it still gets sent to any law school you apply to, so there’s incentive to write the thing. In the opening sentence of mine, I used the word “burgeoning”. As soon as I wrote it, I asked myself, does that word mean what I think it means? Is that how it’s spelled? Is it really a word at all? I got home and checked and it does and it is and it is. Phew.

That’s all I got. I hope you’re well. Pictures from today’s party below.

The Head of State (at far right) visits the face-painting tent.

The kids.

Assembling sausage sandwiches.

Santa showed up.

Apparently the makeup crew from CATS was in town.

PCV Erin's school came to the party.

The event was sponsored by both SamoaTel and Digicel, the two rival cell phone service providers. It was funny to see the SamoaTel guy taking down Digicel signs.

Gift Bags

During a break in the action, I looked over at a panoramic view of a beautiful sunset, and though I wasn’t clear on whether or not I was authorized, I crossed the room and walked through the French doors out to the veranda. A chain link fence separated the expansive backyard from the ocean waves that calmly lapped the beach. With the picturesque sunset, the fence was an eyesore, but I suppose security’s got to be tight at the Head of State’s house.

Samoa has two national leaders: the Prime Minister, which is an elected position, and the Head of State, which is something more akin to the Queen (or King, in this case) of England. The position is more of a figurehead than a governor. Before today, I’ve seen the HOS 3 times: he made an appearance at the 4th of July party, he attended the girl’s rugby game at Apia Park that I attended with my host family, and he was a central figure at the National Memorial Ceremony after the tsunami.

In any case, the HOS is throwing a Christmas party for children living in tsunami-affected areas, and he called on a number of service organizations—Rotary, the Lion’s Club, et al.—to help organize the event. I’ve been getting more and more involved with the Apia chapter of Rotoract, the Rotary club’s youthful counterpart, and we’ve been tapped to man the food tents at the event, which will be held tomorrow. We were also asked to come help stuff gift bags tonight.

Initially we stuffed the gift bags with small stacks of books—Harry Potter coloring books, young adult novels, comic books, etc. There was some effort to separate the bags into girl bags and boy bags, but as the evening wore on and the number of bags became more unwieldy, the separating line was blurred.

We bunched the bags in groups of 5 to aid in keeping tally and laid them out in improvised rows across the entry way of the HOS’s house. Then stuffers came through with candy, tossing handfuls into each bag. Having the bags all tied together in groups of 5 made it difficult to toss candy in logistically, but by that point I’d been tasked with keeping tally of the number of bags stuffed. I dodged candy duty.

Someone brought a large cardboard box filled with stuffed animals into the room, and 2 guys went around choosing stuffed animals and dropping one into each bag. Once a bag had books, candy, and a stuffed animal, it was complete.

I caught a ride with Ainsof, the current president of Rotoract, this afternoon. He told me they’re expecting approximately 900 children at the event tomorrow, although I heard from someone else the number could be as large as 1,200. When the dust settled, we’d stuffed 1,083 bags. So let’s hope the 900 estimate is more accurate.

Either way, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s event. I think it’s going to be a good time.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Ainsof and Blakey hard at work.

Stuffing in action.

Group photo with stuffed bags.

I'm not sure who took this picture, or how they took it. But it's, like, totally psychedelic, man.

Group 82's Swearing In

In an effort to further annoy busycorner, Paul and I spent a lovely island morning inside my house with the curtains drawn watching “My Cousin Vinny” today. Paul wasn’t feeling too hot, and I’m on school break and feeling little motivation to get off the couch. I’ve seen the movie many times, but I didn’t remember one particular line when the judge tells a leather-jacket-clad Joe Pesci to “wear a suit—made of cloth.” It made me laugh out loud.

It’s funny how re-watching something can bring new things to light, and make missed details come to the surface. Another example is how watching “The Wire” the second time around is amazing because you can worry less about story and revel in the details. It brings a whole new level of depth to the show.

