My Weird Life

This morning Thanh and I were getting ready for school, bouncing around the house getting lunches and book bags ready. On one of my many trips from the kitchen to my room I happened to look up and was startled by something staring at me near Thanh’s open bedroom door. I stopped in my tracks and blurted “What the hell?”

There before my eyes was the front unsquished half of a biggish gecko that had apparently gotten caught in Thanh’s door the night before. At this point Thanh, just from hearing my exclamation (and rightly assuming it had to do with animals) had already jumped on to her bed with a shout of “What is it!?!? What is it?!?!” As I move in a little to inspect the poor guy, Thanh catches sight of its legs and starts with some “OMG!”s. We are both pretty grossed out as it freshly dead and some guts are coming out of its side, but it is cartoonishly only squished in one hip area. Thanh looks pensive for moment and then realization dawns on her. When she went into her room for the night, she had heard some scratching noises that she thought was a rat or something trying to get into her room. As it turns out it was the slow death of a trapped and partially pancaked gecko.

Thanh is super disgusted, and even though I usually don’t mind dead stuff I was kind of grossed out too. Thanh remained on her bed while I got Ben’s machete and an empty oatmeal box to get rid of our deceased friend. Our grossed-outness was upped as the geckos’s toes stuck to the machete as I tried to pry the body out of the door frame. It was a disgusting process as the body was sill all fresh-and-floppy but the part that had been squished in the closed door was practically cemented on. After some scraping and a nasty, wet plop the gecko was removed.

Strangely this was not out first squished-gecko-in-the-door experience. About a week ago Thanh noticed the near-mummified remains of a smaller gecko smooshed lengthwise in the bathroom door. As this was fully pancaked and dry and crusty it wasn’t so bad, and is actually still there. But the one this morning had a tendency to wiggle. Eww.

So far no one else in out group has had this problem, but maybe Thanh and I are just natural (if accidental) gecko killers.

DOE Dinner and Thanh's Birthday

Last Friday was Thanh’s 26th Birthday and we celebrated in an interesting way. After school we went to Pago Pago for the DOE Teacher of the Year Banquet that we were invited to since we are WorldTeachers. As it was formal we had to rock the pulatasis (ugh) and act all professional and when we arrived we realized that only Thanh, Julia, Rosemary, Steve, and I came to represent WorldTeach. I was secretly, or perhaps not so secretly, grumpy about getting guilted into going to some boring DOE dinner on a Friday night, but as the night went on I became glad that I came. The night turned out to be one of those unique Samoan experiences for a few reasons.

When they called up the teacher of the year for each school, and announced each regional winner the lucky teacher came up to the stage to not only receive a “trophy, certificate and three hundred dollars” which they announced with EVERY teacher, but stayed up to do a traditional Samoan ‘siva’, or dance. It is fun to watch the traditional dancing and see dollar bills thrown at and shoved into the clothes of respectable teachers. I amused myself during the boring talking in Samoan part by imagining what it would be like if when teachers in the states won an award they had to do a dance on the stage and have all the audience stuff dollar bills in their shirts like common strippers. I think I’m going to try to start that up when I get home.

There was a little break for dinner, and the dinner was classically Samoan and made my night. Do you see the platter of food I am showing you in this picture?

Did you think that was for our table? Nope. EACH of us got one of those platters! I have no idea how anyone could eat all of that, but I know that Samoans are fond of left-overs so many that’s the intention. Regardless, we had to stifle our amusement at just how much food was put in front of us.

We ducked out a bit early as we arrived at six, the time it was supposed to start but as it didn’t actually start until seven we were pretty tired of sitting at nine when we were still there. We headed to Sadie’s by the Sea for a bottle of wine by the harbor to celebrate Thanh’s B-day and had a very fun night and a great sleep once we were back home.

Saturday was also a nice day consisting of the typical Taylor and Scott’s house, and then some late night Chinese food. Nice last weekend before my visit home!

