Breaking Bread and Brie

For a short time in college, I wanted to be a religious studies major; not born out of any strong religious views of my own, but more out of an academic curiosity. While I was raised in a progressively Catholic family, I find other faiths just as fascinating. And just as the Peace Corps is a cultural exchange of sorts, I enjoy a good religion exchange when I can find it. And since a bunch of the Christian churches in Apia get together for an ecumenical gathering once a month, I’ve been meaning to go. Also they serve dinner after.

In the announcements at the end of mass this morning, it was announced that this month’s gathering would be held tonight at the Anglican church. As I always have in the past, I briefly considered going, and then figured that the hour of mass I’d already attended was enough organized religion for this week. But then one of my friends in the Mulivae Youth program texted to let me know they were planning on going to the ecumenical service tonight after the weekly youth meeting. Also I’m over budget for the month and my refrigerator is empty. So I decided to give it a shot.

I showered and shaved and headed to the 7 o’clock service. I showed up to the church and immediately got my first lesson of the evening in Comparative Religion: Anglican is not the same as Protestant. I pass the Protestant church all the time, and when they said it was at the Anglican church, my mind didn’t process the difference.

So there I was standing at the Protestant church all alone. Just me and the crickets. At the neighboring hotel, I asked for directions to the Anglican church. It turns out I had walked completely the wrong direction from my house. Luckily I had about 20 minutes before the event was supposed to begin.

40 minutes later when I was standing at the gates of the Mormon church up the hill from the National Hospital, I decided I must have missed something. I was feeling foolish and hungry, and I’d decided to go on a whim, and I’d pretty much given up. And walking down the hill, I looked across the street, and there, a ways back from the road next to the gas station the concierge had mentioned, was the Anglican church. I was 24 minutes late.

With approximately 60 people in attendance, the gathering was relatively small, and I felt conspicuous when I tried to quietly slip into the back. But people were friendly enough.

From what I could gather, I think 4 churches in the area participate: the Catholic Community at Mulivae, the Protestant church, the Anglican church, and Peace Chapel in Vaimea. Ecumenical services are great and awkward. The people who show up are clearly passionate enough about their faith to show up, but they’re also secure enough to accept the faiths of others, which is cool. And then occasionally you get that feeling that people are walking on eggshells, and the fragility of comparative religion is palpable.

Whatever, you sing a couple songs, you say a couple prayers, and everyone feels like family. And then it was time to eat.

There was cake and doughnuts and sausage dumplings and breaded fish and sandwiches. And there was crackers with tomatoes and brie, which no one seemed very interested in. I probably had 14. They were delicious. And then a couple Aussies from Peace Chapel, Paul and Tim, chatted me up.

With my belly full and my Gnostic curiosity sated, I headed home.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

One nice thing about the Anglican/Protestant mix-up was the sunset. I usually save sunset photos for Thursday, but there's been an abundance lately.

The Unofficial Halfway Point

When I trained for my first marathon, I remember I felt really good when I reached the halfway point of any given run because at that point I was pretty much guaranteed to finish the course, if for no other reason than I’d have to get back to where I parked the car. The longest run I did was a 20-mile course from Dockweiler Beach to Redondo Beach and back (The following week when the team did the 22-mile run, I sat in the car and slept. What a whiner.). In any case, when I got to the turn-around point, I thought to myself, I will get back to the car if I have to crawl.

By my calculations, today marks the unofficial halfway point for Group 81’s tenure in Samoa. Since volunteer departure dates vary within each group, so it’s difficult to pinpoint any specific time, so I’m basing my numbers on staying until 2 years after our official Swear-In date and then taking the flight home on the following Monday.

I realize I made a big to-do about the one-year mark last month, and there will probably be more fanfare in December to mark the one-year anniversary of Swear-In, but I feel like the symbolism of today might be stronger than either of those. Today is Hump Day on a macro scale. We’ve spent the last ~13 months climbing the mountain, and now it’s time to start our ~13-month descent.

Going back to running, when I’m on a long run like that 20-mile course, there’s a lot of time to think, and one way I enjoy passing the time is thinking about the numbers. At the 5-mile mark, I think about how for every step I’ve taken, I need to take 3 more steps. And then at the 8-mile mark, every 2 steps I’ve taken, I need to take 3 more. It’s always exciting to make it to the halfway point because that’s when the numbers change and number of steps taken surpasses the steps remaining. You’re not driving into the tunnel anymore, you’re driving out.

Although I don’t mean to make it sound like I’m in a tunnel. And I’m not a prisoner chalking days up on the wall. I’m having a great time in Samoa (except for the paper-grading), and as exciting as it is to come this far, there’s also the worrisome realization that we’re not going to be here forever. There’s a lot left to do in school and out. I want (Max) to setup an intranet in my computer lab so my kids can email each other. I haven’t been to the Blow Holes on Savai’i, nor have I been out to any of the smaller islands like Manono or Apolima or even Namu’a. I could go on with my Samoa Bucket List, but I’ll spare you.

One more running analogy: When Brian and I did the San Francisco Marathon, our split for the first half was excellent. I nearly puked on the Golden Gate Bridge, but hell if it slowed me down. Save for a quick bathroom break around mile 10, we ran those first 13.1 miles fast. But not too long after that, I needed to walk for a while. And from what I’ve seen from other groups, that scenario seems to fit the Peace Corps as well. The first year is one prolonged adrenaline rush, and then you need a breather. Which isn’t to say that people begin to slack off. But I think people start to feel the limitations of time and the weariness of their persons.

