The end is coming

This is just a quick update, since a lot of people were asking: I will be back in the states June 15th (very early in the morning), which means I leave Samoa on June 13th (very late at night) which is in approximately 9 days (very soon). This is all kind of dependent, of course, on whether or not we get off our tiny little island, and I'm not gonna jinx us all by saying things are looking good... but we're booked for the plane on Monday (though it hasn't actually been flying for the last few weeks, oops) and there should be a boat early next week, as well. So... send all of your happy thoughts to the poor broken Interisland plane, pretty please!

Until we leave, it's a lot of graduation and a lot of saying goodbye. Graduation is Friday, but grad festivities started Sunday with the Baccalaureate (actually, they probably started Thursday, when the Seniors all finished their finals...), which was lovely but kind of long and all in Samoan. The graduates all looked wonderful, dressed up and so grown up! The girls looked beautiful, and the boys looked clean, so everyone was at their best. That night was the Faleasao village celebration for our 4 graduating boys, which meant lots of speeches and A LOT of food!

Then, last night was the Senior Awards Banquet, where, again, we all had a lot of food (well, except for the seniors, who oddly didn't get fed at all...). It was a very Samoan celebration, including just enough awkward dancing, songs, dances, rogue butts, and speeches from the seniors and others, and lots and lots of awards. The Valedictorian speech was absolutely beautiful, all the graduates looked awesome again, and it was just a really, really fun night. (Oh, and we ended up with bags of apples and oranges afterwards, so that was sweet)

In non-graduate news, the underclassmen took their finals this week. Though they had varying success, every kid who has NOT missed months of school passed my classes! So yay! This morning was the underclassmen awards ceremony, as well as their last day of school... which meant my last day with them. Weird! And sad. A few months ago, if you had asked me if I would miss my students, I'm not sure what I would have said, but now I know that I will miss them all a lot... I already miss my seniors, and I've basically seen them every day since they finished my class! No matter how much trouble they caused, I learned a lot from my students, and it will be so strange not to see them every day. People keep telling me how I sacrificed so much to be here this year, but I can never quite comprehend that idea because I think I gained so, so much more than I could possibly have lost... talking to my students today and saying goodbye has reminded me of that.

Anyway. Later today is the final staff party and good-bye, which means even MORE food and MORE goodbyes, and I don't know which I am dreading more. I've also been told there is wine. Until then, I'm cleaning up my classroom and packing up for the year while kids come in for their goodbyes and final hugs, and to make sure I add them on Facebook, and it's all sort of surreal.

It's been quite a ride, and it's hard to believe it's almost over. Still, I'm ready to enjoy my last few days on my favorite island.

(Pictures of all things will come eventually... except maybe in July...)

Culture Shock

Yesterday, I was sitting on the beach and thinking how weird it was that I graduated from college a year ago (an entire year?? ... only a year?? ... I still can't decide). One year ago on this day, I was still in Boston, packing up and saying goodbye to my friends... now I'm in Samoa, staring out at the ocean, preparing, once again, to pack up and say goodbye. Where will I be in another year?

I also thought... how weird is it that in one month I will be in Europe? Like, not even in my house at home but in a European city. Somehow, it doesn't seem like Europe and Samoa can exist at the same time in the same world. I had just started thinking about the (reverse?) culture shock that would come so soon... and then Jackie yelled at me from the other side of the beach, and when I went over I was handed an unshelled snail, fresh from the ocean, and ordered to eat it. So Jackie and I sat in the ocean on bits of exposed reef and shared a meal of fresh snail (crunchy AND slimy... at the same time? A real treat...) with a pair of women from the village while watching the sun go down over the ocean.

Hm. Yup. Culture shock is coming.

What I ate... it's called alili, and it can be eaten steamed, but I guess also raw? (At least, I haven't died yet) Leafa used a rock to crack open the big shell, and then you kind of have to bite it off that little round shell you can see in the opening. Yummy!

What happens when you give kids sugar...

It all started innocuously enough when Jackie gave a gang of neighborhood boys TWO marshmallows. Suddenly, our little beach-side bungalow was full of 9-year-old boys… cleaning? Avi even promised to come over later to do our laundry… Only in Samoa…

Avi doing our dishes!

AND sweeping!

Nainoa and Briggy helping out

Nainoa washing the kitchen counters

Mikayla is going for the mop!

And the camera ;)

In case you wanted a play-by-play of the action, here's Nainoa with his commentary!

Adorable video of Nainoa being adorable

Siva Samoa!

