8 Hours in America

During the summer before my senior year of college I had minor gum surgery, and though I was living in Los Angeles at the time, I flew back home to the Bay Area to have it done. And so I’d say the longest I’ve had to travel for the most proportionally insignificant dental appointment was 8 weeks later when I had to make a special trip so I could open wide for the dentist, and he could nod and say, “Looks good!” And that was it. Today’s was a shorter trip for an entire dental cleaning, so I think the old record stands, but on the whole, today still qualifies as absurd.

It’s standard Peace Corps procedure to have a routine dental check-up and cleaning around mid-service. In some places, this check-up happens within the host country. There’s a dentist that comes through Samoan on occasion who meets the Peace Corps’ standards, and when he’s here, volunteers are encouraged to go to him, but he’s not here right now. Most of Group 81 got their routine check-up when they went back to The States during the holiday season a few months back. But a few of us stragglers missed the travelling dentist and the trip home. So we move on to plan C: Pago.

In December I visited American Samoa for 2 days to take the LSAT. This time I went on the Peace Corps’ dime, so my trip was significantly shorter and all business. In fact, on all of my customs forms, in the “reason for stay” area, I checked the “business” box each time. When I had to confront the U.S. Customs lady, the interaction was short . “When do you go back to Apia?”

“Today at 4:00 p.m.”

“That’s a very short trip. Why did you come?”

“To go to the dentist.”

“Ohhhh. Talofai.” Poor baby.

I walked out of the airport, hopped in a taxi, and headed to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Tropical Medical Center. The government hospital has a sprawling campus, and by sheer luck I happened to walk into the correct office on my first try. I registered for hospital services (non-resident, Apia status), and paid my $10 US, and they headed me in the direction of the Dental offices.

The Peace Corps Medical Officer here in Apia told me I should be able to finish with all my dental business by 11:00 a.m. I was still confident of this holding on to the door knob of the dental offices at 9:30 this morning. My heart sank when I opened the door to find a long narrow corridor with a bench on one side that resembled an at-bat Major League Baseball dugout with coaches and players standing all over the place, everyone hoping to bat next. This was going to take a while.

2.5 hours and 30 pages later (Why can’t I finish “The Odyssey”?), they called my name, and I went to sit in the dental chair. I handed the doctor my Peace Corps paperwork, which he was less than thrilled to see. His examination was cursory—in lieu of the normal recitation of numbers, “2-3-2, 2-3-3, 3-4-2,” he filled the sheet with “0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0”—but he seemed nice enough.

Jenny 80 and Joey 80 went to Pago yesterday for the same dental check-ups, and so the hygienist had all sorts of questions for me about the Peace Corps and why we’re all showing up for dental appointments and what we do and how much we get paid.

Though the doctor’s examination was cursory, the hygienist’s cleaning was unforgiving. I admit the ruggedness of the Peace Corps lifestyle enables a more lax system of personal dental care, and I atoned for all my flossing sins when the water pick came through. Then the polish, and finally the fluoride. I haven’t had to gargle fluoride like that since I was 11 years old, but whatev. It was nostalgic. Don’t worry, Mom. No popcorn or blue Slurpee to wreck the moment.

In the short time I had left before my return flight, I took the bus back to Carl’s Jr. and stocked up on American fast food. It was great.

To my great disappointment, I was unable to find any store that sold Guinness, though I swear I remember seeing it when I was there in December. Oh well.

BusyCorner, I’m sorry if this second trip to American Samoa disappoints you as much as the first, but my time was limited.

I hope you’re all well. Pictures below.

I sat right behind the cockpit again.

My school and the plane's landing gear.

Apia and Apia Harbour from the air.

Bus in front of Carl's Jr.

Lyndon Baines Johnson Tropical Medical Center.

This sign is so close to my header. They couldn't go with "Afio Mai"?

Value and Cost

In deciding to enter into the wonderful world of the Peace Corps, the price of admission is 2 years of one’s life. Now, yes, the 2 years aren’t squandered or wasted; certainly the time I’ve spent in Samoa has been great, and I’ve learned a lot about myself and the world. But even with that, there’s an opportunity cost at work, and in the days and weeks leading up to my departure from The States, I realized the things I would not be around for: the 2008 presidential election, the 2010 Winter Olympics, the final season of LOST, and for me, probably my 10-year high school reunion.

Our reunion is still in the naissance of planning stage—I’m good friends with our class president, Virginia, whose job it is to organize the event, and right now she’s waiting for responses from a survey asking people what they’d like to do for the reunion, when it should be held, and how much people are willing to pay.

I talked to her on Sunday, and we discussed the issue of cost. She said it looked like people thought $40 was reasonable, except for a few outliers who’d be willing to pay upwards of $100, which she couldn’t fathom. And then she asked what I would be willing to pay.

And at that moment, I felt the most out of sync I’ve ever felt with life in the United States. Not until I was asked directly did I realize how I’ve lost all concept of American money. It felt a little like that scene in “Rain Man” where Dustin Hoffman’s character thinks a candy bar and a compact car cost roughly the same price. Granted my barometer isn’t quite so off, but I was still quite baffled by the question.

Part of the problem is I’m used to dealing with American money as an indirect currency. 100 Samoan tala is roughly equal to 40 U.S. dollars, and I occasionally have to use that information when making a large purchase here. So for the last year and a half, my experience with the dollar has been mostly indirect.

Also, volunteers don’t tend to think of things in terms of American dollars since we’re paid in Samoan tala. Our friends come to visit, and they’re so tickled by how cheap things are here in terms of American dollars, but since I make a fairly modest Samoan salary, budgeting, particularly budgeting for recurring expenses, is all done in tala. My dial-up Internet costs roughly $150ST per month, which comes out of my Peace Corps living allowance. At no point does the dollar factor into this.