Running the race, I’d start to realize I was on a 26.2-mile tour of San Francisco. I could put my head down and power through the rest. But it was a such nice day. Might as well take it easy and enjoy it.

Here’s to enjoying the last 13 months and looking forward to 13 more. Picture below.

Today was my school's Entrance Exam for next year's incoming class. This is the view from above.

Trivia bonus!
Which side of my face was duplicated to create the above-the-fold image?

Mark

The party has started. I finished grading the free response portion, and I’m about to move on to year 9. The year 10 test integrates multiple choice and free response, and is therefore less easy to break up, so I’m going to save that for last. It’s a slow-going process, and as soon as I start to feel like I’m “in the zone,” I promptly fall right out of “the zone.” Overall I’m happy with the pace though. A couple volunteers who aren’t encumbered with an onslaught of tests to grade have volunteered to help with the multiple choice portion, so I figure if I can finish the free responses by Sunday, things should work out fine. The more I grade, the more I sense a few running themes.

Wandering Eyes

Over half of the 11.3 class answered that the Paste tool “inserts the contents of the keyboard.” It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth time I saw this on a different students’ papers I realized they were trying to say it “inserts the contents of the clipboard.” A bunch of students in the same class also wrote that Bold “makes the sine darker.” This one’s a little more cryptic, but I think they mean “line”. There’s no trigonometry on my computer studies exam.

First of all, it’s annoying that so many of them clearly copied because it puts me in a weird position. Do I slash the scores of half the class because of circumstantial suspicions? Probably not, but it’s disheartening.

But second of all, perhaps even more disheartening is that none of them saw any red flag in those answers. Come on, guys… inserting the contents of the keyboard? How does that make sense?

Going through all of the papers, it was difficult to trace any sort of chain, so I have no idea where these malapropisms originated. I wonder if that student knows s/he has so much sway with his/her classmates. Oh well.

Point Blank?

I wrote a “Fill in the Blank” portion into the test in which students choose words from a list to fill the blanks. I feel a twinge of guilt when I correct it because if a student has one word in the wrong blank, it almost always means the correct word is also in a wrong blank. So “Fill in the Blank” seems unfair because one mistake is penalized with the loss of 2 points.

I’ve been compensating for this by throwing in an extra point for anyone who doesn’t have all 6 blanks correctly lined up. Is this unfair to those who do have the 6 answers lined up properly? Probably. But I’m okay with it.

Legendary

For the Excel Charts portion, I showed a picture of a pie graph entitled “Students’ Favourite Musical Artists”. I stole the artists from one of my year 13s’ PowerPoint presentations, and it includes, among others:

• Beyoncé;
  
• Samoan rapper Savage; and
  
• Michael Jackson.

I labeled the pie pieces with the name of the artist and the corresponding percentage, so there was no legend necessary. But then I wrote a question to ask about that, “Why does this chart not need a legend?” To which a student answered, “This chart has a legend. Savage is a music legend.”

Touché.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Stacked on top of one another, the tests tower to the height of a wine bottle.
Coincidence?!

This girl in 10.2, Emily, put on this bandana in the middle of the computer studies exam today. It was a cross between a Ninja Turtle and Samurai Chef.

Odds and Ends Thursday 33

As was alluded to at the end of yesterday’s post, I’ve spent the week bracing myself for tomorrow afternoon when I will stare down the long end of 500 exams. I acknowledge I brought this upon myself, but that makes the process no easier. I’ve been strategizing different ways to approach tomorrow’s pile. I think I’ll leave the multiple choice until last, and jump right into the nasty short answer section. How fun. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• My propane stove ran out of propane on Monday night while I had guests over and I was just about to make popcorn. This is annoying for so many reasons, which include:
  
  
  
  • This new tank didn’t last half as long as its predecessor;
    
  • I have to go back to the filling station, which is obnoxiously far away; and more than anything
    
  • We couldn’t make popcorn.
  
  
  
• The security guard outside the Peace Corps office always gets really excited to see me now, and then usually proceeds to tell me dirty jokes. My Samoan isn’t good enough to understand these jokes, but I recognize enough words to get the gist. And I can usually pick out the inflection of the punchline, at which I laugh heartily. I’m unclear on how this relationship developed, but I figure it’s best to maintain it.
  
• It’s really REALLY difficult to stay awake when you’re sitting in a silent room watching other people take a test. Even with a good book, it feels impossible. I get up, walk around, look over kids’ shoulders, stand in the doorway and look outside, but once you get that feeling that you absolutely need sleep immediately, it’s hard to shake.
  
• I found out last minute there was a Rotoract function last night. It was Salsa dance lessons. In Samoa. Taught by a Samoan. I got there late, but it was a good time.
  
• Now I don’t feel bad for setting the Fiafia slideshow to Salsa music.
  
• A number of faleoloas allow you to fill your propane tank or exchange it for a full one. I called, and the lady recommended I go to Lynn’s Supermarket up the hill. So I carried it up there. Mine was too small. So I carried it back down the hill to Mari’s. They don’t do propane. Finally I went to KK Mart by the Peace Corps office. They were willing to exchange mine, but all of theirs were empty. So I walked home.
  