So, I know I don’t blog enough. Sorry! There are two majors reasons I don’t blog more: one is that, at some point, even living on a tropical island becomes mundane- every day stuff stops being excellent blogging material and just becomes, well, every day stuff. The other reason is a bit more complicated: some of the major stuff that we spend time discussing here, the things that annoy me and frustrate me and drive me crazy, the things that I DO want to talk about, are the kind of things I can’t (or won’t) blog about. If you’re curious about the “other side” of paradise (and this is excluding the lack of all uncanned vegetables, dairy products, bread, and Target), you can hit me up privately. But, anyway, luckily every once in a while something comes up that is neither mundane nor frustrating, and this is one of those occasions (except that this was actually like 2 weeks ago, and for the delay I have no real excuse except that I’ve been watching a lot of trashy TV lately. Sue me).

This blog post is very long overdue. But it also has lots of pictures! I think it’s a good trade off, overall!

Friday, March 21^st (shortly after hopping off a boat from Ofu), Jackie and I went to our first Siva! Sivas are Samoan community events that function as a fundraiser for something (in our case, I’m pretty certain it was for the church). “Siva” in Samoan means “dance”, which is very accurate because this is how the fundraiser works. Everyone in the village turns up in someone’s fale (aka outdoor porch-thing), and as a DJ or band play music, one family is called up at a time to perform a dance. Each family chooses a taupo (female “princess”, usually the oldest daughter) to perform the siva for the family. First, all of the matai (village chief) families go, then the aumaga (untitled men), and then everyone else. As the taupo dances, people gather around and literally throw dollar bills (or, as it so happened, $20 bills) at the dancer, and someone collects the money and brings it to the matais to count. Not only is this a fundraiser, but it’s also a competition! The family that raises the most money wins (though I have no idea what exactly they win)! Apparently, our siva raised a whopping $32,000! What?!? All from money being thrown at dancers?! I don’t get it, but it’s pretty fantastic!

The weekend of the Siva happened to coincide with our (shortened) spring break, so we had a couple of visitors from Tutuila, one of them being one of our WorldTeach cohort! We spent a few days hanging out with them on Ofu and then returned late Friday afternoon, in time to take a break and ready ourselves for a night of fun! We had some dinner (a sandwich! With bread! And cheese! And deli turkey! THANKS ALEX!) and a pot of iced coffee (necessary since we were staying up past 9pm), waited until “after dark” (the closest approximation to when this thing actually started that we were able to get- Samoan time, ugh!), and then headed down to the Siva! What followed was an AWESOME night of dancing, playing with the village kids, and watching the teenage boys get steadily drunker as the night wore on. In between the taupo songs, the DJs played dance music and everyone (aka the kids, the drunk teenagers, and the palagi teachers) had a blast dancing the night away. This is probably the one time and place in which it is not only appropriate but actually encouraged to dance with your drunk students… at a church fundraiser… at the principal’s house. Hm. I have to report that Jackie may or may not have injured her hip while “getting low” with one of the seniors… God, we’re getting old!

Like I said, Jackie and I had never been to a Siva before, but from the testimonials of Alex (who had been in Tutuila) and Matt (who had stopped by one in Ta’u a few weeks ago), I can pretty safely claim that Faleasao throws a good party! The festivities ended around 11pm and we stopped in to the local store for some ice cream before heading home to bed. All in all, a fantastic night, and an awesome cultural experience I won’t soon forget!

And, to help me remember, PICTURES! Enjoy!

SO READY TO SIVA!!

Cas siva-ing with a high school senior

The kids

Breaking it down on the dance floor!

These kids know how to dance

So adorable.

More dancing!

Awww!

The palagis are having a GREAT time!

Jackie, me and Cat, all decked out in our Samoa finest (girls are required to dress in puletasis while mean, as you can see, can wear what they want. SO unfair!)

The school principal doing her fundraising Siva

Look at that attitude!

Adorable!

Crazies

Also (and more recently), last Saturday afternoon we had a really low tide, so I was able to walk out onto the reef from the beach, and walk all the way to the break! Awesome! The tide had come in a bit by the time I went to get my camera, but the effect is still pretty cool!

View from outside my house. You can see the reef poking out above the water.

Just casual standing on a coral reef, nbd

Looking out at the ocean (Ofu/Olosega are the islands you see at a distance)

Looking back to shore

So awesome! The water was crystal clear

AN EEL! This one made me jump straight out of the water, since I've been terrified of eels since 5th grade. But once I was at a safe distance, it was pretty awesome!

Never quite the same...

Sometime in the last 8 months, I think I’ve kind of forgotten that I used to separate what I considered “normal” and what I considered “Samoan”. Now, I mostly have trouble telling the difference unless I really think about it. Last night was one of those nights.