In fact, in my eyes for the past year and a half, the dollar has been completely finite and not something associated with a salary or any other method of replenishment. When I spend my American dollars, it better be worth it because I’m not going to see my American money grow until I go back to the States and get an American job. And thus figuring out a “reasonable” expense becomes difficult because the criteria have changed.

Finally, even in tala, I don’t have very much budgeting to do anyway. I don’t pay rent or utilities. I don’t have a cell phone plan. I don’t have a car, so I don’t have to factor gas money into my monthly spending plan. With my monthly wages, I buy food, Internet, phone credit (which isn’t as predictable as a plan), and miscellaneous items. As much as I adhere to a budget, it’s not a complicated regimen.

So when she asked me what I thought was reasonable, I felt a little baffled. At this point, the difference between $40 US and $100 US seems both vast and negligible, and at this point I have a really difficult time assigning the term “reasonable.”

Does this make any sense? My mind was shocked by its own inability to function, but I’m not sure I can communicate how bizarre it feels to lose perspective on something like money. It’s amusing and unnerving. I guess it’s another price of Peace Corps admission.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

I left my camera with my school's secretary for 5 minutes today, and I come back to find self-portraits galore.

Rugby practice this afternoon.

Thanpuii brought over beef curry she made from scratch after I fixed her computer last week. Awesome.

Electrical Parade

It was an urgent knock. I was laying on my couch at the time, and the clatter of the knock made me spring to my feet. The cat has been increasingly curious about the outdoors lately, so I grabbed her to keep her inside, as I scrambled across the living room. I opened the door and saw a large man wearing an fluorescent orange vest stamped with the initials of the Electric Power Company. “You live here?” he asked me. I nodded. “Good,” he said. “We’re shutting off your power until you pay your electric bill.”

I was only for a moment, and then realizing I was essentially powerless in the situation (no pun intended), I started to laugh. “You’re shutting off our power?” I repeated. “When are you doing this?”

“Right now,” the man said, gesturing to his truck, where I saw a man with a hard hat pulling out an extendable ladder preparing to scale the electricity pole outside my house. “Do you know who lives here?” he started knocking on Maengi’s door.

“Yes,” I said.

“Where is she?”

“She’s at school. Teaching.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. You’re turning off our power right now?” The guy was clearly annoyed I wouldn’t identify my neighbor, and he didn’t seem too interested in going over the details of why he was shutting off the electricity. So I left the guy standing at Maengi’s door and went back into my house.

My laptop’s battery ain’t what it used to be, and I was working on my drawing contest entry, so I saved and shut down. By then, Maengi had come home to find the man up the pole.

“This is very frustrating,” Maengi said to me when I got back outside.

See, in return for our efforts, the school and its parent organization pay for our electricity. In gaining a Peace Corps (and 2 missionaries), the school agrees to provide housing and water and electricity, but for some reason, they waited until this morning to pay the bill, which didn’t leave enough time for the dispatcher to call this guy off.

And this guy had the self-righteousness of one of those Repo guys from TV. He knew that we were bad for not paying our bill, and he had no interest in listening to reason. So Maengi and I went back to our houses. The fan was dead. The lights were out. The computer’s battery indicator light was on.

So one by one, we complained our way up the chain of command. First our pule, then the main office, then the Treasurer. Maengi’s lived here for 8 years, so she knows a thing or two about navigating the system, and after not too long, we had guarantees from several people that our power would be back on today.

When I left to run some errands at 3:30 this afternoon, the power was still off, and I’d grown skeptical of its coming back on before tomorrow. I had flashes of reading a book by candlelight and sitting in the dark trying to make music blowing over the top of a Coke bottle.

But, sure enough, when I got home around 5:30, the cat was sitting in front of the electric fan, feeling the cool breeze.

Just another day in Samoa.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

Who parks here? Who parks here. PUN!
Oh, is that Pete Townsend's spot? PUN!
That's where they park the magic bus. PUN!
Owl parking. PUN!
Who? My wife, Ellen. Who? My wife, Ellen. INSIDE JOKE!
I think you-know-who parks there. PUN!
Feel free to post your own.

Knock on Wood

We are smug. We are pompous and proud and totally impressed with ourselves. And if there’s one topic of conversation that we can all speak about passionately, it’s one in which we try to understand why we’re so amazing. And in situations like yesterday’s, that conversation becomes inevitable, and while Group 81tries to fathom its own glory, everyone else rolls their eyes and waits for the love fest to be over.

As much as Samoa is a tiny country and as much as modern transportation and technology allow any volunteer to travel to any other volunteer’s site within a single day, it’s still extremely rare to have an entire group gathered in one spot. In fact, after training, for most groups there are essentially only 5 or 6 more times every single person in the group will be in the same place at the same time, and all of those are Peace Corps functions where attendance is mandatory. Getting everyone together for a casual occasion is rare, and for some groups nearly impossible.

But self-satisfied, too-cool-for-school Group 81 breaks the mold. A couple volunteers got together to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day yesterday, and once Erin showed up, we looked around and all 13 members of group 81 were present.

Now, first and foremost, group 81 is proud because we haven’t lost anyone. The 13 people who boarded the October 7, 2008 flight are all still here. Blakey points out that more than anything else, this is due to luck. The fact that no one in our group has had a big tragedy back home (knock on wood) and no one’s gotten sick (knock on wood) and no one’s found reason to leave (knock on wood) is all a lucky game of chance. But we’ll still obnoxiously pat ourselves on the back for being so gosh darn lucky.

So in addition to having everyone still here, we are all also fairly likely to show up to events like yesterday’s. We are all social enough butterflies to come and hang out with volunteers en masse where we can have obnoxious Group 81 love fests and alienate everyone else who showed up.