• I probably walked 3 miles carrying that damn 25-pound hunk of steel, and I still don’t have a working stove. This frustrates me.
  
• I really want to finish marking the 500 tests over the weekend. I don’t want it to drag into next week. There are going to be whiney overachievers on Monday, beside themselves to get their scores, and I want to appease them. I also want to be done with my stuff so I can be ready when other teachers turn in their marks. I want to be ready with my automated spreadsheet.
  
• The printer in my school secretary’s office has been grumbling about how low its toner level is. Twice a day for the last two weeks, I’ve been called in to make the printer work. I take out the cartridge, tap it on one side, tap it on the other, put it back in. Magic. I’ve tried imparting this skill to others, but they keep calling me. What can I say? I have the touch.
  
• Two of my year 12s asked for my phone number so they could contact me if they had questions while they were studying for the big test. I caved and gave it to them. This has yielded an unending stream of text messages, very few of which have anything to do with curriculum.
  
• I’ve been exhausted all week, and then inexplicably, I feel great today. What’s that about?
  
• Phil and AJ were complaining last weekend about how expensive it is to come into Apia. And it was funny because I realize their complaints about coming this way is exactly how I feel about going out to Savai’i. After comparing notes, we all agreed it’s the boat.

That's all I got for this week. I hope you're well. Picture below.

Man trimming hibiscus bush while Lady picks up trimmings to move them off the road.

Finals

One morning on the ride to high school—it was probably junior or senior year—my friend Marcus’s mom sympatheti- cally asked how finals were going. Brushing off her pity, I told her finals were my favourite time of year. The school day is shortened, there’s no teacher talking at you, and the general feeling around campus is calmer and more low-key. Marcus’s mom looked at me like I was an idiot and said something along the lines of, “I guess there’s a few in every bunch,” but I stand by what I said. And it turns out I feel that way about Samoa too.

I admit the image of me feeling pleasure as my students miserably sit down for hour after hour of tests is a little maniacal. But it’s not aobut the misery of the exams, it’s about the atmosphere and the feeling of being in the home stretch.

The year 13s are literally camped out in a couple of classrooms cramming and cat-napping. It’s a lot like being in a university dorm where different students have different exams at different times; whenever you’re not scheduled for a test, you’re lounging with friends, quizzing each other on valence electrons and political theory. And when you get hungry, you simply run down to the mess hall (e.g. the umu cooked by a couple of boys from year 12). Life could be a lot worse.

The stakes are high for the year 13s though. The Pacific Senior Secondary Certificate exams determine whether or not they move on to university. In that sense, stress levels are high. But by the time they’ve made it to year 13, they’ve had their lives determined by their test scores for quite a while. The rank of the underclassmen (i.e. 11.1, 11.2, 11.3, 11.4, etc.) is determined by students’ final exam scores. The stakes aren’t quite so high for underclassmen, so they’re allowed to go home at night, but I guess some misery is still in order.

The style of testing is pretty formal. Each exam for each level as its own test booklet with an official time limit. Proctors track the passing of time on the chalkboard, ands students it in equidistant row s and columns that have a military rank-and-file feeling. The process is cloaked in an intimidating air. It’s everything short of the “make your mark heavy and dark” speech.

On the other hand, despite the authoritarian feel, there is rampant pushback from students. Conversations are whispered and White-Out is traded back and forth—occasionally it’s flung across the room. This could be a reflection of my lax discipline policies. I’ve heard stories from other volunteers in which students’ tests were ripped up on account of cheating. I prefer to lob empty threats.

I’ve enjoyed this week quite a bit myself. I’ve read a lot, and the hours of silence are a welcome change from my usual mornings spent bantering about Excel for hours on end. No lesson-planning is necessary, which is probably my favourite part. The only downside (and it’s a whopper) is that Friday afternoon I will be given a pile of 500 tests to grade. But until then, I will sit in blissfully ignorant silence. And it will be good.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

11.1 taking the maths exam (11.2 is pictured up top.).

The front row of 11.1 taking the maths exam ("Maths" means "math" in New Zeanglish.).

I noticed Kinny is left-handed. Apparently that's not frowned upon here. Cool.

The View from Here

A month or two ago, my friend Chris sent me a text message letting me know he’d purchased a Snuggy with the Weezer logo. When I responded by asking just what in the hell is a Snuggy, he let told me it was clear that I hadn’t been to America in a long time. It’s been a little over a year since I was in The States, and I admit certain concepts and ways of life are becoming foggy; things that used to be taken for granted are now only a vague memory.

I just watched a vignette from the “Mad Men” DVD special features in which an expert quotes the following fact: The typical American is exposed to approximately 3,000 advertisements every single day. I think whether or not I’m living in America, that statistic is mindboggling, and though I believe it and I vaguely remember what that felt like—the billboards, the bus stop posters, the placard at the back of the shopping cart, the radio commercials, the DVR interstitials, the email, the many facets of online—but it’s still difficult to fathom from this perspective.

Before I left and since I’ve arrived, I’ve been asked many times why I joined the Peace Corps. In fact, the Peace Corps asks each of us to write an essay about this particular subject before we arrive in country. One thing I like to talk about when answering this question is 3-D movies. When you go to a 3-D movie, you get a special pair of glasses so that one eye sees one thing, and the other eye sees the same thing, but slightly different. When your brain resolves the two perspectives, it yields a much richer multi-dimensional image. And just the same, I think there’s something to be gained from seeing the world through the American lens in combination with the Samoan lens. And now that I’ve had time to adapt to the Samoan lifestyle, the differences between the two lenses are becoming more stark.

