Ran allem!!!
Tiro me fairo aami monson... (that's: "hello, excuse me everybody" - typical salutation when you start a greeting)
Well I'm alive and in Pohnpei. Satawan is great - realllllllllllly great. I will take some time to offer some real reflections on this first leg of the journey. I will be in Chuuk tomorrow, but just wanted to take a moment now to thank you for all the love, prayers, and support you've offered me and my family. The first three months of service are definitely a very challenging period, but I feel like I've been through the refiner's fire and am stronger for the next part of my service. So thank you very, very much.
Feel free to leave comments on this with specific questions that I can answer on my next post. Killisou chappur aami monson! O le no!
2 comments:
uh... I can't really think of a question for you. I just felt that I should probably comment since you FINALLY posted again. Here's one, are you doing alright? You're not sick or have electricity running through your body right now do you?
I will say that we just got a DVD burner a couple weeks ago so I'm working on downloading this season of LOST and getting that to you. Some of the episodes might have Spanish subtitles but hey you get to learn Spanish!
Also turns out I know how to play Euchre now. They always play it at S.C.C.A.T. and one day back in like December my brain decided to think like a drunk yooper who has nothing to shoot and only half a deck of cards and it finally clicked. I just thought you'd like to know that because I don't know how many times you'd yell something along the lines of "You know how to play! You've watched us play this enough times that you know how to play!" Good times. Good times.
alright well that's all I got for now. I look forward to your actual post. It better not fricken take 3 months I'll tell ya that much.
And the word verification is verfoxi. I don't think I really need to sound that out I mean it sounds exactly how it's spelled I would think. And ya know I think it's slang for a good looking word verification right?
Oh here's a good question. How were the kids you were teaching? and a follow up, if they weren't well behaved were you able to control your temper?
the best part, keith, is that you do truly know me very well. i have seniors and juniors in HS and i have had to work hard to control my temper at times. they don't act out like americans - they don't give me any attitude, they aren't disrespectful - those things are completly against their culture.
instead, they cheat on HW, which is motivated simply by the fact that this is a collectivist culture where individualism and "doing things alone" doesn't really make sense, nor does it work on the whole for the entire community. kids are used to working in groups, working in the taro patch or fishing in large groups, so school should be in groups, too. they also come late and often use the excuse that they "didn't understand" when i say something, which just irritates me b/c i tell them all the time: if you are confused, ask for clarification. WE EVEN HAVE A TRANSLATOR WHO COMES EVERY CLASS!!!! so apart from that small side of laziness in actually working a little harder to get on the same page, they'll just put their feet up and blame it on something else.
the other part which frustrates me is that our school "year" is only half a year this term b/c the dept of education failed to send out food and materials for our school, which hosts students from each of the mortlocks islands - 165 students total, most of the boys live in dorms. w/o supplies, the school could not start back in september, so we started on january 7. its very, very, very difficult (if not impossible) to prepare them for the college entrance exams etc, which they take next month. i freak out about it more than they do, which probably isn't great to do, but it's b/c i care and i'm trying hard - so i think they should, too, ya know?
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