One could argue that the social personalities provide good reason for why we’re all still here—perhaps group 81’s sociability contributes to its completeness. I’ve always felt like we’re in the longest game of chicken ever, and no one’s quit yet because no one wants to be the first the back down. See? I’ve seduced the post into a conversation about why Group 81 is so amazing. Tricky how we do that, huh?

I’m not trying to be ironic or clever by talking about how obnoxious we can be. We most certainly are that obnoxious, and after a year and a half, we’ve learned to tone things down. Sort of. Each of us has caught enough flack for our self-love that we know we should keep such talk amongst ourselves. In the family.

Actually, we weren’t very obnoxious at all yesterday. Erin got there, we realized what was up, we snapped a couple photos, and we went back to the party. We've become so humble. We're awesome.

I hope you’re well. Happy birthday, Aunt Kelly! Happy Pi Day! Pictures below.

Phil, Paul, Dan, and one of the 82 Jennys.

I just re-watched The Godfather, and the toilet at The Yacht Club is suddenly much more foreboding. You just get that feeling that Abe Vigoda just might have hid a pistol behind it.

The waitress last night brought over this bug, which she called a sei. She said they're lucky.

Phil and I are having a drawing contest in which each of us must reproduce the image above using Microsoft Paint. Once the entries are ready, I'll post them too.

Breakfast Club

Phil, Dan, and I breakfasted at the Aggie Grey’s breakfast buffet this morning. It’s $25, which is a little more expensive than any of the breakfast places in town, but it’s all-you-can-eat and therefore quite a deal. Without getting into any specifics in regard to last night (Supy, me, and Joey above), suffice it to say I had a headache this morning, and a square nutritious meal was just what the doctor ordered.

Phil told a story about how he taught his kids about Uninterruptible Power Supplies by comparing them to Jesus. Uninterruptible Power Supplies are a bit like surge protectors on steroids—they have a battery inside that allows the computer to stay on when the power goes out or becomes unsteady, and they also absorb any power surge or spike. Of course, if your UPS does absorb such an impact, it dies, but the computer lives. It dies so the computer might live. The metaphor kind of invites itself. And in the country, you can do no wrong with Jesus. "You know how Jesus saved us? Well that’s what a UPS does for a computer," Phil recounted his lecture with a smile.

Dan told a story about saving a dolphin. Some boys from his village came running up to him calling, “Malie! Malie!” Shark! Shark! They wanted him to come and see. As it turned out, the shark was actually a dolphin, and it was stuck in a small hole less than a meter deep. It had become stuck when the tide went out. So Dan employed two trusted year 10s to help him hoist the dolphin out of the hole, and then had the boys carry it out to the deeper part of the reef. When the boys returned, he asked if they did it, and they said yes, and when he asked what the dolphin did when they let it go, they said it swam away. “I saved a dolphin,” Dan told us triumphantly. “I totally have good dolphin karma now.”

I had a full plate of bacon. Just kidding.

Short post today, but you know, things are busy this weekend. I hope you’re well.

Your Reports in My Handwriting

I still haven’t gotten used to the idea that every time teachers have a due date for formal paperwork, it inevitably translates to me typing everyone else’s stuff. Ideally I would have them type their own stuff, but faced with spending copious amounts of time in the computer lab keeping things in line, I cry uncle and agree to do the typing. I usually split duties with the school secretary; and so the marathon typing begins.

Today a teacher came up to me to ask about a letter she needs to write to someone in New York. At first I think she wanted me to write the entire letter, but I convinced her she should come up with her own draft and then I could polish her draft. And I’d type it of course. This kind of project makes me happy.

An example of a project that doesn’t make me happy is as follows: Another teacher approached me Thursday to ask if I’d type a document for him. He hands me a business studies assignment from another college with the name of the college whited out and my school’s name written over it. He wanted me to re-type everything so our school’s name would be written at the top. Grrrrr.

Part of the reason teachers ask for this kind of thing is because the South Pacific Board of Education looks over everybody’s stuff and I guess the assumption is that if they hand in some shoddy xeroxed version, it would reflect poorly on the school, but a fresh typed version someone maintains a modicum of respect. It’s kind of like in Back to the Future when Biff Tanon asks George McFly, “Do you know what would happen if I turned in my reports in your handwriting? I’d get fired. You wouldn’t want that to happen, wouldja? Wouldja?”

And just like George McFly, I’m a pushover. And I type stuff that someone else has clearly spent well over an hour typing.

This situation became particularly aggravating this morning when I went to print the business studies report on my secretary’s computer. See, the assignment I typed for the business studies teacher involved a bunch of financial statements, which I created by inserting Excel spreadsheets into my Microsoft Word document. Apparently when you create such a document in Word 2007, save it as a .doc file, and then open it in Word 2003, it destroys the entire thing.

I typed up the entire thing (8 pages!) last night, and it destroyed it this morning. So I retyped the first 3 pages at home during Interval today, only to fall into the exact same trap. So after school I spent another hour typing the same 8 pages I typed last night. But now I’m really really familiar with the internal assessment for the Year 13 accounting students. Hooray.

I hope you’re well. Happy Birthday Margarita! Pictures will be posted later tonight, or more likely, tomorrow morning.

Odds and Ends Thursday 46

We’re on the verge of finishing week 7 out of the 15 in the first term of the school year. Term one is the longest and tends to be the most formal and straight-laced time of the school year. With after school sports, I feel like working at school has been almost non-stop lately, and I’ve spent much time this week calculating the number of school days until Easter break. Three weeks from today. I can’t wait. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• I realize I’m starting to sound like a lush with all this talk about Guinness, but does anyone know what the rules are for checking beer in one’s luggage? Aside from the weight restriction, is there a limit? Say I was to go to American Samoa. Could I bring back a case of Guinness? I mean, hypothetically. Just throwing it out there.
  