It’s somewhat common for people to ask what I miss most about The States. At this point, my stock answer is that my perception of America has become almost dreamlike. In my mind, America has become so mythical that yearning for In-N-Out Burger is tantamount to yearning to ride a unicorn. It’s just not something I think about often because it’s anachronistic nearly to the point of fantasy.

But the advertising thing is weird for two reasons:

• I spent a year and a half working in Internet advertising; and
  
• As Mad Men points out several times, “Advertising is at its best when you don’t realize it’s there.

The first is weird because I was intimately involved in the advertising industry for a while there. Two of my roommates were too, and we used to sit around the TV and use all the buzzwords and have obnoxiously in-depth discussions about TV ads and such. Watching Mad Men, I remember my time at CNET and working with advertising agencies, and I see many differences, but there are also an overwhelming amount of similarities.

The second bullet above makes me feel naïve about my self-evaluation of my advertising intake here in Samoa. I feel like there must be days in which I’m exposed to an extremely low number of advertisements. I have no TV, I don’t listen t the radio, my internet connectivity is limited, I rarely ride in cars, I don’t read any periodicals. I’m sure I’m exposed to more advertising than I realize, but it still seems awfully difficult for Madison Avenue to reach me here.

And so the idea of 3,000 ads a day makes my brain hurt.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The kids brought by panipopo this evening.

What Doesn't Kill You

On an episode of the thankfully short-lived sitcom “Men Behaving Badly,” I remember a character listing the reasons why he had such a great day, which ended with “and then I stepped on a rusty nail.” When the others react with shock and horror, he tells them, “I just got a tetanus shot yesterday!” I realized I had a sizeable crisis on my hands around 1:00 this morning, but I was able to alleviate it in 10 minutes this afternoon, and I’m feeling good right now.

Some of you will remember how I put together a big Excel spreadsheet about 6 months back to automate a bunch of the processes teachers at my school were doing by hand. It took roughly a month to build it and polish it and confer with others about ways it could be improved. Sometime around mid-July I decided I was done with it until our next set of common exams in mid-November.

Since exams (and marking of exams) began today, it was crucial I distribute grade sheets to teachers today so we could implement my spreadsheet. True to form, I procrastinated and finally put together the handouts last night so I could give them to teachers today. The forms have to match the file itself, so I went to load the big huge masterpiece of a file, which I have saved on my flash drive. Except it wasn’t on my flash drive.

I never backed up the file, and the only copy of it is on the server in my computer lab, which you’ll recall was eaten by a virus about 2 weeks ago. This was a terribly stupid confluence of events, and a year ago, I would not have been able to fix it.

As it turns out, I’ve faced a similar problem already this year.

Before I left last October, Jennifer and Tommy gave me a 1-TB external hard drive with a slew of movies and music and video games loaded on it. There was even more stuff in-country, and I’d loaded quite a bit of stuff on it when it short-circuited and died in July. Jordan told me I could get a new shell for it, and most of the data could probably be salvaged. Cale looked at it and told me it needed SATA shell, which aren’t available in Samoa.

Amanda planned her visit for September, so I found what I thought I needed on the Fry’s Electronics website. As it turned out, this magical tool is exactly what Samoa needed.

I was able to salvage all of the data from the dead terabyte drive. After that, Jordan borrowed it to salvage data off the computer of one of his staff members. The thing is like a little pocket knife of ports and connectors that turns whatever device you have into a simple USB 2.0 connection.

I figured I could probably use that to get my large Excel masterpiece off my out-of-commission server. And it worked. Excel is back in business. Marks at my school will be automated this term.

I’m still a little freaked out about “taking a look under the hood” when it comes to computers (ha. Or cars for that matter), and I only have a surface-level understanding of what I actually did today. But I was able to avert my own crisis, and I’m pretty happy about that.

I hope you’re well. Images will be uploaded later this evening.

It rained really hard this afternoon—harder than it's rained in 3 or 4 months.

Rain falling off the roof at Italiano Pizza.

Rain falling off the roof at the firehouse.

Night Terrors

Since I have no TV, I’m constantly afraid of running out of stuff to watch, so I tend to ration my TV viewing. But last night, Phil and I splurged. We watched one episode each of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” “Rome,” “Mad Men,” and “Eastbound and Down”. We set Phil’s laptop on his kitchen table and watched while we sat in plastic dining chairs. Not too far into “It’s Always Sunny…”, I shut of the lights, and almost immediately termites started landing on the screen of the laptop. Phil remedied the situation by turning on the light in the bathroom, to which the termites swarmed; however, the mosquitoes refused to relent.

When the 3-hour TV marathon concluded, cleaned up and started to get ready for bed, and Phil found the source of the mosquitoes: the backdoor to Phil’s house was open the entire time. Like the ones at my house, Phil’s screen doors are not completely sealed, and when the lights in the house are on and the door isn’t completely shut, unwanted guests invite themselves in.

Not too long after that, we settled into bed, Phil in his bedroom and me on the living room floor. Against Phil’s advice and my own better judgment, I didn’t light a mosquito coil. Mosquito coils are flat, cardboard-like discs that, when lit with fire, burn slowly and emit mosquito-repelling smoke. I neglected to light one last night instead relying on the electrical fan to create a draft strong enough to deter the pests.

