ok ok ok photos

The occasion for this most recent four-day weekend is/are the "Kosrae games." It is like the Olympics, but way more important. Each village on the island competes at canoe racing, volleyball, baseball, basketball, and track & field. Wednesday night was the basketball final at the (only) gym, and at least half the island's population was in attendance. I couldn't tell if I was at a game or a concert; instead of (in addition to?) cheering by yelling and screaming, the fans cheer by singing, and everybody knows the songs, and everybody sings them very loudly, and it is so cool.

So here are some photos of the canoe races.

The Lelu team (my village!) against the backdrop of the Sleeping Lady (head on the right, sleeping on her back). The mountain silhouette gives the island its nickname.






















The girl who sat on my lap for about an hour. At the track meet yesterday, one of my students was walking around holding a baby. I was really impressed at how naturally and intimately he was holding it (this is a music student who spends most of class time wielding his ukulele like a machete); the baby half asleep on his shoulder, the student gently rocking it back and forth. "Who's that?" I asked him. "I don't know, just some baby who was looking at me like he wanted me to pick him up," he responded and then walked off.
That's pretty much how babies work around here.








A glamor shot and also a typical hairstyle.


















More children.





























My student who looks like Butchie!!


















And that is all for now.

in this belly of a whale

The other day I saw a tuna as big as a couch.

Two things have come into my life and made it infinitely better: a hammock and a class set of textbooks.

The hammock now lives in between two of the three palm trees in our backyard, right where the ocean breeze blows. My new favorite activity is lying in the hammock and thinking about how busy my life used to be, and also how from directly underneath palm fronds look like giant stalks of celery.
Maybe someday when I am busy I will think about lying in the hammock.
Anyway, it is a great hammock.

The class set of textbooks is equally exciting. I came across about 40 almost brand new environmental science books. I'm teaching geography, but they are close enough. And now they are in my classroom. And I was so visibly excited about announcing this to my students that they now think textbooks are cool. Hooray. The discovery coincided nicely with the beginning of second quarter, too, such that I may even pass for appearing quasi-organized.

Teaching is still going well. My big secret is that I really like my students. Their big secret is that they let me keep thinking they don't know that. Second quarter will fly by because there are only six weeks in it, only two of which are full five-day weeks. Then next semester will probably fly by in the way that premature nostalgia makes things fly by. So if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go lie in my hammock.

Happy fall, New Englanders!

And happy Homecoming, Amherst! Eat some tea rolls for me.

The next post will be full of photos.

Sam

My Year of Self-Improvement

whistling: check

riding a bike with no hands: ch-ch-ch-check

blue in green

Things have begun to feel oddly normal around here lately. This really means I've changed to the point where things have begun to feel normal around here, which probably means that it will be strange to be elsewhere after this, but that is not a problem for right now.

One thing that still feels foreign is how everyone is at the mercy of the weather. It's still the dry season here (so it only rains about once a day), but when it rains it really rains. Like, it rains too hard to have a conversation, or to see anything, or to sleep. Sometimes it feels like someone very large is hanging out in the clouds with a bucket and a hairdryer. Anyway. When that happens, you just stay inside (or under a tree) and wait, and then it stops, and that's just that.
Maybe 'at the mercy of' conveys the wrong idea. Maybe it's more that the weather very much informs daily activities. Sunny days are perfect for hang-drying clothes, so everyone does laundry. Vaguely overcast days are good for biking around and buying food. On rainy days many of my students coincidentally stay home with headaches. etc.

Even though the island is small, there's still a lot left of it to explore. I sometimes have to remind myself of this when I've spent half the day in bed reading, but that is what Sundays are for. Yesterday my roommate and I biked to the marina by the airport for a friend's birthday barbecue, and watched the sunset over the water from inside the water. I should post more photos. The next entry will be for photos.

The latest winner of my students' inappropriate t-shirts contest was a shirt that read: Why go to high school, when you can go to school high?

At least it was sort of clever.

Ok, time to go grade some (really really really cool) poster projects. One of the big highlights of my stay here has been receiving letters in the mail, so if you are looking for a way to fill some free time, write to me! My address is:

Sam Hesni c/o WorldTeach
PO Box 419
Kosrae, Federated States of Micronesia 96944

note

I must post because just now I successfully whistled for the first time in my life. There were no witnesses, but it happened. So now you know that even though I haven't blogged in a few weeks, I have been busy working towards very important things.

Things are going well. In the spirit of October, we had a gloriously overcast day yesterday, so that was a nice change. The first quarter of school is coming to a close, and my music kids are putting on a concert this Friday, and the cat that lives outside our house had kittens, and the store by our house has papaya again, and life is good.

no rain, no rainbows

Two months, and I've been getting used to all the new sounds here. Herons make a sound like something in between a gurgle and a meow. Geckos chirping sound like something in between a giggle a screech. Frogs sound like nothing until you step on one barefoot in the middle of the night while going outside to get drinking water from the catchment, and then they sound like squish.
It was bound to happen.

School is going well. The Department of Education here has a secret stash of ukuleles, which was exciting to discover. They have since migrated to my classroom. I've instituted a rule that my non-music students may play the instruments before class, so most mornings I get serenaded before the school day starts.

Last Thursday the island celebrated Liberation Day with church, food, games, and canoe racing. My big contribution was racing in a canoe without capsizing. The racing is an all-day event, where hundreds of people take turns racing in 5 6-person canoes. While the races are going on, everyone else sings (and sometimes dances). It is pretty awesome. There is so much music everywhere.

Recently, I've felt like things have just begun to become normal (i.e. I am becoming more acquainted and used to everything here) until they stop being so. For example, yesterday I tried out a new laundromat a little further away from our house, and while waiting for my clothes to dry decided to go read on the beach. Walking to the beach, I found myself thinking, "wow, this is a long walk to the beach. I wonder if it's worth it," then stopped to remind myself that this long walk takes approximately six minutes.
Or coming home to hear our three-year old neighbor calling "Sameeea, Sameeea!" the way she usually does when I walk in or out of the house, and turning to see her standing naked on top of a car.
Or meeting the woman in charge of ukuleles and learning that her name is Mona Lisa.

Ok, time to grab my big anti-dog stick and head to school!

there's the part you've braced yourself against

Last night I dreamed that I shoplifted a pizza.

Dreams have been on my mind a lot recently -- probably because I have been sleeping so much. During my first year of college I had a recurring dream that I had to go back and complete another year of high school. This feels a little like that. High school is high school everywhere, and Micronesia and Cairo are similar in many ways. I haven't had an identity crisis yet, but it is still a little bit unsettling at times. The reassuring thing, however, is that my students think that I was born in 1972.

Outside of school, things are still beautiful and peaceful. There is a vague effort on the part of the police department (all four members) to cull some of the more aggressive feral dogs -- this only sounds sad until you have been chased down by a pack of them. So now instead of swerving to avoid dogs in the road, drivers swerve to hit them. It is unclear whether this is any more dangerous than the status quo.

Liberation Week (next week) has been shortened to Liberation Thursday-and-Friday, so there are three extra (!) days of school this quarter. One of them will be a party, because I can decide things like that, because I am the teacher and I said so. Ha, power trip trumps identity crisis. Or maybe this is what happens when you don't know which mentality -- student or teacher -- to harbor. Or maybe parties are good things and that is all.

These are our three dogs: Saddam (front), Bobo (right) and the neighbor's puppy who answers to "oh hi!" That is our house in the background. If you look carefully you can see the "OPEN" sign in the far window, leftover from the glory days of motel-dom.



Happy Sunday/Saturday!