The work weeks are long and the days seem endless, but when it finally hits the weekend, I breath a sigh of relief and get ready for another adventure. While teaching teenagers is awesome, and school is a good place, nothing beats the sunburns I've been getting on Saturday and the inevitable wrinkly fingers that happen after we've been swimming all weekend.
We've finally started getting out and venturing to places we've never been and crossing items off the bucket list. Last weekend, for instance, started off with watching the sunrise from the 'tramway' point in a village called utulei. The tramway is just as it sounds, an abandoned tramway that has a creepy old, rusty cable car and a lookout point that has a perfect view of the water. The sunrise brought up deep conversation (and not so deep discussions about coffee) and once it finally hit, it was breathtaking. I'm still trying to decide what's better - sunrise or sunset, but this day definitely gave some points to sunrises (lmk if you have any arguments for one or the other). Our next stop was the market place, where we ate pancakes and koko rice. I know you're thinking that pancakes are delicious, but just wait until you come to AmSam and taste these. The Samoans' version of pancakes are fried dough balls, which can't really be beat! Koko rice, on the other hand, is probably something you've never had, but should!! It's a cream with rice and koko samoa, the country's delicious local chocolate. After acquiring food babies, we made our way to the beach, where we celebrated 'coastal week' in support of a healthy coast here in American Samoa. It's here that we got our gnarly sunburns, attempted to long boat, and I rode a jetski for the first time! To finish it off well, although I was not allowed to go in the blow up slides at the celebration, I did win a Samoa bracelet that I will cherish forever (except I've already lost it). Like most Saturday nights here, a few of us spent it in McDonalds, crying that the ice cream machine was broken but happy with our mcnugget meal. To tie the weekend together, after lesson planning as best we could, with a new hilarious friend (Teejay), I drank my first ever milkshake. This one was special, as it was made by a guy with a jerry curl and accompanied by gushers. Weekend = success. The fact that we had to go back to work = yikes.
0 Comments
In Samoan, Sole is the word for 'dude'. It's pretty quickly become my favorite and most used word - along side 'seki' which means awesome (obviously) in the Samoan language, and I have amazing new friends and welcoming people to thank for that. The past three weeks have gone by incredibly fast, but also incredibly slow. Each day drags on, but the weekends comes and goes in the blink of an eye. After passing through the initial 'I'm a teacher' shock, the job has become more challenging. Students are getting more comfortable; testing my behavior policies, losing motivation, and getting more and more angsty. As a perfectionist, myself, it's been hard to try to keep track of everything. When I want everything to go as planned, that's when things go awry. These are things I'm learning to deal with though, and I've found that the trick to going with the flow is to flow with confidence. This is just another stepping stone in the path towards adapting to this new life - it's all gonna be seki :) The most important thing that's kept a huge smile on my face in these past weeks is the relationships that have grown. It's so exciting to meet a friend you click with right away - it's a relief when they tell you they love the same ice cream flavor, and an even bigger relief when you realize you feel comfortable belting out "All I Want for Christmas" in their car, even though you can't sing and it's only September....these are besties! Basically, this post is cheesy and I'd just like take this moment and give a shout out to all the soles who have made this adaptation to island life come with ease. You rock, don't know what I'd do without you! Stay cool...hags |
AuthorThe only way to find yourself is to get lost (and eat a lot of ice cream). Archives
January 2017
Categories |