This idea of the second experience being richer than the first has been my experience with group 82. The deer-in-the-headlights blank-mindedness of the training experience can be rough the first time around, and watching someone else go through the process fills in a lot of the stuff I missed the first time around.

The first time I felt this was at their ’ava ceremony on the day they arrived when the orator was cracking jokes and mocking PCV Benj’s “chee-hoo”. The newly arrived trainees were on edge and too nervous to enjoy the humor, but for those of us participating in the event for the second or third or fourth time, it was a grand old time. There was an element of that feeling at Group 82’s Swearing In ceremony this afternoon.

Swearing In is when you transition from being a Peace Corps Trainee to a full-fledged Peace Corps Volunteer. It’s an awkward moment because you’re mentally exhausted after 2 months of training, you’re elated to be finished, and you’re apprehensive about moving to your permanent site. It’s a stressful time, to say the least, and the hour-long ceremony of speeches and formalities seems like more of an affirmation to the attendees rather than the actual trainees who swear in.

My memory of our Swearing In is a bit of a blur, but it came back as I sat through group 82’s this afternoon. There was a prayer and the training director’s speech and the country director’s speech and the Charges d’Affairs’ speech. Much like a first communion or a graduation, there are a lot of formalities and “things to be said” beforehand, and then the actual central event is extremely short. The kid gets the wafer, the graduate crosses the stage, the trainees stick their hands in the air and read the oath (they didn’t actually stick their hands in the air to swear in, to the disappointment of the many photographers in the room).

PCT Martin (now PCV Martin) gave a short speech thanking the host village and the training staff, and emphasizing the bonds forged in group 82, and how the real work starts now. I think it echoes the speech that Chris gave on behalf of group 81, but I couldn’t tell you for sure. It’s kind of a blur.

I hope you're well.  Pictures below.

Group 82s. Front row left to right: Emily, Martin, Allison, Elisa, Dan. Bill and Kathleen in the foreground. Back row left to right: Jenny U., Rachel, Tiffany, Cassandra.

PCT/V Corina sings a song with one of the language trainers, as the dignitaries look on. At the table left to right: MESC representative, Charge d'Affairs Robin, Country Director Dale, Manunu Faifeau, Assistant Country Director Fata.

Group 82s. Lili in foreground. Jenny in red in the back, Dana in blue, Matt looking into the camera.

Blakey, Dan, and Koa chilling outside.

Group 81's Swearing In where we did indeed raise our hands. We also had to walk to the village. Uphill both ways. Kids these days. Get off my lawn.

A Walk in the Clouds

Bungee jumping freaked me out a whole lot more than skydiving. I went skydiving for my eighteenth birthday, and as crazy as it was to jump out of an airplane, the whole thing felt too unreal to instill very much fear. Besides being strapped to a seasoned (and girthy) skydiver, the ground from 13,000 feet doesn’t look much different from the ground at 12,000 feet. So even though gravity is yanking you back to earth, the feeling is more like that of swimming. And then your parachute opens. Bungee jumping, on the other hand, is more real and thus terrifying. The ground at 300 feet looks very different from the ground at 30 feet, and the initial sensation as your feet leave the platform is “Holy hell. I’m going to die.”

I bring this up because the sensation of flying in Boeing-747 feels a lot more unreal than does flying in a plane like the tin shoebox I flew between islands this weekend. I don’t mean to say I was frightened by the flight—in fact it was exhilarating—but the exhilaration of the tiny plane and the terror in the freefall bungee jump is that feeling of undeniable reality.

When you check in for the interisland flight, in addition to weighing your luggage, they weigh you. The plane is small enough that passengers are assigned seats based on keeping the airplane balanced. On both flights, I was relatively smaller than just about all the other passengers, and was thus assigned to the front row on both flights.

There’s no door separating the passengers from the pilots, and I had to turn up my iPod so I could hear it over the hum of the propeller outside my window. Going from 747 to tiny island hopper is somewhat akin to going from lavish charter bus to Volkswagen Beetle; you become a lot more aware of the driver and the road. You feel the turbulence. You feel the landing.