• Today after school I was in the computer lab waiting for one of my students, Taua, to finish what she was working on. And for whatever reason, I started whistling Barbra Streisand's "Woman in Love". "What are you whistling?" Taua asked. "Nothing," I said quickly.
  
• Cheers to Vero for getting 16/24 in the Oscar pool. Did you guess right on the shorts? Or did you know Avatar was in for a rough night?
  
• My sixth grade rugby team won their game today against Avele College, 19 – 21. Avele missed one of their 2-point kicks, and that proved to be the difference. All in all, a very close game.
  
• The past 3 weeks in a row, one of the math teachers has come up to me early Wednesday morning to ask me to type up worksheets for his evening bible study. I’ve been able to churn them out in full and on time, but I realize it’s that sort of effort that ensures he’ll have more for me the following Wednesday. No good deed goes unpunished.
  
• I asked him to start giving me his worksheets on Tuesdays.
  
• After watching an episode of “The West Wing,” I’d usually feel inspired, but after watching an episode of “Ally McBeal,” I’ve been feeling bleak and depressed. I think they try and play down all the dark stuff on the show with Vonda Shepard, but sometimes that’s not enough.
  
• It’s been very windy in Apia lately, and in the middle of the night there’s been some pretty crazy rain. And often just moments after it let’s up in the morning, I can hear students on campus already. That’s gotta be a lousy commute for them.
  
• For the most part, recycling is not an option here, except in the case of beer bottles and Coke bottles. Apia Bottling will pay 40 sene per bottle, and most faleoloas are willing to split the difference and offer 20 sene. So inevitably, many households—mine included—accumulate Coke and beer bottles eventually intent on turning them into money. Thus the Coke bottles in this picture.
  
• Last month I nearly took in a couple bottles so I could piece together enough change to buy cell phone credit. It was a little pitiful.
  
• On the old Windows Spider Solitaire, you can’t undo a deal?! WTF?
  
• Due to school cancellation and the SchoolC meeting on Tuesday, I only taught my science class once this week, which brings the total number of times I’ve taught that class to an astounding 2.
  
• Speaking of the meeting on Tuesday, I ran into blog-reader Rob there. Rob had emailed me at the end of last year from Sydney. He and his wife just moved here to do some work with the Palms organization. Pretty cool.
  
• To the person who leaves comments under the handle “BusyCorner,” please shoot me an email at the link on the righthand column. I have a couple questions I’d like to ask regarding American Samoa.
  
• What did people think of the “My Goodness, My Guinness” ad? Did anyone notice in the original post that my right hand was a nubbin? The nubbin’s been replaced. It’s not the perfection I saw in my head when I thought of the idea, but I think it works pretty well.
  
• Comments are way down on a day-to-day basis, but site visits and page views remain steady. What’s up with that?

That’s all I got for this week. I hope you’re well. My camera’s battery died right at the beginning of today’s rugby match, so no pictures today. Sorry.

Let's Not Do That Anymore

In high school I knew a girl who swore by a philosophy in which posited that any time you try something new, you are obligated to try it twice to either confirm your experience and/or dispel any part of the initial experience that was false. This philosophy, at least somewhat based in reason, seems logical enough, and I’ve employed it on quite a few occasions in Samoa. For example, there’s a restaurant in town where some Peace Corps love to eat while there in town. Tried it. Didn’t like it. Gave it the benefit of the doubt. Tried it again. Still wasn’t impressed. Done and done.

But on some occasions, the first experience is so jarring and wrong, that one can forego the whole doing it again thing. That was my experience in my English class this morning.

It is common among teachers at my school to write heaps of text on the chalkboard and then have the students spend the period copying it all down. For certain aspects of computer studies, I felt like I could justify this method to a certain extent. For one thing, my school doesn’t have the resources to make lots of copies of handouts. Also, the physical act of writing helps the brain commit it to memory. So, for example, when I’d draw out all of the Microsoft Word icons they were responsible for knowing, and then list the definitions alongside, I had no problem making the kids spend a good half hour drawing the pictures and copying the notes.

But in English, I've always been a little weary of the practice. But the plan was to read a short story together as a class, and since there aren’t enough copies of the story to go around, I figured I’d write the story on the board and have them copy it. Bad idea.

My first problem was choice of story—I decided to use the one from the Year 10 textbook. It should be reputable, right? Wrong. This story had words that would have perplexed an American twelfth grader, let alone my kids who don’t speak English natively. The story, written by a Samoan, uses words like “austere” and “implicitly” and “swathes” and “profusely” and “defiant”, not even close to my kids’ English vocabulary.

I wrote the first two paragraphs on the board. They were both quite long, and even though I wrote fairly small, they were all I could fit. Many students, who by this age are quite proficient at blindly copying the board, actually kept up pretty well. Others, understandably, got that glazed-over look in their eye.

The first two paragraphs set the scene: A Samoan family living in New Zealand. The mom constantly picks the red roses that grow in front of their house, and she and the dad sing in the late afternoons before taking the flowers to church.

After my kids labored for most of the period, I decided to ask some of the critical thinking questions the textbook suggests. “How do we know the people in the story live in New Zealand?” I asked.

“Because they’re palagi,” Because they’re white people, said a kid in the front row.

“Whoa,” I said. The words ‘Samoa’ and ‘Samoan’ appear in these first two paragraphs several times. “Are the people in the story palagi?” I ask the entire class.

“Yes!” They shout back quickly and in unison.

“No!” I shouted back at them. “What are they?”

“Afakasi?” Half white? The same kid in the front row half states, half asks.

“No!”

Finally a girl in the second row: “They’re Samoan?” The two paragraphs are dripping with nostalgia for Mother Samoa, and my kids aren’t getting a hint of it. It’s way over their heads.

I will never spend another period writing English on the board for my kids to blindly copy, and we won’t be reading any more snooty stories from the textbook. Done and done.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Apong and the sixth grade rugby team.

