feeling cold in Samoa?

in the pics: I'm getting a good collection of sauces (new find--french dressing); good food: dark brown bread, melted cheese, and some stirfry with laupele; and a pic of my samoan family's paopao (boat) and our house.

7/9

We’ve been slammed with rain over the last few days. When the wind blows and the rain falls sideways, I feel cold. Wait, did I say I feel cold?...hmmmm it is a little cooler, but I do feel cold. One of the teachers was wearing a jean jacket today.

Doing some planning . icky.

I'm writing this in my computer lab, listening to the falling rain, as it seeps through everything in Samoa. Hard, heavy rains have soaked us for the last two, three, I don't know ...many days. I got my shower for the day as I rode back from a family I stayed with last night. I went over to help the son with the computer. He is a student at NUS (national university of Samoa), and he is taking basic computers this semester. It is a big advantage to have a computer at home, even if it is an older computer with only 64MB of ram. We watched a movie called "Step UP2" last night. It's interesting the words he asks me about in the movie "what does 'step up' mean? ..legacy..accent..'you have crap on your face'..." it's a lot of American slang, and a big advantage everyone else has to learning english. Most movies in circulation in Samoa are in English and a few popular movies (series) are in Philipino. I don't know much Samoan slang.
I went to the evening church service last night. The father is the pastor of the Lotu Pati Pati church--a lot of music (there was a keyboard and drums! --no one was playing drums, and the drum set needs a new set of drum heads). "I hope you dance" (the Samoan version) was the first song. that made my eyes water. My mom gave me a book with that title and the CDsingle before I left. The family is very nice, and the father said now I am part of the family and can come anytime. I want to try and go every wednesday (there's the typeA/schedule part of me trying to break through;) The one good thing about all the rain is that it's easy for me to fall asleep during hard rain.

I hear the students getting hit...hmmm...sounds like a book this time. They must have done bad on their midterms.

My principal told me I'm not going to be having year11 students for the reading period. The form teachers need to be with their classes for progress tracking purposes. I now have the remedial yr9 students. That's fine with me, but I don't really feel i know how to do a remedial reading class. The students need BASIC basic reading comprehension. So I cracked open my trusty encyclopedia, c1965 (the actual hardcopy book--i forgot how heavy they can be). Book #8, Palate - Roux. It's been a LONG time since I picked up a real encyclopedia. Turn to page 490, the entry called "reading, improvement of." Yup, I'm a computer teacher, not a reading teacher, but maybe we can use the computers to help with the reading. I only have to figure out how to get the computerized voice to work. I go to my trusty library (which is also our computer room) and look for a book. Ahhh, a Cat in the Hat book "would you rather be a BullFrog?" and "Berenstains' B Book." hmmm.."beautiful baboon" that seems like it might be too hard for a remedial yr9 student. I need some help.

There are many random, esoteric (what other thesaurus words can i find?) problems that pop up with computers...that don't seem to pop up when I have the internet..darn that internet. Onosa'i! Hark--do I hear that we might be getting the internet, and turned into a college, all in the next year? we'll see. Well, the internet would be a good thing. The current problem computers: lesson for the day (from yesterday): don't mess with things if they already work fine. I installed new update files for antivirus program AVG on one of my computers. Now Microsoft Word doesn't start...gives error message "the operating system is not presently configured to run this application." bad bad bad, since I will use this program a lot in my classes. and I can't seem to get AVG to uninstall, and I can't open Restore application to roll the computer back to before I added the new files. and, I can't get into "user accounts" I don't know what to do, except rebuild the computer. I think it was a bad idea to add the new updated definition files.



Watching Samoa Start Search…singing with out music, acapella (pese to’atele). I like that the best. The woman had a cool necklace.



7/4
A celebration of the 232nd Anniversary of the Independence of the USA…a party at the Charge’d Affairs (old) pad. It was a swank show (meaning a polo shirt and shorts don’t cut it) but the open bar was nice. Good white wine. How many pieces in the band…a 15 piece police band played the formal selections such as Star Spangled Banner and Battle Hymn of the Republic. Hmmmm I didn’t know the SSB had four verses. I really hope that they spell my name correctly on a thank you certificate if PCVs get one at the end of two years. My name was misspelled on the Fouth of July invite.



6/30

I was just going to give kudos to using the new broadband wireless internet (fast fast fast) at my friend’s house, but today is Sunday and internet doesn’t work. I guess SamoaTel wants everyone to sleep and not work—which includes using/playing on the internet. No points!

But I have had a good weekend in Apia—the food has been yummy! I’ve had fajitas, cream cheese French toast at sara and cale’s house. Also steak and potatoes, pineapple banana papaya fruit smoothies and melted cheese on rye bread at richard’s place. I went to a catholic mass on Sunday and found that even if I bring a book to read, I usually find other interesting stuff to read. This weekend it was a report about Boys Town, stock concepts of W.D. Gann, and a book by a southpacific author (oh I forgot his name…sorry cale).

Oh…and I also just posted a poem I wrote inspired from phrases in the Dec 2007 Sun Magazine.