But then again, for most of the flight, you feel like you’re floating in the clouds. Yes, it’s always fun to fly through the clouds on an airplane, but when you’re flying in a little aluminum can, it’s a different a different sensation all together. When you can see out both sides and through the windshield, it feels like you’re riding a Dodge minivan through the sky.

The trip is very short, so the cruising altitude is relatively low. The buildings never get too tiny. And especially given my familiarity with Upolu after 14 months, landmarks are pretty recognizable. So in addition to the soaring shoebox feel, the relative scale of things is never too far away.

The feeling is buoyant and weightless and dreamlike. When we touched down, it seemed like the destination was a bonus; the exhilaration of the flight itself almost seemed worth the price of the ticket.

Almost.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The return-flight plane. Dustin, what kind of plane is this?

No zoom. Maybe a lateral arm reach. I took this picture from my seat.

The southeastern corner of Upolu. I don't think the water used to be as light before the tsunami hit. I'm pretty sure it's all white sand along the coast because the tsunami dragged so much top soil away.

We were flying low enough that my school was very easy to pick out.

There was a rainbow over the ocean.

The Open Itinerary

While my trip to American Samoa was conveniently timed so I could leave the day after all of my school obligations for the 2009 school year were fulfilled, that was not the reason for my trip. Nor was visiting Sarah, nor was the chance to see Tutuila, nor was it the chance to enjoy Carl’s Jr. My sole reason for going to American Samoa this weekend was to take the LSAT Saturday afternoon; beyond that, my itinerary was completely open, which was fine.

I originally intended to fly out Friday night, but since our staff dinner was Friday night and the lady at the travel agency assured me the Saturday morning flight wouldn’t be delayed, I opted to stay. I got as much sleep as I could, knowing the test was the next day, and woke up just after dawn on Saturday and called for a taxi. The man on the phone sounded hesitant about sending a cab, and I was nervous about missing my plane, so finally I wandered out to the road and hailed a cab.

This is a routine flight at the Fagalii airport on the outskirts of Apia, and they’ve become a well-oiled machine at getting people on the plane. Surprise! There’s a $30WST takeoff tax! Thanks, Samoa. I didn’t have enough cash, but it turns out the faleoloa across the street has a side currency exchange that offers terrible exchange rates to its captive customers. Oh well.

The flight was great.

Sarah emailed me directions to give the taxi driver to help me find her family’s house. Sarah herself was at a conference in Hawai’i, and I wouldn’t see her until late in the evening Sunday. The taxi driver and I were able to find the house with relative ease. I’m pretty sure he overcharged me, and that was that.

Walking up to Sarah’s house was not unlike approaching my host family’s house in Fausaga. In fact, spending the weekend at Sarah’s felt exactly like having a host family—with slightly more lax rules and higher quality TV.

Her dad was expecting me, and acted as my host for the weekend. He made corned beef hash for breakfast on Saturday and then gave me the remote and told me to watch whatever I wanted. As I said in yesterday’s post, I engorged myself on the Top Chef marathon, occasionally changing the channel to catch Alabama upsetting Florida. It is mystifying to me that my parents don’t get Bravo! but in BFE American Samoa I can get episode after episode of Top Chef.

Sarah’s friend Tia, who also happened to be scheduled for the LSAT, picked me up around noon. He was all freaked out because he’d had to do some unexpected chores for his mom that morning, and he hadn’t had time to print his test ticket. We stopped at an Internet café and got it done. We also stopped at a faleoloa (general store?) so I could grab a couple Capri Suns and a juice box of chocolate milk to replace my juice boxes confiscated by DHS before my flight.

The test was okay. It lasted around 4.5 hours. Ick.

I convinced Tia to stop at Carl’s Jr. on the way home. Between the relief of being finished with the test and the refreshing goodness of real ice tea, I was happy.