The kids loved practicing plowing into each other.

Boys waiting in line.

Trading Bases

I hung out in the staffroom when the bell rang for first period this morning, waiting for the van load of teachers who would be heading to the SchoolC feedback meeting. I was reading my book when Taleni sidled up next to be with a stack of papers and a rugby ball in hand. Taleni is the head coach of the sixth grade rugby team, I am the assistant coach. He had been looking for me this morning to tell me he’s going to Savai’i for the rest of this week to attend a funeral and attend to subsequent obligations. So even though this is our first game of the season, and even though I remain perplexed by the rules of rugby, I’ll be flying solo coaching our team this Thursday. Great.

Later this evening while making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner, I listened to the Fresh Air interview with baseball hall-of-famers Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson. Now as much as neither of my parents emotionally involve themselves in sports, I would still refer to ours as a Baseball Household. I rarely remember watching football growing up, but baseball had a presence in our house and even more so on the radio in the car.

We were enough of a Baseball Household that after the players’ strike of the mid-1990s, baseball’s absence was felt in our house. In fact, it was felt for years after because we were so annoyed by the whole thing. I don’t know if that makes us less of a baseball family or more of one.

In any case, listening to Bob Gibson and Reggie Jackson tonight made me miss baseball. And the juxtaposition between coaching a sport which I only vaguely understand and have little-to-no emotional investment versus completely missing out on a sport that I grew up with seems insane. I realize much of the Peace Corps is insane, but this seems more off than usual. It’s one thing to participate in cultural exchange; it’s quite another to be put in charge of the strange new pastime that’s completely supplanted everything that was once familiar.

I’ve asked for help, and hopefully someone will feel sorry for me enough to step in and straighten things out. I like to think I save begging for pity for dire situations, and I think this fits the bill.

On the other hand, it’s just a game, and God knows the boys know what to do. Mostly I just call their names so they know who should be on the field, and they’ll take care of the rest. For a coach, it certainly helps to be familiar with the ins and outs of the sport at hand, but I guess for one game, I can fake it.

It seems like sixth grade is a lot like Under 6s or Under 8s in soccer where you mostly put the kids on the field, throw the ball at them, and let them chase it for two halves. And then you have orange slices and Capri Sun afterwards.

Let’s hope it works like that.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Older boys running in the rain.

La'au Moli and Keke Saina during morning tea today. La'au Moli, literally Citrus Leaf, is a tea made from citrus leaves (duh). It tends to be served with lots of milk added. Keke Saina, or Chinese Cake, is a cookie with an onion-based paste in the center. It's not really similar at all, but I guess you could kind of think of it as a cousin to the onion bagel.

Why Must I Work with Teenagers in Love?

I’m not sought out for relationship advice very often. This was true in The States, and it’s even more true here. Maengi, on occasion, plays the role of undercover guidance councilor, helping students talk through problems with significant others. But something about me tells people to look elsewhere for such advice. The Love Doctor I am not, and everyone seems to have received the memo.

But then today I got a rare glimpse into the discreet social lives of students—albeit ones that graduated last year. One of the Year 13s from last year—let’s call her... Ruta—came by this afternoon to get help on her University-level computer studies homework. Ruta wasn’t in my class year, but she’s quite the overachiever and went out of her way to make friends with me so she could use the computer lab to type of English essays and such.

In any case, this computer class is the first she’s ever taken, so I help her out with some pretty basic Microsoft Word stuff. We finish, and it turns out she has no means of transporting the files. So I offer to lend her a flash drive from my house.

So walking to my house she gets to talking about all the kids from last year and how many of them are at the National University of Samoa (NUS) now, and how friendship dynamics have changed. She tells me about Mira and Sinaumea and Marie and then she gets to Epi (name changed, of course), and she starts to laugh so hard, she can barely speak.

“What?” I ask.

“She was going out with this boy,” she laughs. “And he broke up with her. And then.... She CRIED!” She laughs and laughs. I’m caught offguard. This story is sad. But then she clarified the joke. “I can’t believe she would cry over a BOY.”

“Ruta,” I say. “That’s so sad. It’s always rough when someone breaks up with you.”

“Yeah, right,” she retorts matter-of-factly. “I will never cry over a boy. I’ll cry for my mom. That’s it.”

“Okay,” I shrug, not wanting to argue.

In the Peace Corps, we talk about relationships between students a fair amount. They’re entertaining because, for the most part, they’re very VERY hush-hush. Romantic gestures and public displays of affection are taboo in Samoa. Even older and/or married couples don’t kiss or hug or even hold hands in public. At the cinema, you can hear angry audience members tsk during kissing scenes.

So the adolescents I see every day are faced with a difficult choice: obey cultural norms, or obey your hormones. The result is an awkward, covert dance, that can sometimes come across as naïve or overly dramatic. Yes. I just described the life of every young adolescent, but here it takes on a special flavor.

Boys and girls alike tend to be quick using the phrase “I love you.” And yet even the two in the relationship tend to find the entire thing laughable just their peers. It’s incredibly serious, and it’s not serious at all. And the kids like poor Epi don’t know what to do with themselves.

And poor Ruta, at 18, is still adamant she’ll never cry over a boy. Let me know how that goes.

I hope you’re well. Picture below.

