speeches, tattoos, close the service...mint chip icecream?

in the pics: hot cricket action, come and see it..i didn't do much with the cricket team. the students laughed at me when i tried to bat..oh well...not my thing i guess; one of my students, tasi, also notorious cricket buff; our cricket bus; one of the teachers, faatonu and me at a cricket match...fun fun fun.

9/04

It’s Friday. But a special Friday—the last day of term 2. that brings me that much closer to going home. The banana flavored ice cream here is not the same of Mint Chocolate Chip…after a sauna;) things I’m thinking about:

0. Project for next term: a school yearbook. Our school only has about 100 students, so the whole book will be 10 pages double-sided (I hope). I think it would be a good “stretch” project for my students. And we do OK on that, and have enough time (between tests and end of year stuff) there is the project to create a presentation using all those pics I’ve been taking over the past two years of school related stuff. And students (and big kids) really like pics, and music. I emailed some people at home to ask them what 2-3 questions jump to mind about samoa. A few responses: what is the largest crop in samoa? Is the ocean there very warm? What are three top places to take a visitor? Stay tuned for the answers.

1. Going to visit some friends in Australia on the way home. There is a mealofa fare (special rate) for people flying in December. I’d better buy a ticket soon, if they are aren’t all sold out already.

2. Grad school grad school grad school. I looked at graduate school before doing peace corps. I even took the GMAT for business school. Now I have the “go to a very far away place” thing out of my system (at least for now), and grad school seems to be what happens after undergrad. I printed the list of schools that have a PC Fellows program, but lots of questions such as: “are the only grad school options public policy or teaching?” “what degree would help me most working at a nonprofit (since that seems to be where my past experiences land)?” “are there professors doing the work I’m interested in?” “how can I narrow my interests down enough to choose one program?” (on that note there are a few programs on the list that offer joint/dual degree programs.) “how can I do GS in the northwest?” “is it really that important to do grad school in the NW?” that’s where I want to settle, anyway. That’s my home. Or so I think right now. “how can GS really be connected with my work?”

After a semi-quick perusal of the list, I circled schools in NY, NC, MI, OR, VT. I would like to GS in either Oregon or Washington (University of Washington, are you listening). I didn’t see UW on the list. Booooooooo.

3. Peace Corps close of service (COS)…happening mid September. That marks the three months group79 has left in Samoa, although at least one of us will be staying “a bit” longer. COS happens at coconuts beach resort—that’s over in my neck of the woods…well, sort of. Keywords: leaving, review, future, readjusting (ah…that lovely word I heard so much about before I began this adventure), the end (what has a beginning always has an end, doesn’t it?)

4. On that note of future things: my resume. Old objective: “to obtain an exciting peace corps position.” Well, I would say that objective has been achieved. What’s next? Right now, I couldn’t tell you…work or school; work and school. Probably the latter. I did some word mining in my resume and came up with: technology, implement, train, team, publish, grant, design, leadership…so we’ll see where that leads me.

5. important words to me: God, education, technology, youth, movement, service, inspiration. What about business and community?

6. Adding to the tattoo…we’ll I don’t know. I’m working on my own designs. I like something with waves, since I see waves everyday—I live at the ocean. I’m not complaining or anything.

7. Farewell speeches…lauga fa’amavae. Goodbyes seem to be important in samoa. And a goodbye forever might be really important. In our PC training we were given some pages on how to create an appropriate speech. Let me pull those dusty pages out now;)

9/3

The $50s and $100s rolled aplenty today. The day of settling accounts, paying IOUs and late bonuses. I think the goal is to walk out with more money (even if you have loans) than you came with.