The fan didn’t work. Within 10 minutes of laying down for the night, I had 3 huge bites on my right wrist and one to match on my left. At that point, I realized my folly and put on a t-shirt, covered up with an ’ie, and went so far as to spray insect repellent on my forearms.

Mosquitoes are crafty little bloodsuckers, and they will exploit whatever gap in security they can find. For me last night, it was my feet. An ’ie is roughly 2 yards of fabric, which isn’t enough to be an effective bed sheet. My feet inevitably exposed themselves during the night, and sometime around 3:00 or 4:00 a.m., I woke up to a throbbing itch on the bottom of my left foot.

I don’t know whether it’s the rude awakening or the depth of the mosquitoes’ puncture or the chemical makeup of the venom, but fresh bites in the middle of the night seem to ache more than they itch. In fact, the throbbing and the aching seem to exacerbate one another. I often feel that if it was just the pain or just the itch, my brain could adjust to the discomfort and move on. But the two in combination are too much for my brain to ignore. But when I’m faced with 3:00 a.m. mosquito bites, I still try in vain to distract my mind from the pain. Sleep! Sleep! I try and will myself.

The strangest part of all this is how my body has developed an immunity to the venom. By the time I woke up this morning, there was no trace of any bites on either of my wrists nor my foot. The pain and the itch are gone, and all the overnight bleary-eyed trauma feels like nothing more than an extremely unpleasant dream.

But it’s early tonight, and I’m already feeling sleepy on account of all the waking up in the middle of the night last night. Sleep deprivation is now the most lasting mosquito-caused malady.

I should have used a coil.

I this weekend has left you well-rested. Pictures below.

Phil and AJ.

The GoMobile Store in Salelologa on Saturday.

The Bus to Salelologa

Phil, AJ, and I woke up groggy this morning. AJ played games on his cell phone, I read a book, and Phil slept late. We took turns taking showers, and enjoyed a breakfast of “Magic Shapes,” a generic version of “Lucky Charms.” None of us felt any sense of urgency about doing much of anything, but eventually it was decided we should head into Salelologa, the largest city on Savai’i where the satellite Peace Corps office is. So around 11:00 a.m., we walked out to the road and waited for the bus.

There is no hard and fast bus schedule in Samoa. The buses run back and forth during certain hours of the day, and if you live somewhere fairly close to town like Phil does, it doesn’t take long for a bus to show up. A bus drove by as we were walking through the gate of Phil’s school, which was poor timing. When it’s unclear when the next bus is coming, it’s lousy to miss one. A bus in hand is worth two in the bush.

We were in luck though: Phil barely had time to put his trash in the roadside receptacle before a bus from Puipa’a appeared at the top of the hill. AJ waved it down, and within 20 seconds of arriving at the road, we were climbing on a bus.

The bus was mostly empty when we boarded. There were a sprinkling of passengers, but we were all able to get an entire seat to ourselves. Phil pointed out that bus rides like this are his favourite: the bus is empty, and it wasn’t a popular time to go into town so the driver made few stops along the route into town. The public transportation system in Samoa is nothing like any in The States, but I remember thinking the same thing about Saturday Muni rides into downtown San Francisco.

A bus ride on a Samoan bus can overwhelm the senses: the bus’s lack of shocks, the rigidity of the wooden seats, the bright colours, the smell of gasoline and sweat and barbecue, the temperature change—i.e. hot as hell when the bus is stationary, cool and windy when the bus is moving. And then there’s the music.

Magik 98.1 tends to be at the center of popular music in Samoa, but its reach isn’t as wide as the bus system. Most buses are outfitted with blaring sound systems and CD players, and drivers often swap CDs when they congregate at bus hubs in Apia or Salelologa. This system is amazingly efficient and viral. I’m unclear on how CDs are duplicated, but certain songs have a tendency to spread like wildfire. Currently en vogue is a Samoan artist whose name I don’t know, but his songs are everywhere. Googling his lyrics yields no results. I’ll get back to you.

In addition to popular music, a Saturday morning bus ride gives a constant stream of glimpses into the lives of Samoans who live along the road. There was a basketball game in Fogapoa, competing barbecue sales in Fusi, and a funeral in Sapapalii.

We rolled into Salelologa after a quick ride, and that was that. The ride was uneventful, but no bus ride in Samoa is ever ordinary.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Boy selling taro in the shadow of a breadfruit tree.

Church in Salelavalu

Phil and AJ in silhouette with guy outside store in the background.

Liz and Briony.

Dudes

I’ve ventured across the strait to Savai’i for the weekend for no particular reason other than I haven’t been here in a really long time. The last time I came to Savai’i it was with my parents back in May. I went to New Zealand after they left, but from the time I arrived back in Samoa on June 1 until today, I’ve been on Upolu. I never lived on an island until I moved here, so I have no previous experience with which to compare. Is not leaving an island for 5+ months the same as not leaving Union City? The East Bay? I probably did stretches growing up where I didn’t leave the East Bay for months and months. In any case, I haven’t had any sense of “island fever,” so it’s probably not worth talking about.

