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Friday, February 12, 2016

Aloha and Talofa

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!
Fun snorkeling spot
Collecting some marbles at a Buddhist Temple
Jamie loving her life now that she's back in the water

Jumping from rocks
We wanted to take this heart rock home for you mom, but its apparently bad luck to move lava rocks from Hawaii.
Rainbows every single day.
Learning how to SURF!
Getting serious on NYE
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.  
Found a rock wall for you mom.
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.

Lastly...It takes a REALLY long time for me to upload pictures onto this blog due to the lack of wifi. One of these days I will post A LOT more of my pictures onto Facebook if I can find good enough wifi. And I'm not exaggerating when I say if have thousands of photos.... Here are a few that I was able to upload!
View from my school.
Le Vasa Team
My students during our Christmas show.

Another shot of me and the last sunset in the world.
Facemasks with the roomies. (I think I forgot to mention that I now have two roommates.)
August 2015 and January 2016. Six months strong.
Turning into a island girl slowly but surely.
Xoxo
Until next time,
Maggie

 

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