Thanksgiving (almost)!

Happy Gobble-Gobble Day!!!

Today I spend a good portion of my afternoon mopping my classroom. Funny thing is, the last time I mopped my classroom was on my birthday. Maybe I'll mop again for Christmas!! How fun.

In the pre-mopping stage aka sweeping, I noticed something was moving in the pile of dust, dirt, and paper that I was pushing around my floor. I looked closely and noticed it was a tick, I looked closer and noticed there were at least five ticks in the pile. My classroom is worse than a field of grass! Luckily, here ticks do not carry lime disease or anything else (that I know of anyways). I just swept them out the door.

The reason I was mopping is because tomorrow my Honors English class is putting on a puppet show for Staci's 11th grade English class, Stefani's 12th grade Science class, the principal, counselor, and secretary. Woah! Pressure! They did well today, though it took us all of class plus half of our hour long lunch to get through it all. Hopefully tomorrow they will be much quicker! I'll post pictures of it soon.

Oh... I almost forgot. Don't worry, I AM having a Thanksgiving meal. We just postponed Turkey Day until Saturday so it would not interfere with school. We are having about thirty people. I am in charge of the stuffing. Any recipe suggestions? I might make something else as well, I have to think of something though.

Tough Week

I had a really tough week. It was too weeks ago, and now I finally feel at a point where I can write about it. Two weeks ago today one of my students passed away from complications with kidney stones. She had been in the hospital for the entire semester and was supposed to come to school that Monday. I was happy for her to return so I sent one of my students with work for her to look over so she would be relatively caught up. Monday morning my students tell me Josse is dead. At first I thought they were making an awful joke because some students were laughing, but when I checked with the principal he confirmed it to be true. Of course I was shocked. I had no idea what to do in class, as I did not have full understanding of the cultural differences related to death. Each class I gave a little talk about Josse and then allowed the class some free journaling time. Some of the students wrote about Josse and others wrote about their weekend or sports.

The cultural differences were huge and at times hard for me to deal with. I felt my lack of knowledge about how Marshallese handel death led me to feel frustrated and helpless. I didn't know what was right to say or do for the students who were close with Josse and the students who barley knew her. I never expected something like this to happen this year.

The wake was last Monday. The whole school went at a scheduled time (we had the day off as it was President's Day). We filed in past the open casket each placing a dollar or a quarter inside. Three of my students who were close with Josse were sitting around the casket fanning her. Then we all sat down on the floor while the principal and secretary of education gave speeches. Triston and I gave short speeches as well since we were her teachers. I felt my speech was too impersonal; I had no idea what to say and was so overcome with the emotion of seeing my students so upset that I made it very short.

After the wake things have been better. I was glad to be able to morn with my students in a way I was more familiar with. Since the funeral school has been much better. My lessons had been unfocused and under-planned during that week. Now I am back into focus and am doing much better in the classroom and out. Though seeing Josse's name in my grading book always makes my heart drop.

Pictures

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The Office and some classrooms are in the building to the left. The building with my classroom is on the right. My classroom is the closest one. The dog is named Yogi. He sleeps under my desk during the school day.



The building on the left is my house! The closest window is my bedroom window, no peeping! The building on the right is the same one as above. I live right on the school's campus, my front yard is the main school yard.

Chicken, anyone?

So I was teaching when I noticed a chicken was standing in the doorway. She poked her head into my classroom but I continued on with my teaching. Typically the chickens see the room is full of people and they continue on their way. This chicken was a little more adventurous and decided to come into the classroom a little further. One of my students sitting near the door decided it would be funny to scare the chicken INTO my classroom. So he scares by swinging his arm and the chicken flies over my class and onto the other side. "ANJE!! You scared the chicken into my classroom now you must get it out of my classroom." I was not happy with him, but was struggling trying to hide how funny I thought the situation was and how I was actually enjoying the whole interruption. He scared the chicken out in much the same way he scared it in, the chicken flew over my class again and out the door. Afterwards I kept calling the turkeys I was talking about chickens.

Lesson Learned: Dogs AND chickens want to learn English.