I’m staying at Phil’s tonight, as is AJ. It’s always fun when volunteer guys get together because it ends up being shameless bachelorism. Usually when I’d get together with other single males in The States, we’d go out to a restaurant for food and keep our bizarre dining-in habits to ourselves. But in Samoa, restaurants mostly only exist in Apia. So we eat in.

AJ was already here at Phil’s when I got here. “What do you guys want to do for dinner?” Phil asked. AJ, thinking ahead, brought a box of Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese Dinner. This provided a good start, but was probably not enough. So we headed up the street to the Tuasivi grocery store.

It’s clear I haven’t been here in a while. The Tuasivi grocery store was a thriving faleoloa when I was here last, but they’ve remodeled, put in tile flooring, and installed a turnstile at the door. It’s a swanky little place.

Shopping for dinner with other Peace Corps dudes is a perpetually awkward experience. “What do you guys want to eat?” “I don’t know. What do you guys want to eat?” “I don’t know. What are you hungry for?” Fade to silence.

Inevitably one or all of the following gets suggested (or combinations thereof):

• Ramen;
  
• Tuna;
  
• Spaghetti;
  
• Hot dogs;
  
• Cereal;
  
• Our own feet.

AJ suggested tuna tonight, an idea which I shot down before it was allowed to marinate. I have graduated from a life of picky eating, but when it comes to canned tuna, I will dig my heels in.

In the end it was decided we should just get extra pasta shells and use the same cheese from the box. We also picked up some canned pears and 3 bottles of Coke. And AJ got a can of Chilli Cheese Fritos.

And that is what we ate. The pasta was divvied up into equal portions, and the canned pears were dumped into a single bowl, left on the kitchen counter, and consumed while the three of us stood in a circle around the bowl. There was grunting.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The line to get on the boat. Look closely and you can see Blakey and Koa.

People sleeping in the aisle on the ferry.

Tuasivi at dusk.

Phil's freezer, which had a cameo in Empire Strikes Back as the ice planet Hoth.

Odds and Ends Thursday 32

Since all students will be taking exams next week —common exams for the 9s, 10s, and 11s, the School C for the 12s, and the PSSC for the 13s—this week was essentially the last week of classes. The whole thing has been frustratingly anticlimactic. Part of me wants to have big parties in each class, but it’s difficult because everyone’s in study mode, so a party is difficult to justify. So most of my courses have concluded with me saying, “Good luck,” and waving and that’s it. Prizegiving is 3 December, hopefully that will provide closure. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• Tonight was also the last night of the year 13 camp. There was banana crème pie and panepopo, so I guess there was some acknowledgement that things are ending.
  
• At the Halloween Party, I ran into Dale almost as soon as I got there. We talked about USC losing to Oregon and debriefed the rest of College Football Saturday. As soon as we parted, Jordan told me we had to go back to Dale so he could get a picture. And it wasn’t until people started taking photographs that Dale turned and said, “Wait. Did you come dressed as ME?” Then he turned to his wife and said, “He came dressed as me!” It was funny.
  
• Apparently Group 82 was in Apia on Saturday (as is evidenced by their blog updates), but I didn’t see any of them because they were gone by the time I returned from Fausaga.
  
• A bunch of the Indian missionaries are leaving for over 2 months at the end of November. Last year they visited friends in American Samoa and New Zealand, but this year they’re going all the way back to their hometown in India. I’m bummed because I was planning on using Maengi’s oven to cook my dish for Thanksgiving, but she’ll already be gone.
  
• In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s an open call for a sublet-able apartment in the Sydney area in late December/early January. Please see the upper right sidebar for details.
  
• I attended one of Blakey’s Rotoract meetings yesterday, and they signed me up to participate in some Amazing-Race-type event that will also serve as a membership drive. It sounds somewhat similar to our photo scavenger hunts from back in the day. More on that as the story develops.
  
• All internet connections in the country seem to be really slow lately.
  
• I broke out the Ghiradelli Chocolate squares for my year 13s at the end of class tonight. They were quite pleased.
  
• Mom, QWERTY is the nearly ubiquitous keyboard layout that is almost certainly right in front of you as you read this. In fact, while you and Dad were here, you made me read a passage out of “Guns, Germs, and Steel” about the design of the QWERTY keyboard. It’s on the year 11 curriculum, and thus Tuesday’s killer game of Hangman.
  
• Water pressure has been variable since the early October drought. As I type this, it is out.
  
• As I was sitting here tonight, a lizard fell off the ceiling and landed with a thump next to me on the couch. He glanced at me as though slightly embarrassed, and then quickly scurried up the cushion, on to the window sill, and out of sight.
  
• Yesterday I wore a shirt that I got from RPCV Christian when he left in September. It is bright blue and covered in hibiscuses. I was in the middle of my 10.3 class when a teacher pulled me out of class to compliment me on it. Then Filifili stopped by later in the day to give me a “Seki a lau ofu.” Sweet shirt. Thanks, everyone.

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

Site and boys standing around the fire tonight.

Filifili with a plate of onions.

This cruise ship tourist insisted on taking a photo from the middle of the street. At one point she stood down a van. Really, it was kind of impressive.

Jordan dressed up as a diver for Halloween. This photo doesn't capture his short shorts. It's just as well, I think.

AJ as Tyler Durden.