Last night, Manu’a High School held the induction ceremony for the new National Honor Society students. I feel like we have so many assemblies (and classes, meetings, general interactions) where the principal/vice principal/teachers/everyone ends up yelling at the students (not that they don’t deserve it….) that it was nice to go to something that was actually celebrating their accomplishments, and the four new members of NHS (plus the old members) all definitely deserve it. The ceremony was at 6pm, so I decided to stay after school and get some work done and head straight there, which meant I literally spent one billion hours at school yesterday (ok, fine, 13.5, but still!!). But I am very glad I did.

National Honor Society is a very Western- very American- organization, and its traditions are very Western as well. But Samoans have a knack for making things their own, and this was no exception. I had been trying to remember all day if there had been an induction ceremony for NHS when I was in high school, and though I still can’t remember (though I’ve been assured that there was, and that there are photos somewhere on Facebook…) it did make me look at the event in a different light: how was it different than what would have happened at DeLaSalle High School? Well.

The event was held in the cafeteria, which had been specially decorated for the night: NHS balloons covered the walls, and at the front was a huge airbrushed banner: “Our Choices Not Chances Determines Our Destiny” (ahem). The principal, keynote speaker, and a few other important members of the community sat under the banner, facing the audience. The NHS members sat at the front of the audience, the inductees in front, wearing all white, and the current members behind them wearing their official NHS uniforms (blue ies (skirts) with the logo on them and yellow shirts- and, yes, the uniform is basically the same for boys and girls).

The ceremony started on time (which is so weird for Samoa) with a prayer, and then a speech from the NHS advisor. Then, four of the former NHS members stood up and gave speeches on the four tenants of NHS: character, leadership, scholarship, and service. The new members stood up one by one, lit candles, and were honored by their parents with an NHS logo to pin on their shirt and an ula lei (a necklace of flowers) … or two… or three. And, once that was over with all of the members of NHS stood up and…performed a song and dance! This is SO Samoan, and something I am so used to now, but it makes me think… if, back at my high school, we had been required to perform in front of an audience to get into NHS, how many people would say “yeahhh… thanks, but no thanks!”

After the ceremony, the current NHS students as well as some of the other high school students who had come to help out walked around with trays of sodas and water, and then brought out Styrofoam to-go containers to every person present, along with a bag of chips and a cup of ice cream (!!!). The to-go container contained an entire meal: 2 sandwiches, 2 cupcakes, and a muffin. I’m still always confused when I’m handed a to-go container like that at an event: am I expected to eat there? Or are we all supposed to take our food home with us? Eating together in Samoa is very different than eating together in America (or, especially, in Russia!): it seems like it’s the food that is important, instead of the company, and everyone eats relatively quickly, gathers whatever is left, and heads back to their respective homes… coming from a family that will spend 5 hours at the table when we have company that’s so weird to me. However, when it’s a school night and it’s already almost 8pm, I’m not exactly complaining…

Congratulations were given, photos were taken, and, finally, the school bus took us all home where I relaxed on the couch, ate a grilled ham and cheese sandwich, and watched 3 episodes of How I Met Your Mother. And now it’s Friday! I am definitely not complaining!

Also: the countdown is on:

           

91 days to graduation

98 days in Samoa

If your friends tell you to jump off a bridge... (Ofu for President!)

I now know for a fact that I’ll do it. Peer pressure, man… it works.

As many of you know (and I’m sure I’ve mentioned before), American Samoa is made up of a number of islands, some of them more populated than others. For President’s Day weekend, we made the trip over to the neighboring islands of Ofu and Olosega, which are connected to each other by the afore-pictured bridge (and to which we’ve been once before, but accidentally… I never wrote about it but Jackie did and so did Chris and also Matt). We spent 3 nights enjoying a relaxing break at the Vaoto Lodge (located just at the end of the airport runway), where we spent our days relaxing at the beach and enjoying the creature comforts of 3 homecooked meals, hot water, wifi, and a whole room full of books.

The following is a photographic documentation of our time.

The Vaoto Lodge aka Paradise

Hey! An airport!

Ofu sunset

The famous Ofu beach!!

The water's so clear you don't even need a snorkel...

Beach selfie... had to happen...

Another Ofu sunset....

Standard underwater snorkeling pic...

Selfies because we're BFFs!!!

Underwater selfies are hard work...

And so the starfish photo shoot begins...

Hats!

Yum!

Starfish bikini... the newest trend!

STARFISH ANTLERSSSS

Because downward angles are the most flattering? 

Matt got a bikini too!!!

Swimmin' wit da starfish

Artsy pic? Mkay.

Roomies at the beach <3

The boat we took to get to Ofu (and home)

On the way!