This is refried from September, but it's pretty funny and it illustrates my point perfectly, so I thought I'd bring it back out. The letter above was passed around the staff room during Interval. Transcript below:

DEAR U Hi! Wazz up. Luk this is hard for me to say yes or no becoz, I don't feel like making another girlfriend, but don't hate me, I have a girlfriend b4 but we broke up, 2 months ago, becoz of me, she don't like what I say to her, or don't kiss her when she live. If your love for me has any realty then that's for me 2!!! Um, I was very shock about your first letter, I really[?] didn't epect this to happen betwe u nd me. Luk I don't wanna hurt u, I don't know, if u know me well but this is so unbelievable. If I said yes, then promised me this is going to be a secret, between u nd me ok! Don't tell your friends either, becoz we don't know wate gonna happen. Sorry I dont know how to make or create your folafilaava [no idea what he means], becoz I'm not taking [talking?] Samoan. Maybe I'll ask you to talk to me 2maro, then we started things up, I don't if u really luv me, or I really luv u if ur free on Saturday, come, met me at the Paualalo market, just you. If u really luv me and if u wanna be wif me, do as I say. K plz don't tell anyone, I promised u, and u have to promise me ok. From me.

Awards Re-Cap and Housecleaning

First the Academy Awards (feel free to skip this section)... Overall, I’m happy. “Avatar” may be the technical revelation that only comes once every couple years, and that’s great, but I maintain it has no business winning the top awards without telling a good story. A good counterexample is Pixar. When “Toy Story” came out in the mid-1990s, it was an amazing step forward in cinematic arts—but it also had a poignant, clever story.

In any case, I was happy to see “The Hurt Locker” take Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. The fact that it snaked the sound awards is even better.

I was happy to see Christoph Waltz win for “Inglorious Basterds”. It was too bad The Academy overlooked the movie in all other respects, but I guess some people just don’t get Quentin Tarantino. Some critics say it’s his best ever, and I can get on board with that. It’ll never be a pop cultural staple like “Pulp Fiction,” but as a piece of filmic literature, it’s great.

I thought the John Hughes tribute was great. I would still rank “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” in my top 3 favorite movies of all time.

I was proud that I called “Up” for Best Score. Everything I read pointed to other favorites-to-win, but I called the underdog. It’s got that simple, great, happy, tragic melody line. It fits the movie like a glove. I called it.

In the end, I called 14/24, which is 55% better than last year, but doesn’t match my 2007 record of 17/24. Oh well.

Regularly Scheduled Post

I had to install drivers on Thanpuii’s computer just before I watched the Oscars at Maengi’s house, and in similar conversa- tions, they both made the same observation: this seems to be the hottest year in Samoa they can remember. They both arrived in December 2001, so that’s pretty substantial.

In my first period class this past Wednesday, I was standing at the chalkboard at 8:00 a.m., and I could feel my body drenched in sweat. It rolled down my frontside and my backside and everywhere in between, and my clothes felt heavy on me as they absorbed what they could. It was gross. Later that day I talked to Blakey, and she reported having the same experience in her first period class. First period!

I bring all this up, one, to give you an idea of what we’re all going through here, and two, to give you an excuse for why I haven’t been doing anything for the past couple months. My house is in squalor. The trees outside are overgrown, and the inside has become a dumping ground.

Guests show up, and I have to move loads of dirty laundry to find sitting space. It’s embarrassing and gross, but until today my motivation has been rock bottom.

But this morning I needed to find a certain piece of paper to give a lady at church, and that finally tipped the scale.

I found I have stacks and stacks and stacks of out-of-date school stuff from last year, so I shed all that. And along with that, there was heaps of other stuff: old telephone bills and Peace Corps meeting agendas and draft syllabi and old notices from my pule and blah blah blah.

I also found:

• $5.20 WST;
  
• 4 flashdrives;
  
• Weeds Season 3 Disc 3
  
• The current Samoa tourism brochure (and the one before that, and the one before that);
  
• The Periodic Table of Elements;
  
• The receipt for my dental work in New Zealand; and
  
• Many other fun things.

It was a productive day, and I made a little cash. The dirty laundry is still sitting on a dining room chair though. Call before you come, and I’ll move it.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

A teacher at my school borrowed my camera on Friday, and this picture of me was taken as a test shot.

A couple months back, Jordan asked, "Why do cats like to sit on pizza boxes so much?" And lo and behold, Scout found a pizza box this week.

I took her to the de-sexing clinic in this box, which she hated. But turn it on its side, and she loves it. Whatever, Cat.

Brilliant!

The story goes like this: Cale 79 calls Dylan 77 and tells him he’s been hearing a funny sound around his house, and he wants Dylan’s opinion on the matter. Dylan assents, and then Cale holds the phone out and Dylan hears a small, high-pitched PSHHHHHH immediately followed by a hollow popping sound. Dylan, of course, has no idea what the noise is, and Cale tells him, “Oh right. I know what it is. I just opened a Guinness.”

Guinness was one of the first imported beers sold at Farmer Joe, and it was a big deal when it first arrived on store shelves. Whether or not the above story is true, it provides anthropological evidence that, indeed, Guinness was sold in this country in the not-too-distant past. It’s the “hollow popping” that really proves the point. Guinness’s patented nitrogen capsule makes a funny noise when you open a can or bottle, and it gives the beer that authentic draught taste.

I spent the day looking for such a can or bottle. With Saint Patrick’s Day just around the corner, Guinness should be in season. In addition to enjoying the rich, smooth taste of Guinness, I’ve been dying to make Irish Car Bombs. An Irish Car Bomb involves dropping a half shot of Jameson Irish whiskey and a half shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream into a glass of Guinness and drinking the resulting concoction. The coffee taste in the Bailey’s combines with the chocolaty Guinness to create a perfect little drink. For those of you trying at home, drink up fast—the Bailey’s coagulates in seconds, and then you won’t want to drink it at all.

In any case, for the past year, the problem has been the Jameson. While there is a fair amount of whiskey for sale in Samoa, the Jameson plays an important part in the drink, and it’s not something you want to scrimp on. But going through duty free in Sydney, I remembered the Jameson. The last part of the equation was in place.