Chalk

I remember the chalkboard in the band room during middle school. Mr. Tatum had a special wooden tool that held five pieces of chalk equidistant from one another so he could draw musical staffs when need be. And I remember coming back to school after summer—I forget which particular summer—when the blackboard and chalk had been replaced by a whiteboard and markers. The tool had been adjusted to fit the wider width of markers. And the transition was complete.

It’s weird to come back to chalk. On one hand, it’s those perfectly cylindrical sticks that you remember so well, and on the other hand it’s yet another of those things you perceived a certain way when you were younger that turns out to be completely different years after the fact.

My own learning curve with chalk has progressed slowly with this school year. Inevitably, the first thing I noticed was a fresh piece of chalk, 3.5 inches in length, needs to be broken at least in half before it can be properly wielded. And even then, it tends to break unless it’s halved again. Writing with a 0.875” piece of chalk becomes like playing guitar with a disappearing pick. You keep going and going until the strings feel like they’re scraping layers off your fingertips.

For a while I thought our school was buying defective chalk that had small scraps of rock baked into the sticks. It wasn’t until fairly recently I realized pieces of chalkboard were embedding themselves in the chalk. Chalkboard on chalkboard is one of the worst feelings in the world, and at one point yesterday I had to recoil and allow the nastiness to roll down my spine.

And then there’s the inherent dryness. I start the morning fine, and by Interval my hand are all dry and puffy and nasty. And the dust. Sure, you can pat your hands and your clothes, but there seems to be a never-ending supply of dust.

One thing that’s nice is my school seems to have a large supply of colored chalk, which is fun. In my attempt to stimulate the visual learners, I use the colored chalk whenever I can. It’s to the point now where I can coordinate color by sub-topic, and then repeat that color scheme from class to class.

With my computer being down lately, I’ve been using whiteboard markers in my computer lab. And I do have to say the markers aren’t nearly as sexy as the chalk. The markers are finicky and oily and frail. My handwriting is more smooth, but it doesn’t have the feel, the sound, the uneven trail.

Whatever it is, I can’t help enjoying the ironic juxtaposition of teaching computer classes with chalk and a chalkboard. In the “Environmental Conditions” lecture, there was even a point at which I would write on the board, “Keep dust to a minimum by using a whiteboard.” It felt like I was betraying a medium. It felt wrong, and yet so right.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Year 13s.

Most difficult Hangman ever.

It's Hot

Whenever there’s an opportunity for hi-speed internet, I like to sign on to Facebook and see what’s going on in the world. And I’ve consequently become a frequent user of Facebook’s chat function. I still use my regular “How are things?” to initiate conversation, and inevitably the person at the other end asks, “How’s Samoa?” And for as long as I can remember, I’ve almost always had the same succinct response: “It’s hot.”

I’ve been meaning to pick up a PDF copy of the 2008 PSSC from the Peace Corps office, and I finally walked over there tonight. And walking home in pitch-black darkness at 8:30 p.m., it was probably in the mid-90s. And though I say it all the time, I had to stop and say it again. “It’s hot.”

Samoa is 14° south of the equator, so it abides by the seasons of the southern hemisphere, and thus is technically heading into summer. The terms “Summer” and “Winter” aren’t really usually replaced here by “Wet season” and “Dry season” respectively. Nonetheless, the southern hemisphere winter months—i.e. June, July, and August—tend to be cooler, and the Summer months—i.e. December, January, and February—are noticeably warmer.

Group 81 arrived in October 2008, so we’ve been through one hot wet season already, but this year the change feels different. Last year, we were newbies, and the warming trend was not relative to the dry, cool Samoa, but to dry, cool America. We got here and we expected it to be hot. It’s in the damn tropics. And as it got hotter, it only made more sense.

But now, after spending a cool dry season (that should really be called Slightly Less Hot and Slightly Less Wet), it’s time for the hot wet season to begin, and it’s hard to imagine things hotter and wetter than they already are.

I was walking in town with Blakey a while back, and I remarked on what a hot day it was, and Blakey told me she’d given up trying to discern the heat and humidity from one day to the next. “It’s always hot,” she said. It was a fair point with which I couldn’t argue, but there still seems to be times when it feels good to affirm the obvious.

Part of the differentiation springs from the fact that we’ve adjusted our lives to better deal with the heat. If I had errands to run back in February, I’d leave right after school to walk into town. Now, I usually spend an hour or two after school laying on my couch, and only after the heat subsides in the late afternoon will I venture into town.

Yet even with behavior adjustments, the heat seeps in. Teaching my year 13s at 4:30 this afternoon, we had all the computers off and all the windows wide open. I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts as is my custom during after school “camp” classes, but I could still feel the sweat running down my back. My kids nodded at me as they fanned themselves. Yeah. It’s hot.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

The family's new cow, Supo.

Akanese and me.

The baby, Keleme.

On the Same Page

Today marked the start of the final week of classes at my school, and I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On one hand, I’m thrilled to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Teaching is an exhausting profession, and I understand why we allow teachers a couple months of vacation each summer. On the other hand, I have a sinking feeling in my stomach that it was all for naught, and that I’ve failed to teach them everything they need to know or that everything I actually have tried to impart will have gone in one ear and out the other.

That feeling was especially strong this morning when, as we were nearing the 10.1 class, I gave them a lightning-round quiz. I asked what hardware was. The definition came back: the pieces of the computer we can touch and feel. I asked if we could touch and feel Microsoft Word. No. I asked if we could touch and feel the motherboard. Yes. I asked what the motherboard was.