Tia talked about taking me to a nightclub Saturday night, but he showed up late, and I didn’t pack appropriate attire. I ended up having a beer with Sarah’s uncle while we sat and admired the “waterfall” Sarah’s dad had recently installed in the backyard. Sarah’s dad was really proud of the waterfall.

Sunday in American Samoa seems just about as dead as Sunday in Samoa Samoa. I ended up working my way through Sarah’s DVD collection. She recently rented “Doubt,” which was good. I finally watched “Big Daddy” 10 years after it came out. And then, in act of extreme randomness, I watched 12 episodes from Season 1 of “Martin”. The writing on the show is mediocre, but its reflection of the state of African American culture in the early 1990s is fascinating. When I write my book of essays on postmodernism, Martin will get a chapter.

There was a brief interruption in the afternoon when Sarah’s uncle offered me a tour of the island, which I happily accepted. He took me to the original “Maliu Mai,” a resort with an eponymous counterpart in Samoa Samoa, which is owned by the same guy. We snorkeled and walked around the tide pools. Then we went to the Turtle and Shark cliffs (pictured above), where local children sing a particular song that attracts turtles and sharks. Except on Sundays. My loss.

Sarah arrived late Sunday night, and we chatted about the state of Group 81 and reminisced old times. Sarah insisted she take the couch and I sleep in her bed—an arrangement I refused until she tenaciously fell asleep on the couch. Fine then.

Monday morning I watched 3 episodes of a “Cash Cab” marathon while we waited for Sarah’s co-worker to come. The co-worker generously agreed to drop me off at the airport since he was giving Sarah a ride to work anyway—Sarah’s truck was a tsunami casualty.

And thus my trip to American Samoa came to a close. One might say it was uneventful, but I’d also argue the slow pace of the weekend is emblematic of the lifestyle there, and what’s wrong with that?

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Unlike Apia, Pago has no concentrated "downtown" area. The whole thing is spread out. This makes for nice scenery, but difficult for getting around. I'd hate to have to run errands there.

Me with Sarah's Uncle Tua.

At the Maliu Mai swimming hole/snorkeling area.

Tua took me to see Leone, a village hit pretty hard by the tsunami. You can see the relief tents in the distance.

I’ve Come to Look for America

I learned about modifiers and bases from the naming convention for Crayola crayons. The crayon that was mostly green with a little yellow was “yellow green”. The one that was mostly yellow with a little green was “green yellow”. And thus the territory is called “American Samoa” rather than “Samoan America”. There are pockets of extreme Americanism here, but more than anything else, this place is Samoan.

The only two countries I’ve ever really lived are America and Samoa, so coming to a place that claims to be their amalgam is pretty exciting. In the lead up to coming here, I had no idea what to expect. We hear all these stories about how there are all kinds of fast food in American Samoa, and about how the population’s a lot smaller and how the entire island was wiped out in the tsunami and blah blah blah. There’s a lot of information and misinformation out there, and so I’ve been pretty excited about coming to see it for myself.

Really, except for the plane ride and the change in currency, American Samoa is pretty much identical to Samoa Samoa. English is slightly more prevalent, but Samoan still seems to be most peoples’ primary language. From what I’ve seen, it seems like most families live in similar fale-style houses with large bunches of extended family.

But like I said, there are pockets of America here and there. Cable TV has a lot more channels here; I watched 3 episode of Top Chef before Sarah’s friend came to pick me up for the LSAT. And students here are in “grades,” not “years,” and summer break coincides with the American summer.

The Carl’s Jr. is lavish. Lavish. It’s huge and carpeted and has a soda dispenser in the dining area so you can refill your own drink. The booths have real cushions, and when I asked the girl where to find the ketchup, she went behind the counter and handed me a chilled squeeze bottle of ketchup from the refrigerator. And there are, of course, criss-cut fries, which even in American are delicious nuggets from heaven.

They sell Vailima Special Export Brew here, which is more concentrated than the Vailima they sell in Samoa. I hear that to get the watered-down brew they sell in Samoa, they literally add water. They sell a lot of American beer here too though, but it just seems like a lot of Coors Light.

