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!

A BIG Kommoltata

I received two boxes from amazon.com the other day with Charlotte's Web and Holes. Kommoltata, thank you Aunt Nancy for sending my students the books. Within the next two weeks I will finish reading The Big Wave with my honors students and I am wicked excited to start reading Holes. They are excited to read a book that has a movie to go along with it.

If anyone is interested in sending books for my classroom, I would love to be able to have class sets of Charlotte's Web by E.B. White and Holes by Louis Sachar (used or new).

Amazon.com and Barnes&Nobel have reasonable shipping costs, DON'T pay more than you would pay to ship something within the US. The Marshall Islands are on the USPS. I am in the process of figuring out if it is possible to claim the donation on your taxes. I'll keep you updated.