Deafening silence.

At first I was annoyed. “C’mon, you guys. You gotta know this stuff.” But as 40 blank faces looked at me and then down at their notebooks and then back up at me, I realized it was probably my fault. I grabbed the notebook of a kid in the front row, and began to flip through it, urgently looking for lecture notes on hardware. To my horror, there were none.

Now, before I paint too nasty a picture of my abilities as a teacher, you should know a little about the national curriculum for computer studies in Samoa for years 9 through 11: there is none. School systems are allowed to dictate their own curriculum in order to adequately prepare students for year 12, which does have national standards.

So Phil, Koa, and I wrote the curricula at the beginning of the year. You know… before we’d ever stepped in front of a classroom. And really, they’re not so bad. We modeled them from curricula written by past Peace Corps, and for the most part, they’ve provided a solid backbone for each level. Things only get confusing when it comes down to the nitty-gritty details—like at what point students should be responsible for the definition of the motherboard.

These small issues are proving to be big problems as all students across the school system take the same standardized test at the end of the year. There’s no mention of the motherboard in the year 9 curriculum, but there’s a question about it on the test. Neither Phil nor Koa nor I wrote the year 9 exam, but I did get a chance to proofread it.

Part of the problem is there’s very little on the year 9 curriculum; it’s mostly learning to type. And you can’t fill a test with questions about Mavis Beacon. So inevitably material has shown up on tests that wasn’t included on the curriculum, which is awkward for me as a teacher and really lousy for students.

I wrote the year 11 test, which adheres nicely to the year 11 curriculum, if I do say so myself. There are no questions about motherboard on that one. Of this, I am sure.

In any case, now that Phil, Koa and I are seasoned teachers, we’re more aware of the ridiculous inconsistencies, and we’re setting aside a couple days in January to get things on the right track next year.

And I had my 10.1 class copy down the definition of the motherboard. Just in case.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.















My year 13 class.  I gave them some compound formula problems this afternoon, and they were surprisingly into it.















Flowers in the ditch on the side of the road.

Halloween Comes Together

As reported Thursday, much controversy has surrounded Halloween, both because of my lack of costume and the contentious debate over where to hold the party. The bus coming back from Fausaga was an hour late, and I still had no costume when we rolled into Apia at 4:00 p.m. I called Supy, and it turned out the location issue also had yet to be resolved. Things were becoming dire.

Word went around back in August that Jim and Spencer were dressing up as Simon and Garfunkel. I’m a pretty big Simon and Garfunkel fan, and I felt a little heartbroken when heard about this. After discussing the matter with others, it was suggested I go as solo artist Paul Simon. I could get a pair of jeans, a white t-shirt and a grey suit jacket to try and pull off the “You Can Call Me Al” era look. This would have been a slightly obscure reference, and it would have only been funny to me, and I probably would have had to walk around the party explaining the costume to everyone. And who wants that?

Last year’s Halloween party was awesome. It was held at Zodiac in Vailima, which has a huge outdoor patio area where a bunch of traditional Halloween games—bobbing for apples, Cale’s Slimer piñata, etc.—were held. The plan was to replicate this party as best we could. Blakey, the official Social Chair, talked to the management at Zodiac, and given the success of last year’s party they were having a bigger party this year, which they were advertising on radio and TV. Also they were charging a $20 cover. This did not sit well with many volunteers.

My other idea was to go as a Samoan bus. Buses here are pretty distinct, outside and inside, and the plan was to dress the front of me like the outside and the back of me like the inside. I had big plans for the back. I found a UFC t-shirt with an over-the-top pro-American slogan and a feather boa, and I was going to make a flyer for an upcoming siva to tape to my back. The front was a bigger problem. I couldn’t figure out a way to capture the outside of a bus. All my ideas required a lot of money or a trip to Target, neither of which I have access to. I finally scrapped the idea Thursday night.

The Yacht Club surfaced as a possible venue about 2 weeks ago. Consensus among volunteers was agreeable, but Blakey texted a bunch of us last Sunday to say The Yacht Club had been booked for the night of Halloween, and that we were tentatively back at Zodiac.

It’s unclear how the double-booking issue at The Yacht Club was resolved, but when I talked to Supy on the phone yesterday, a contingent of volunteers had decided to go to The Yacht Club. There was a widening schism and at one point it looked like volunteers were going to split for the evening.

On the costume front, I ditched the concept-centric approach and decided to try the materials-centric approach; I brainstormed costume ideas based on things I already had. I figured my thick-rimmed glasses were as good a starting point as any.

I stayed out of the location controversy. While the issue was debated via text messages and in person at the Peace Corps office, I sat at my house, out of the fray. And lo and behold, around 5:30 p.m., it was finally decided that all volunteers had opted for The Yacht Club. Done and done.

I decided to be Peace Corps Samoa Country Director Dale. I realize this reference will fall flat over the Internet, but it was a pretty big hit at the party. Just know that the man has a distinct enough style that it could be replicated. It also helped that Dale and his family coincidentally happened to be eating at The Yacht Club.

So it all came together in the end.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.















Me as Dale and Dale with his daughter, Celine.















Jim & Spencer as Simon & Garfunkel.















Casey as Sean of the Dead.















JICA volunteers were there too.















Paul as Captain Morgan.















Koa as a Never Nude (There are dozens of us!  DOZENS!).