Other than that, it’s the same old Samoa. The buses are even crazier than the ones in Samoa—they look like converted Honda Accords. And everybody drives 20 mph.

But I guess either way it feels familiar.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Watching Top Chef before the LSAT.

Carl's Jr. after the LSAT.

The Carl's Jr. had a Los Angeles theme, and this picture of the Aon building was on the wall. The Aon building is the 2nd tallest building in LA (Library Tower... errr... US Bank Tower is the tallest). The Aon building also happens to rent space to the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, where I interned in college. There was an employee who was all weirded out when I took this picture, but she actually interested when I told her I used to work there.

The Samoa Sports Center probably didn't use the en vogue Futura font to be all hip. But the font does make it look straight out of an (old) Ikea catalog or a Wes Anderson movie. This photo also provides an example of one of the buses.

Prizegiving 2009

At USC, there was all kinds of hoopla surrounding graduation, and rightly so. We had an Honors Convocation at which students received accolades for various achievements. Then there was the Baccalaureate Service which was a nondenominational quasi-spiritual gathering with a graduation focus. And then, of course, there was the graduation itself which is a day-long event with keynote speakers and thousands of graduates crossing a stage. In Samoa, the Prizegiving ceremony rolls these three things into one big chunk.

In a lot of ways, the beginning of the day was like any other Friday assembly. The kids were all seated in front of the stage, a faifeau got up and asked the kids to lead us in a song, and then he gave a short sermon and said a prayer. There were rows and rows of parents sitting in plastic chairs behind the students, who were sitting on the ground as usual, which was new, but beyond that, same old thing.

After that, my pule got up and gave a kind of State of the School speech during which he talked about the ups and downs of the year. At one point he mentioned the help of the pisikoa mai Amerika. What what!

Then the awards started. We went year by year, handing out prizes to the year 9s then 10s, etc. In each grade level, the top 3 students in each class were given a prize and then the top student in each individual subject was also given a prize. In my own experience at such ceremonies in middle school and high school and college, the event inevitably evolves into one specific kid getting his name called over and over again, as though he (or she) is doing laps between the stage and his/her seat. This gets a little obnoxious.

I kinda feel like graduation and prizegiving should be separate events. I remember at my high school students who got awards were invited to Awards Night; that way it was less of a slap in the face to students who didn’t win any award? Perhaps. Or maybe watching someone else receive an award gives incentive to the also-rans to try harder? I guess there’s arguments either way.

In any case, the graduation itself was very short and awkward with the year 13 students walking up from the back individually to accept their certificates. The girl who came in Second to Dux (in America she’d be the Salutatorian, i.e. second place to the Valedictorian) was not happy about losing out on the big prize, which was just a big huge trophy… that the school eventually wants returned so it can be given out again next year.

After the closing prayer, the event devolved into chaos and Christmas music and hugs and photo opportunities. Overall it was a fun day. It brought a little bit of closure to the school year, and it’s always fun to see parents who are proud of their children. I think most moving were the top-scorers in the middle or lower-level classes whose parents would rush to the front to throw an ula around the kid’s neck and then tackle the kid in a bear hug. It was like when Cuba Gooding Jr. won his Oscar and he went all nuts. That’s how it should be done. You can tell it meant something.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below

Odds and Ends Thursday 36

I wandered home after Prizegiving this afternoon, and though I wasn’t really thinking about it, there was a big shift in gears. With all the prizes given and the speeches made, school’s over and it’s time to start finalizing plans for this weekend’s trip to Pago and the trip in 3.5 weeks to Sydney. I would claim that there’s so much to do in so little time, but really I feel like there’s shouldn’t be too much to do and lots of time left. Thus the last-minute haphazard packing. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• I’m pretty pumped about island-hopping this weekend. I’m very curious to see how American Samoa is the same, which I hear it is, except with an American flavor rather than a Kiwi flavour, which I hear it has. Too bad I’m only there for 2 days.
  
