pictures love us.2

waterfall fun + TJ (3 years old at my family's fale--house)

we're going into the village for two weeks..so there will be no blog posts..;)

pictures love us.1

Two houses(fales), picture of water and boat, and my training village family: Su'e Malo (my dad), Malu (my mom), and Ipela, who helps me with language a lot!

Poetry's visiting slacker

11/19/07

Aua le pisi...don't the noise-->be quite..a good classroom command to know.





I'm beginning to understand how much power a teacher has in Samoa.
Volunteer visit…where we go to a current volunteer’s home and work and see what they do; how they survive. I was with Steven who works at a primary school called Vaitele-Uta (also the name of the village). He is the computer teacher in a lab with ten computers and “broadband” internet. Internet companies charge by the MB here, so it can get very expensive very quickly. He lives on the school grounds—so it seems kind of secluded. The two main people he talks to outside of school are Afa (a 21 year old Samoan who really likes computers), and a night watchman who kind of creeps him out. It makes me think about whether I really want to live alone or with a family. I want my alone time, but there is so much to gain from living with a family.

The other big thing is that steven doesn’t use a frig or stove. He uses a rice cooker a lot. It cooks pasta and a can of tomatoes very well (in picture)…chicken...well, had to re-cooked until it was done. We should have cut it into smaller pieces the first time.

Steven’s school is the largest government school with about 360 kids and 20 teachers. The computers are rather new because the school is part of the School Net program which provides computers and internet to five pilot schools in Samoa.

Steven talks about volunteers not being a push over—I’d like to know (iloa) more about that. He says trainees seem to be too worried about offending Samoans. I don’t want to be a push over, and I don’t want to take on too much too soon.

Steven has found a counterpart in Afa, who runs the canteen at school. He may be good for teaching computer classes. It sounds like a promising situation—the principal (the position seems to have a lot of power at schools in general) supports it. Steven says if you really need to learn Samoan you will. for PCV that teach primary school, or are village based development, they will need to learn Samoan…secondary school teachers—like me—may not NEED to. I still want to learn Samoan.

What is Peace Corps’ reputation? A couple of us (PCTrainees) have been talking about the PC reputation when volunteers leave early. I guess a few people are not happy—a few PCV who were placed at SchoolNet.na sites left early. Bottom line—when a school starts to rely on a PCV, and they leave early, everybody hurts. I don’t like it.

Older people—listen up! Samoa is a place wehre age is respected, so an older volunteer will be listened to more and get more done. Check it out==older people are needed. Peace Corps has a 50+ initiative. My experience at Training Inc suggests that for profit companies don’t’ want to hrie older workers:(

Does having things given to you through aid and relatives living in other countries—promote idleness? I think people have priorities, and one person’s idea of progress may be different than anothers. Our training village—Lalomauga—built a church by themselves. It’s interesting to hear stories of what works and what doesn’t work.

My current reading… “who’s looking out for you?” by Bill O’Reilly. He has interesting views. I think he’s a “conservative.” he says “the so-called justice system in American is not looking out for you.” Not equal justice. He seems to support families and minorities. I had parts I wanated to type but one of my agreements is no typing while I’m in Peace Corps..except for this blog and maybe some poetry.. Bottom line, look out for yourself, “art of self-protection” “flirt with tolerance.” In search of Nomads. By john Ure. Now I want to go find some Bakhtiari. It seems the women are an adventurous type…there have been more women explorers than men in the book so far! It’s nice to take my mind off of training and the push to learn Samoan. I found a poetry book!! To Young Artist in Contemplation” it’s giving me inspiration lines I can use to start new poems…such as “listen to the stars. Awakening to this woman. Taxis zoom and zoom. When dogs do not howl. Poetry of rain. Empower this native. Unbelievable lightness of not being. Gods of hope.”

Poetry can be so revealing.
I think my brain is empty now…tomorrow the 21st we have our processing of volunteer visit...and probably more language!…I think only 2.5 weeks of training left! We are in Apia at the hotel until Saturday, then go to the village for two final weeks…maybe a week after that.

more pics..

more pics..

catch up..run away from the language monster..

We're at our training village... the kids really love boxing..
As I turn on the spigot to rinse my hands, I look up between the coconut trees to see the stars spread before me. I’ve just finished practicing my Samoan with Ipela—my little brother at our training village Lalomauga. The lessons have the English and Samoan, so I help Ipela with his English. He’s 11, and has good enough English so it works well. Some of the words he has trouble saying are father, who, and Los Angeles.

My friend Anna, who lives in Boston sent me a Halloween card—Yea!! People remember me..and I guess a big congratulations is in order!! I have no concept of seasons here in Samoa (a long ‘A’ sound on the first a).