DOE Dinner and Gecko Guts

Crazy Days

I apologize for the delay since the last post, but these last few weeks have been rather busy and fun, coupled with sporadic internet function. Today however I am kicking back and relaxing. My school work is all caught up, we got out of school a bit early, and I caught a bus and am at Pizza Hut watching the Monday night Packer's game in sweet AC, writing this between plays. Sigh… It's a good Monday.

To quickly recap:

• I finally made it off of Ta'u and back to Tutuilla by Thanksgiving afternoon, only four days late... My long weekend actually turned into a week, but it was definitely a fun week!

• A few hours after I got back, KC and Courtney came in on the next flight and surprised us at our house. Thanh, KC, Courtney and I had a fun Thanksgiving Day weekend of many movies, dinners out, laughing at New Moon and late night chats. It was so fun and relaxing that I wasn't even that upset that the delay in Manu'a had caused me to have to cancel my trip to Western Samoa.

• Last week at school I had one of those awesome weeks where I just love my kids to death, even when they are little shits. For example, when two of my seniors were fighting over a book bag and dropped a liter of beer which shattered and showered them, me and my room in beer – I could only roll my eyes, laugh and ask them to clean up. Well that and having them come in at lunch for two weeks to do review work – the alternative was the office which would give detention. The beer actually ended up being beneficial to their education!

• The weekend rolled around and we had an awesome Friday night and Saturday at Taylor and Scott's house that involved much eating, drinking, swimming and coral/mountain adventures (see the pics!) Saturday was definitely one of those days that I will always remember as Taylor, Julia and I ended up sitting in tides pools at the really low tide and just watching all the beautifully colored little fish swim around us. I was even actually cleaned by a cleaning wrasse! Life goal #125 - check. Oh, and I beheld the kleptoparasitic behaviors of a magnificent frigate bird! Epic day for bio nerds.

Time is rolling along, and I feel like I blinked and it is almost time to go home for Christmas. I am ridiculously excited to get home and visit everyone to the extreme that I have dreamed about it many times and made extensive lists of what I want to do when I get home. I also have created a teary scene where I attack-hug my family at the airport in which I knock my mom over with love. Sappy, but true – I miss my fam. I may also cry and or freak out upon seeing any family member or friend – I am that full of emotion.

Despite my excitement for heading home, I oddly am starting to already miss it here, which is lame because I will only be gone for a couple weeks. If this is any indication about how I am going to feel when I leave in June I sense some nights of tipsy crying and much yelling of "I love you guys!" and "I am going to miss you Samoa!" But I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

To end with, a few random notes:

• I was very nearly Frida Kahlo-ed on the bus.
  
• I have realized that no grocery store banana will ever be good enough for me.
  
• Sea-cucumbers are God's dirty joke.
  
• This year's WorldTeach teachers have now had: tons of swine flu, MERSA, boils, detached retinas, bone infections, other eye infections and oodles of lice. We live in a giant Petri dish…
  

Side note: As I sit in this Pizza Hut I am reminded to mention one of the things I most hate about Samoa – they chew louder and more disgustingly here than any place I have been before. I am literally twenty feet from a table of people (mind you they are blasting the sound from the football game) and it sounds as if they are crewing their food in my ear canal. Chomping and smacking of lips? Check. Talking with a mouth packed full of food? Oh yeah. Obnoxiously loud sucking of fingers in between bites? You know it. As my family will attest I loathe loud chewing more than my combined hatred of Hitler, Paris Hilton, Latisse and Nickleback. There is no higher dislike.

Yet another side note: Sorry, but I am just full of Pizza Hut observations today. Another issue here is health, especially for the kids. For dinner while watching the game here I had a nice combo of a diet pepsi, personal pan cheese pizza and a side salad – and I am stuffed. There is a new family near me that consists of two women and two little girls aged about 9 and 7. Both of the little girls had the same combo as me (except with regular soda and pepperoni) AND an order of popcorn chicken each from the connected KFC. And they ate it all! No wonder obesity and diabetes are common place here.

And finally after all the ranting, here are the pictures:

Manu'a!

Biology Nerd Paradise

PS. I apologize for the random and rambling quality of this post, it just came out that way.