Until last night when Chris told me there’s no Guinness at Farmer Joe. I checked this morning. There’s not. There are a handful of other places that typically sell things of the Guinness ilk, and I checked out those places as well. Nada.

And if that’s not annoying enough, Le Well now sells Jameson.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

Oscar Picks
Below are my guesses on who will win at the Oscars tomorrow night. Once again, these are my guesses for who will win. They do not necessarily reflect my opinion of who should win. Feel free to post your guesses. All entries must be submitted by 8:30 p.m. EST / 12:30 p.m. Sydney Time. Winner gets a postcard.

Best Picture: Avatar
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker
Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side
Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire
Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglorious Basterds
Best Screenplay Original: Inglorious Basterds
Best Screenplay Adapted: Up in the Air
Best Editting: Avatar
Best Documentary Film: Food, Inc.
Best Animated Film: Up
Best Foreign Language Film: A Prophet
Best Cinematography: Avatar
Best Art Direction: Avatar
Best Costume Design: The Young Victoria
Best Make-Up: The Young Victoria
Best Score: Up
Best Song: The Weary Kind, Crazy Heart
Best Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker
Best Sound Editting: The Hurt Locker
Best Visual Effects: Avatar
Best Short Animated: A Matter of Loaf and Death
Best Short Live-Action: Miracle Fish
Best Documentary Short: The Last Campaign of Gov. Booth Gardner

I hope you’re well. Congratulations Amanda! Pictures below.

Last night was the Peace Corps/JICA dinner. One of the JICA volunteers is leaving, and it was another's birthday. A good time all around.

Chris setting the table.

Posing with the food.

Am I Spongeworthy?

The packing list the Peace Corps sends future volunteers is 4 pages long, single-spaced. It goes through the necessities and the optional items and suggests helpful reminders. In my opinion, the most peculiar item is where it specifically calls out there are no dried apricots in Samoa, and if you’re someone who really likes dried apricots, you should bring your own healthy supply. As strange as that bullet is, the wisdom of that “healthy supply” part is applicable across the board. There are certain things you can’t buy here, so it’s good to bring a bunch.

The packing list goes into more detail of the “healthy supply” rule when discussing underwear. It suggests volunteers bring extra pairs of underwear sealed in a Zip-loc bag, and then after a year, once the volunteer’s underwear has effectively disintegrated in Samoa’s hellishly humid climate, s/he can open the Zip-loc bag and bask in the firm embrace of preserved elastic.

I followed this advice. I sealed a bunch of underwear in a large freezer-sized Zip-loc bag. I have an extra pair of glasses (thick-rimmed, of course) encased in plastic, and I have an assortment of other random supplies (e.g. dish sponges) still in shrink wrap.

But now that I’ve arrived at mid-service, now that I’m looking at less than a year left in Samoa, part of me is hesitant to open any of these things. My reasons are twofold: I think I enjoy looking forward to opening the new things more than I will enjoy actually opening them, and I’m hesitant to start working without a backup. Let’s look at these one by one.

The current glasses I wear are a little decrepit. The effect of 17 months of Samoan humidity, occasionally wearing them while I climb a waterfall or lounge in the water on the beach, has been substantial. The anti-reflective coding has been slowly flaking off so if the light hits them just right, you can see splotches of light where the holes are. I have a brand new pair that would allow pristine, untainted sight—for a while. Soon enough, they’d start to wilt and crack, and then I’d have 4 or 5 months left with 2 pairs of crappy glasses.

I can’t wait to open those new glasses, but the charm of opening them would wear off and then I’d have no new glasses to look forward to. It’s similar to the slight tinge of sadness I feel every year on Christmas. You spend so much time waiting for it, and then it’s never quite what you expect once you get there. I can have Christmas whenever I decide to open those new glasses, but isn’t it fun to wait?

And then there’s the second issue. When Phil and Koa visited for a teacher meeting back in mid-February, they were appalled by my kitchen sponge. It was frail, and if you watched certain dishes, little sponge-bits would flake off and swim around the sink before going down the drain. It was flimsy and tired. Now, as I said, I had a fresh sponge wrapped in shrink wrap in my house, waiting to be called up to the majors. But I liked having him there. Now that I’ve opened the sponge, I’m working without a net. This a Scotch-Brite No Scratch Multi Purpose sponge. And when it goes, what will I have left?

Please note this isn’t an indirect way of begging you to send me sponges. I can buy a cheap sponge here that will do the job fine. And even if you sent one, I’d probably just keep it in the packaging until it’s time to move out and then I’ll feel bad. I won’t ever be sponge-less, but I like knowing there’s a back-up.

I guess the situation is comparable to the same calculus one usually does when preparing to go on vacation or a long trip. Should you buy a gallon of milk if you’re leaving in 5 days? Should you buy a half gallon? Maybe you can forego cereal and just have pop tarts for breakfast, and then you won’t have to buy any milk at all.

It’s like that. Except my big trip is 9 months away.

I hope you’re well. Happy Birthday, Erin! Pictures will be uploaded late tonight or sometime tomorrow morning.

My glasses. It's a little difficult to see the anti-reflective blotches. They look like little circles on the lenses.

More pictures from yesterday's rugby exhibition game.

The sideline.

The scrum (?).

11.1 student (and Fausaga native) Esau was a sideline judge. Linesman? Flagperson?

Odds and Ends Thursday 45

I can’t wait til tomorrow. The Friday night/ Saturday morning sleep keeps the entire week in balance. It’s the lynchpin, the keystone. When it’s taken away, like it was last Friday during the big tsunami evacuation, its absence echoes throughout the rest of the week, wreaking havoc and dragging me down. Whereas in this spot last week I wrote about how things are beginning to pick up speed, this week crawled by. And so tomorrow night, I will sleep long and good. Here are some other odds and ends from the week:

• Sara from home, let me speak for all Bay Area baseball fans, A’s and Giants alike, when I say BLEHHHHHHHHHH! To even refer to yourself as a “part-time Red Sox fan” breaks my heart.
  