Today is Friday November 16. it is 7:30am and our PC van is headed to Apia, the main city on the island of Upolu. We are going to the all volunteer conference where all PCV will hang our for the day..later I learned we would hear the state of the post address from the country director, a lot of statistics stuff, some bouncing around as we learned some games we could do with primary school kids using minimal equipment, and a cool slide show the other PC groups put together. They also had butcher paper on the tables with crayons…so I enjoyed making a design, but it was gone when we got back from the cardio activities:(

Learning the Samoan language has been hard for me, but I think I don’t practice speaking it enough. I don’t think in grammar terms when I speak in English, and I write poetry that probably breaks all the grammar rules, so learning about objects, independent pronouns, and transitive verbs make it all the harder. But practicing with Ipela really helps, and he’s patient! I appreciate him. I think it helps him with his English too. So if anyone has any tips for learning another language (especially Samoan) please shoot them my way. The style of learning is “chalk and talk” and I’m a very visual/doer type person. It’ll be interesting to see how that works out at Lefaga secondary school where I’ll be placed. We’ll lots of hands on creative doing type activities.

I love how the rain can be heard long before it is heard. It seems to travel in walls (meaning it rains really hard when it rains, and then sunny) hitting tin roofs and leaves. It was raining really hard one day during language class and I just wanted to close my eyes and let my brain drop.

I found someone in my Pisikoa group who likes to do the plyometric type exercises I like—sweet! My back has hurt for most of the time since I’ve been here;( but it’s probably because we’ve been sitting in training for 6hrs/day. Being a good student doesn’t necessarily mean I “get it.” It’s not sticking as fast as they think it should.

There are a lot of American things here—like the music. Hearing “Lady in Red” was really nice..that’s a song that connects me. Everything else seems to stop. I really like that song.

I was going through my vocab words that I put alphabetically at the beginning of training and realized I had set up the American alphabet! There are only 17 letters in the Samoan alphabet …no “W,X,Y,,ZB,C,D,J,Q.” and in my Samoan dictionary I have lots of F,M,T words (each day each trainee had to give two words, not we have five sentences each day that people come up with and write on the white board.

Our PC trainers keep saying that process is important, and I’ve been thinking maybe that’s why I’m attracted to this kind of work and not so much into tests—like the GMAT, which I’ll have to do better on if I want to do an MBA. I’m really interested in business, but is GMAT/B-school the only way?

So language has been a struggle, sitting hurts my back (tiga lo’u tua), but the part of training that has interested me the most has been the cross cultural discussions and activities. Our training manager, HP leads those. We’ve talking about cultural reciprocity—I found it interesting that it is rooted so deeply here, and orgs like Social Capital Inc. are pushing something similar in the US. They should come here and check it out. We’ve also talked about the concept of time, self, and locus of control in Samoa…from those discussions we’ve learned that Samoa is a polychromic, collectivist, fatalist society. But I see American values pressing into that culture...for better and worse.


Today we have our Thanksgiving celebration, and then we’re off to a volunteer site visit. I think I’m staying close to Apia.

Hopefully there are some new pics here…enjoy..and think of me far away…

Lefaga's wormy adventure..take2

the first time I tried adding 5 images..and the internet window crashed on me:(..so there may be not pics this time..but go to this web site to see lotSSS of pics:
see pics from other group79 volunteers:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/samoa79

A shout out to allmy friends in Astoria and ultimate frisbee peeps..you should come at play with at our training village: Lalomauga...hi hi hi!!
Lots of pics this time..hopefully they are displaying correctly.

Yea to my mom!!!! I just got the package she sent me.. there's a pic of the computer tools, shirt of Astoria bridge crossing, and an article of the race from the front page of the Daily Astorian. Thank you thank you thank you mom. I love you;)

We just got back from what will most likely be our permanent sites. We were there for two days for on the job training, but it was mostly meeting people and checking out our living situations and some possibilities. I'm working in a village called Savaia in the district of Lefaga. It's Lefaga Secondary school. (I almost forgot and put in an "ng." In Samoan the "g" makes an "ng" sound. It's BEAUTIFUL...right on the beach, with waves that are just like the Oregon coast! Oka Oka means "oh my gosh!" which is about how I feel about my site. I will be teaching computer studies, and maybe some phyics and math...but there is some cool stuff we can do with the 12 computers we have at the school, and the teens really seem to like the computers. I've already seen a beautiful sunset, and two shooting stars. This is a rural village on the south west side of the island of Upolu, about an hours bus ride from the "big" city of Apia. Sweet scenes, cool people, LOTS of rain. Lighting thunder too, hopefully no tsunamis or cyclones.
I woke up at 2:30am both days to go with the other people and many of the village people to snag a small worm that appears in the ocean only two times a year. It seems to be a delicacy here. I tasted it...a little salty. I didn't really wait to have it wiggle in my mouth. It's called Palolo. it reminded me of digging clams with my mom..EARLY!

There are pictures from my family at our training village. The one of a boy with umbrella and basket is Ipella. ..he's cool and helps me a lot, and I help him with english and he helps me with Samoan.

There are a few pictures from the Ava ceremony to welcome the volunteers from PC groups 1 and 2...a long time ago! Some fire dancing (that was soooo cool!!) and some current PC volunteers dancing.