• I try and keep the comment section organic, but occasionally I feel like I need to step in. When I wrote Monday’s blog, I worded it carefully to avoid comments about how I’m ka’a when it comes to learning the language. But one still showed up, similar to one in October, and so I felt the need to respond.
  
• Preparing for a standardized test is such an inexact science. My plan was to take a bunch of practice tests this week in order to prepare for the real thing on Saturday, but I was all fatigued after the one I took last night, so I think I’m going to take the night off tonight. But what do I do tomorrow?
  
• I was told Samoan youth were interested in Bebo, so when we were at the Internet last week, I had Marie sign up for an account. But now I hear Bebo is passé and Facebook is what everyone uses now. Bebo was never big in The States, but I get the feeling it’s like our version of Friendster.
  
• My fan is dying. Again. This is the one I thought died 3 days after I bought it when I first moved into my house. So that will be 2 dead fans in a year, putting fan life expectancy around 6 months. Sounds about right.
  
• My friend Chris bought his ticket to come visit in January. I should clean my house sometime before then.
  
• Sample LSAT question:
  
  The Japansese haiku is defined as a poem of three lines with five syllables in the first line, seven syllables in the second line, and five syllables in the third line. English poets tend to ignore this fact. Disregarding syllable count, they generally call any three-line English poem with a “haiku feel” a haiku. This demonstrates that English poets have little respect for foreign traditions, even those from which some of their own poetry derives.
  
  The reasoning is flawed because it
  
  1. confuses matters of objective fact with matters of subjective feeling
     
  2. draws a conclusion that is broader in scope than is warranted by the evidence advanced
     
  3. relies on stereotypes instead of presenting evidence
     
  4. overlooks the possibility that the case it cites is not unique
     
  5. fails to acknowledge that ignoring something implies a negative judgment about that thing
  
  
• Here’s a stupid story: I went to the Australian High Commission to drop off my passport to get my ETA visa, knowing full well there would be a 5-day waiting period, and knowing full well I was leaving for American Samoa in 3 days. What a moron. I’m sure the nice people at the Australian High Commission will give me back my passport tomorrow morning.
  
• My school secretary had a computer die on her at the end of last week, and then lost the replacement computer to a virus this week. I think the pattern is her. No more computers for you, Lau. Just kidding. I’ll run and get another one from my lab.
  
• The answer is B.
  
• Correction: The pictures and captions were inverted on Tuesday. I chose the background with the sky and grass. The boys wanted the wall. So Margarita actually liked my background better. The pictures and captions are now properly associated. Matt’s Samoa Blog regrets the error.

That’s all I got. I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

I walked behind this kid into town the other day. For like 3 blocks.

In the absence of yearbooks, students had their friends sign their shirts. Filifili displays his here.

There were really long lines at the ATM on Wednesday. The man in the green shirt is actually a bank employee acting as the ATM attendant. He presses the buttons for users who are unclear on how to maneuver the interface.

Lean On Me

Apparently the USC football team has been psyching itself up before practice this season with gospel renditions of Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me”. Word got around to Mr. Withers who showed up to practice to host a sing-along. Now, true, the sing-along may not have spawned as many wins as I would prefer, but Head Coach Pete Carroll knows that it’s a moving song. And so does whoever picked the music for my school’s prizegiving. The students at my school spent a good 2 hours working out and rehearsing their rendition yesterday.

I brought my book to school because I knew we were in for the long haul, and as entertaining as it is to hear good harmony mixed with a second-rate synthesizer, I figured the opportunity for reading might arise. And it did. I finished my book. And just as I was finishing the kids started applauding and whooping.

I hadn’t been paying attention, and it turned out we were holding auditions for the “Lean on Me” lead singer, and the kids were pretty good about applauding everyone after they finished. Perhaps the strangest part, or the part that was most different from how things would be in The States, is that each lead singer auditioned with the entire student body choir.

Someone new would be called to the front, she’d sing the opening verse, then everyone would break into song and swaying to the beat and they sounded pretty good. It’s kinda hard to not sound good when you’re singing “Lean On Me” and you’ve been trained to harmonize since birth.

