Malo everyone! It's February! I cannot believe that I have been on this
island for SIX MONTHS. January flew by!! I have a feeling the rest of my time
here on island is going to go by very fast. I'll be returning home sometime late June/early July... dates TBA!
So what have I been up to since I last blogged? Well as I mentioned in my last post... I went to Hawaii for Christmas with my sister. Oahu was magical! I had the best time ever, and it was REALLY great to see Jamie again. Island fever is very reall... so having a break from my own tiny island was much needed. It did take a couple days to adjust to Hawaii however... there were SO many people, so many buildings, restaurants, traffic lights, traffic, hot showers, dogs on leashes, people in bikinis and tiny shorts, people driving faster than 25 mph, grocery stores with options, people eating and drinking while walking, and weather that was not in the 100s with 100% humidity. It was A LOT to take in at first. Despite the slight culture shock, Hawaii was truly an amazing vacation and was jammed packed with so many things! On Christmas day we learned how to surf! On New Years day we kayaked to an island (a protected bird sanctuary) off Oahu and snorkeled with sea turtles. We went to a luau, went snorkeling, went on a dolphin watch, went hiking, swam in tide pools with a blow hole, shopped, went out around Waikiki, went to the North Shore, ate from delicious food trucks, and of course chilled at the beach and swam in the ocean!
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| Fun snorkeling spot |
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| Collecting some marbles at a Buddhist Temple |
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| Jamie loving her life now that she's back in the water | |
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| Jumping from rocks |
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| We wanted to take this heart rock home for you mom, but its apparently bad luck to move lava rocks from Hawaii. |
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| Rainbows every single day. |
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| Learning how to SURF! |
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| Getting serious on NYE |
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| Love you sissy. |
Back to AmSam...
Monday was officially the 100th day of school. CRAZY! I
cannot believe I’ve been teaching these kids for 100 days. One more semester to
go! It is difficult for me to describe the multiple challenges and rewards that
have come with teaching second grade students in a language they don’t really
know…But I will give it a shot. Teaching is definitely the thing I’ve been
struggling with the most here in Samoa. A huge part of this is due to the fact
that Samoan culture is very different than the Western culture I am used to.
Samoans have a very different value set and education is not at the top of the
list for many families. In addition, I am a palagi (white person) and I do not
use corporal punishment with my students so the kids are not afraid to disrespect me. All three of these factors play a huge role in
my struggle with classroom management, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about any of the three. Teaching
is definitely much more physically and mentally exhausting that I thought it
was going to be. Furthermore I’ve come to learn, as they warned us we would, that
I am not going to change the lives of all 76 of my students. No matter what I
do, there are some students who just will not care about my class nor will
never respect me as their teacher. Classroom management is definitely the
single biggest teaching-related problem I’m experiencing. As I’ve mentioned
before, the behavior of my many of my students and their lack of respect
towards me is out of control. That is not to say that I’m doing all this work
for nothing. I truly believe that I am seeing great progress in many of my
students. Even with those students whom I struggle the most with, I believe I
will at least have a some sort of positive impact on them. At the very least they are
getting more exposure to the English language than if I was not their teacher.
Just the other day I had a parent come up to me and tell me how thankful
she is that I am her child’s teacher. She said that her student has always
struggled with English, but in the past few months she has noticed that her son
has been speaking a lot more English at home than he used to. Little things
like this are what help me keep going!
On a different note… I only have
four more months left on this island. It may still seem like a lot of time, but
I have fallen in love with American Samoa, the people and the culture.
Leaving
will be extremely difficult. My friends and I have made a bucket list of the
things we still want to do while we are here. Therefore I will hopefully be
quite busy these last few months. In fact the other weekend my friends and I finally took a
trip to a small island off of Tutuila. Still part of American Samoa, Aunu'u is
an extremely tiny island that’s about a 20-minute boat ride off of the east
side of Tutuila. We went with some of our Samoan friends who knew the island
quite well so they brought us to all the best spots. Aunu'u was great and I hope
to go back as much as possible. We spent the day hiking around the entire perimeter of the island, swimming in crystal clear blue water, jumping off the
boat dock, and enjoying the view of my home island Tutuila in the distance.
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| Found a rock wall for you mom. |
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| There is a quicksand pit in the middle of the island. It was so bizarre to see real life quicksand. |
I hope everyone is enjoying the snow that finally decided to come! I'll leave you with a few last quick things:
Some may remember that I was
supposed to go on a week long trip to the outer islands of Manua in November,
but due to a cyclone we were unable to go. Well, we have now rescheduled this
trip for the first week of March! I’ll be sure to post a new blog all about my
time in Manua when I come back.
Thank you thank
you thank you for my latest packages! Mom, Dad, and Linda Cahillane!!
Everything was wonderful! Again I can’t express how much the packages mean to
me! I’m so thankful for all the support from back home.
Until next time,
Maggie