H-A-double L-O-double U- double E-N

The Causeway from Ebeye to Guegeegue

Hello Friends! Happy Halloween!

My Halloween was splendid (vocab word, yay)! My halloween evening can be split into two different parts: one in Ebeye, the other in Guegeegue.

After school I rode the school bus to Ebeye down the 5 mile bumpy causeway. I sat next to a Marshallese woman who was hitching on the bus. While laughing she asked, "Did you tell your family and friends about this causeway?" I laughed back because the causeway is basically a dirt road built on a coral reef. As you can probably imagine it is not in the least big flat. Now try to imagine a huge yellow school bus with two or three to a seat and many students standing going down this five mile pot-hole covered road in the middle of the Pacific. Are you laughing?

I was traveling to Ebeye to visit my Marshallese host family(8 children aged 1-18, mom, and dad) because it was my brother Hamill's first birthday. I made two huge chocolate chip cookies decorated with blue and white frosting. My family LOVES chocolate chip cookies so I thought the extra large cookies would be a hit. My host mom was so excited by them, she had never seen anything like them before.

As soon as I got there my mom told me we would be going to the church (they are Morman) across the street for a Halloween celebration for the children. Unlike most children in Ebeye, there were many in costume ready for the party to begin. After waiting around for 1.5 hours (aka chasing crawling Hamill around), we prayed and listened to some talks, then the Halloween costume judging began. By that time the birthday boy Hamill was fast asleep in my arms. I was one of the judges so I sat and watched 20 children parade around and I had to pick out the funniest, most beautiful, most handsome, scariest, ugliest, and most creative costumes for the 0-5 year old then again for the 5-11 year olds. It was lots of fun! My left arm was tired from holding chubby Hamill for almost two hours.

After the judging my mom came out of nowhere and told me it was time to go back to the house because some people going to sing to Hamill. The birthday boy's older brothers's friends (high schoolers, my students) were all outside the house waiting for Hamill. He was so scared of everyone when they were singing that he would not let his 7th grade sister put him down. After they finished singing and had a little something to eat because of Marshallese tradition I had to give a speech to thank everyone for coming because I am the oldest in the family haha. I had no idea what to say! I have only hung out with the family about 5 times, I don't even know all of my sibling's names (though I only have three more to learn)!

Then we went to the church and the church people sang to him. It was crazy. Hamill, three of my sisters and I sat on two chairs while everyone else crowed around taking turns shaking Hamills hand, pinching his cheeks, and kissing him. Hamill was given quarters and dollars (Marshallese tradition) which my sister held in her hand. We were also given two cakes which I balanced in each of my hands. Of course Hamill started to cry. Good thing I am not claustrophobic!!! After I had to give another speech. This one was not as good as my first because I didn't have as much time to think about it.

By that time it was 9pm and I needed a ride home, so we went in search of a ride. We walked to my Vice Principal's house and to my Uncle's house. Both were not home. Eventually my Uncle drove by and picked me up to drive me back in his truck. He was a nice guy.

Once home I went on a search to find Stefani. She had the only key to our house and had been looking for me for the past two hours, even drove into Ebeye. Eventually I found her (the island isn't that big) and we hung out laughing about night until there was a knock at the door. Six of the seniors, including one of my brothers, were in Guegeegue to go fishing later that night with Rocky the go to guy at KAHS (janitor, fix-it, ect.). This was the start to the second part of my Halloween. They had to wait until the tide was all the way up so they came to say hello. Well, we ended up hanging out with them until 2am. They had a keyboard so they played with that outside and sang and danced. I would have never imagined six high school guys spending their Friday night singing and dancing for their two teachers. It was hysterical. Stefani made them tea and I made them blondies. Stefani even broke out some of her science knowledge and had the guys all hovering around science magazines. We had so much fun.

I was woken up on Saturday morning by a knock at the door. Rocky had 5 fish for Stefani and I in a bowl. He said the guys wanted us to have them. The next night Triston helped us gut them and cook them. Wow! They were yummy!

It was certainly a Halloween to remember!