Over the two hours, we saw a slew of candidates from all 5 grade levels. There was a year 9 that had an amazing voice, but kept pluralizing “sorrow” at the end of the first line. Admittedly the good voice should have outweighed the poor grammar, but I couldn’t handle it. I was happy when they decided not to go with her.

A bunch of my kids got up and sang (okay, almost all of them are my kids, but I’m more apt to claim the ones with whom I’ve developed a good friendship) to mixed results. One of my particularly scholarly year 13s, Maryhellen, who I saw playing soccer during the Amazing Race, did a pretty good job. Between computers, soccer, and singing, Maryhellen is quite the Renaissance woman.

Only girls tried out. Though Bill Withers sang the original, the version that is currently popular in Samoa has a synthesized backbeat and is sung by a woman.

In the end, Goretti, a blithe year 11 with a sweet voice and a knack for improvisation, was chosen to sing the song at Prizegiving. She’s the one with the microphone in the photo up top. I got video of the song in rehearsal and during the real thing, but you’ll have to wait until I get to Ausetalia for me to post it.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Alofa from 9.1 takes a turn.

The girls' side. Maryhellen is in the back/semi-back row, third from the left, next to my year 13 Marie, who makes frequent blog appearances.

The boys' side.

The student body/choir.

In Defense of My Samoan

I’ll be the first to admit I’m insecure about my language skills. There are volunteers in my group that speak and understand Samoan a lot better than I do. But most of them work in schools where Samoan is spoken in staff meetings and in the classroom and in village life outside of school. They are completely immersed in the language, and as a result they’re a lot more advanced than I when it comes to speaking Samoan.

My situation is different. I am encouraged to speak English in the classroom. When I leave school at the end of the day, I head to town and a fair amount of people speak English to me. As I’ve said in earlier posts, it’s common for me to see someone on the street and say, “Mālō,” because I want to practice my Samoan, and for that person to say, “Hello” to me because they want to practice their English. I have cultivated a reasonable amount of friendships with host country nationals who live near me, and though most of them are native Samoan speakers, English is the language they prefer to use primarily.

I’ve been back to the training village 10 times this year; easily more times than any other volunteer in group 81, save for those who were dating people in the host village and were going back and forth a lot early on. I make a strong effort to immerse myself in Samoan culture and, yes, language.

They say it takes an average of 7 years to become fluent in a language, and sitting through and comprehending an hour-long staff meeting necessitates a pretty high level of fluency. Even the members of group 81 who speak great Samoan still talk about how they understand maybe 40% of their staff meetings.

I have a working knowledge of Samoan, and I can clarify concepts for my students, hold my own in a conversation with a taxi driver, barter at the market, laugh at the security guard’s jokes outside the Peace Corps office, and tell my host family stories about teaching. But in an hour-long staff meeting where I’m not the only one giving nonverbal cues, where it’s not really appropriate for me to stop a speaker to clarify a word, where for whatever reasons my vice pule speaks so softly she’s nearly inaudible, there’s bound to be information that eludes me.

And even then, as I said in yesterday’s post, I can often ask 2 people about what was said at a meeting and get 2 contradictory answers because beyond language, there are all kinds of politics and hierarchies and cultural nuances that go into a staff meeting.

Finally, most of the year our staff meetings haven’t gone on for more than 30 minutes, but they’ve been going long lately, to the point that even if they were held in English, my eyes would be glazing over by the end.

As I said at the beginning, I am insecure about my language skills (thus this post), and I recognize I haven’t made the progress others have. But I’ve tried my damnedest, and I’m completely satisfied with where I’m at after living in Apia for a year. Sure, there are still times when I’m caught off guard, but I think the most fluent of volunteers would report a constant flow of surprise. I will continue to maneuver through life, school and otherwise, as best I can.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The Year 13 boys wanted to take a group photo, so I suggested this background.

Then they suggested this background.