• On the other hand, thanks for reminding me about the “Sweet Caroline” Red Sox affiliation. I almost taught that song to my kids. Think of that. How could I have lived with myself?
  
• For better or for worse, I suggested Koa teach it to his kids.
  
• Today was my first day teaching science. I started the class by saying, “My name is Matthew, and I’m your new science teacher.” And I heard one girl in the back go, “Yessssss.” I’m giving her an A.
  
• The cat’s recovering fine. She was very unfriendly on Tuesday night, but she’s been extra-friendly ever since. This little respite is giving my perpetual scratches time to heal.
  
• A girl from the National University of Samoa came to me for help with a math problem last week, and I completely failed. Here’s the problem:
  
  Given the equations below, what values of k will yield a single solution? No solution at all? An infinite number of solutions?
  
  x – y = 3
  2x – 2y = k
• GRE vocabulary! Pied: multicolored, usually in blotches: The Pied Piper of Hamlin was so called because of his multicolored coat.
  
• The maumaga, the plantation and tsunami evacuation point, has so many mosquitoes. Once it became clear we were heading up that way, I doused myself in repellent. My family was running all over the house packing up their livelihood while I was took an aerosol shower in the kitchen. And those bloodsuckers still got me! I had a couple bites on my back where I’d been bitten through my shirt.
  
• And they took forever to go away because I almost never get bites back there.
  
• The “cute puppy” in the picture at the top of Tuesday’s post pooped in his sleep. Even the vets referred to him as “The Poopy Dog”.
  
• We all got this news emailed to us on Tuesday. “Volunteers are going to start getting more money. Just not you.” Thanks.
  
• The new computer teacher seems okay. Pretty mellow. I told him to meet me in the computer lab after school, and when he walked in I was playing “Tangrams,” which was slightly embarrassing. It’s more difficult than it initially looks, but at first glance it looks like me making a duck out of shapes. Like a 4-year-old.
  
• Koa, Phil, and I got into a small argument about who could best draw a map of the Americas. I said Phil’s Baja looked like a turkey wattle, and Phil and Koa both lambasted my depiction of Canada. There was a lot of downtime at the meeting.
  
• I’d never heard of a “German bun” until today. I’ve eaten them, but I never knew the name. In my science class, we are studying food science, and so I asked the kids to generate a list of foods they typically eat. One girl raised her hand and said, “German bun.” And, over-annunciating to clarify, I asked, “GERMAN BUN?” For some reason, the entire found this hilarious. It was all I could do to keep them from falling out of their chairs. I don’t get it.

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

The road is paved! I swear, this intersection, upwind from my school, has been gravel for the past 6 months or so. The blows would blow over and it was all kinds of nasty. But now it's paved. Hooray!

Paved!

Rugby game at Lei'ifiifi this afternoon with good clouds.

Out with Blakey last night.

Going Down?

It’s a rare day in Samoa when I get to ride an elevator. In fact since I arrived, I’ve only been on two: the one in the American embassy, and the one in the John Williams building. I took the latter this morning to get up to the sixth floor for our Head-of-Department meeting. The elevator there is enough of a rarity that up until last year there was an attendant to guide people in pushing the buttons. At one point there were welcome mats in front of the elevator doors, and I’ve witnessed people inappropriately use the “open door” and “close door” buttons.

In any case, a weird thing happened when I stepped on this morning. For some reason I was immediately reminded of the elevator in San Francisco’s Westfield mall; the one in the Eastern end, on the bottom floor you enter from behind the Thai place in the food court. I’m not clear on why this elevator came to mind. I’ve certainly taken other elevators far more in my life. In fact, that mall didn’t open until a year after I moved to San Francisco. But it came to mind vividly, it brought on a warm, fond feeling, and that fondness almost immediately darkened to longing.

Emotionally I was caught off guard, and the elevator’s been on my mind all day.

Riding the Westfield elevator is a generic experience one could have in almost any public building. It’s certainly a nice elevator—spacious, clean, and well lit. It’s not too slow, and it’s got big placards that light up as you pass each floor. But on the whole, it’s unremarkable.

I have fond memories of the mall. It was a casual-but-slightly-fancy place to meet people for dinner. After I got laid off, I’d go up to the atrium on the 8th floor during the day, where I’d sit and read Newsweek. But nothing particularly noteworthy happened there—I don’t even have a slightly funny story to tell about the place.

My longing has nothing to do with place or sentimentality. I think I just miss my state of mind.

I wouldn’t call it carefree. During the period I rode that elevator, I had a corporate job, was laid off, desperately searched for a job, and eventually joined the Peace Corps. It was a strange, stressful time. But I wouldn’t call my state of mind strained or anxious either. After all, isn’t the point of reading Newsweek in an atrium or picking up Vietnamese takeout at Out the Door to relieve stress?

It was a place I’d go to relax and unwind, which is exactly what I’ve been lacking in Samoa recently. With the ever-changing school schedule and feeling cooped up in my house and missing out on crucial sleep during last Friday’s tsunami evacuation and feeling the general malaise of mid-service, I would love to ride the Westfield elevator. If I were in The States, it’s exactly what I’d do.

I guess you could call it homesickness, but I think it’s a little more nuanced. Sure, with our close of service slowly coming into focus, memories like today’s whet the feeling of going home. I imagine the pull of such memories will become stronger as the year progresses. But since the longing isn’t really one for a particular place, I think I just need to find the Samoan equivalent.

Which, incidentally, is not the elevator at the John Williams building.

I hope you’re well. Pictures below.

Koa brought out his day-planner during today's meeting. Phil in the foreground.

The Virgin Mary from above.

Koa and JICA volunteer Summer hung out at my house last night.