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…
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…
posted by bigchainring at 12:26 PM
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