Clown Car

Here in AmSam life is a little different. For example no one really pays any attention to either seat belt laws or having the legal number of passengers in your vehicle. This works out awesomely for us because as you may well know none of us volunteers have cars, but our friends Taylor and Scott do have one.

Their baby is a little Suzuki sx4 which is a four door hatchback that is most frequently compared with the mini cooper because of its small size.

Our usually group of friends has nine people, but we usually don't all make it to hang out, or we will meet up near someones house so most people can get a ride home with T&S. However we have gotten progressively more confident at fitting people into the car and have recently created a new record with all nine of us fitting in the car to go somewhere.

I will remind you that this is a car that is comparable in size with the mini cooper - this isn't a Ford Escape I'm talking about.

This is what we look like...

So how do we do it? Here is one configuration: Scott drives. John sits in the passenger seat with his lovely bride Cynthia on his lap. Five people fit in the back row of seats (Taylor, Jessie, Julia, Rosemary, and Thanh) and then the last person goes in the trunk (me!). It is actually surprisingly comfortable.

TMI

Everyday for the last two weeks we have had classes shortened by five or ten minutes so that we could have fifty minutes of "Samoa Day" practice. At these times the each grade gathers at a designated spot on campus and choreographs and learns a few traditional Samoan dances that they will preform on Samoa Day next week.

On Tuesday I was heading to the Sophomore class's practice as I am and adviser for that class but was running a little late as I had to stay back to speak with a student. Finally I was on my way and while walking along campus I crossed paths with another teacher who I knew by face but didn't know her name. I was just being friendly and said hi, and this is how the conversation went:

"Hi, how is your day going?"

"Oh not well. Very bad actually. Diarrhea. I got the runs."

At this point I notice that she is holding a roll of toilet paper...

"Uh, ok well feel better!"


TMI.

Wonderful Waterfall Weekend

After the exhausting slave labor of our "Field Day" on Friday Thanh and I needed to relax. Thanh chose to take it easy at home while I chose the infinitely more responsible meeting friends for happy hour at Rubble's. There is nothing like air conditioning and margaritas to make you forget a stressful day or week at school, and some of our group had a rough week. After a pitcher of margaritas, some dinner and then another (free!) pitcher of margaritas from Jessie's coworkers we were all feeling much happier than earlier in the day. We decided to then hit up Koko Bean for some coffee and to listen to the band that was playing. As it is AmSam and small as heck, it figures that the band playing was my coworker's band that we heard play at JR's art expo a few weeks back. IT was nice to hear some bluegrass as it is a real departure from the typical music we hear on island. 


Saturday we decided to do something fun and easy and decided that we would go investigate a waterfall in Nu'uuli. Jessie had been to the waterfall a few months ago so knew how to get there, and we were pretty excited because it sounded fun. We parked at a store on the main road, and from there it was only about a 25 minute walk down a road and then a trail. The waterfall was even better than I had hoped it would be – tall and beautiful with a large, deep pool to swim in. We admired the view from up on the area where the trail comes out, and then headed down to the water for some swimming. It was both relaxing and fun as you could jump off of some of the rocks into the pool right under the waterfall so that you get half-drowned with water on the way back up, which was pretty fun. A few boys were there when we got there and they were climbing the cliff face to jump off into the water which looked totally awesome – but as soon as we tried to climb up the cliff we realized that either those boys (twelve year olds, mind you) were redic buff or had gecko feet because it was impossible to get up there! We admitted defeat and just enjoyed swimming and jumping off some of the larger rocks. 


After we all squished back in the car and headed to Jessie and Julia's to shower and change to get ready for the Birthday Party for our fellow WTer Matt. The party was going to be epic because they were renting one of the Aiga busses to chauffer us around from bar to bar for the night. However as it is Samoa, the guy flaked and we ended up staying at the Tafuna house for a good while before finally taking a fleet of cabs to the Bowling Club. We ended the night by camping out back at J&J's house until morning. Despite the bus troubles we still a good night.

Waterfall!

Is this in my Job Description?

For the last two or three months our school has not had a landscaping service on contract to mow (or as they do here in Samoa, weed whack) our campus, so the grass has gotten pretty intense. Last week our principle apparently got fed up with the occasionally chest-high lawn and decided that since the DOE was taking too long to work out a contract for a new service he would take matters into his own hands.

Cue the announcement of "Staff Field Day". We found out that Our principles solution was to decided that the staff was going to all bring their week whackers to school and we would have a half day and then take care of the lawns ourselves. The idea was to show the DOE that if they didn't hurry up and get a contract we would have to have the kids leave early so that they staff could take care of the lawn, therefore reducing learning time. Interesting idea...

As it turned out, when we showed up at school yesterday ready for a half day of classes and then the afternoon slave labor we found out that they had decided to have a full day of school after all. Wonderful. I love having classes that I was told I wasn't having so that I can be completely unprepared. Luckily I all ways have some back-ups ready because hey, this is American Samoa.

The day continued, the kids are ticked because they thought they were having a half day too, and we realize that we are still supposed to stay after an do field day after school. Thanh, Julia and I decided that we don't want to be the lazy teachers so we decided to stay and help, but only til 4 when we are technically supposed to stay at school until. So for a bit over an hours we filled garbage cans up with piles of grass clippings and carried them across the way and dumped them into a giant pile. This was all while we realized that there were only about 10 of the other staff actually doing anything...

Is this stuff in our job description? Who knows. The things we do to look good at our school...

Say What?

There are winged termites living in our toilet paper roll. Seriously. I can't make this crap up.

Oh, Samoa...

I Rescind that Last Post...

Today I was smote by the weather gods of Samoa for my mocking of the 'rain excuse' that some of my students have used as the reason that they are late for school. Apparently my jocular nature should not have stretched to mocking the rain as a lame excuse for holding up school because today as we were contemplating how to get to school in a complete and utter stormy downpour we enlighten on how serious the rain here can be. First our adventurousness failed and we asked our landlady Salu if she could give us a ride to school when she took her son because no amount of ponchos could keep us dry in that rain. Salu informed us that she had been listening to the radio and lo and behold - school was canceled!

The steady, heavy rain over the past few days had been adding up and last night's and this morning's extreme precipitation and high winds finally were too much and there was a lot of flooding on the road and worries of landslides.

Were we concerned? Nowhere near. Thanh and I thanked Salu for the information and as soon as we were out of sight in our house did a celebratory dance of no school and thanked the Mormon god of Samoa for the weather. I have learned my lesson and will not balk at the rain here again!

 

To Excuse or Not to Excuse...

Yep. Here in Samoa rain is a legitimate excuse for being an hour late to school.I'm not sure how this works because it rains quite a bit here, so it seems that kids could be late pretty often. Oh wait... they are late pretty often.