A quick visit to some other volunteers’ village

August 11, 2013

Spent the night at some other PCVs’ house on the other side of Savaii and took a walk down to the beach. Quite a site!

This is about a 5 minute walk from their house

Making Kim Chee!

August 5, 2013

I’ve been missing Korea and it’s amazing food lately. I have plenty of bokchoy available here in Samoa as well as peppers, ginger, and garlic so I figured I’d make some kimchee. Bok choy isn’t what is typically used for kimchee but it works fine (I’m sure any sturdy, leafy green would be delicious--they pretty much all have been modified from the same plant anyway and I think kale or chard would make some delicious kimchee). I chopped up the peppers, ginger, and garlic, smeared them on the bokchoy leaves, found an extra glass jar, and stuffed the yummies in to ferment. OK, I tried some fresh first. It was good. Nothing like real kimchee from my co-teachers in Korea but still good. After a few days it was even better. I’m still finishing it a few months later and it’s still great. I can’t wait to make a new batch. I also tried some simple pickling with cucumbers, carrots, and even tried to pickle ginger. All but the latter came out great. I’ll have to try the ginger again with some fresh ginger from my garden.

A Co-teacher’s Preposition Class

August 27, 2013

I was passing by my Year 4 co-teacher’s classroom and happened to notice a fun class going on. He had the students working in small groups testing each other on the prepositions on, in, and under (if memory serves). They were in groups of 3. One student had 2 objects that they would place in relation to one another in order to represent one of the abovementioned prepositions. The students were having a blast and clearly understanding the prepositions. In order to encourage lessons like this one (and partly to capture their smiling faces for my blog) I ran to get my camera and take snap some pictures. My co-teacher can definitely bust out some fun, student-centered lessons to surprise me with!

In!

These guys were using a piece of chalk and a book, as you can see.

Walk for a Bus

August 24, 2013

I spent the morning walking from the village of Tuasivi to the main market village of Salelologa on Savaii. That’s a distance of about 15km. While I have been known to do similar things for fun, this was also done for a good cause. Actually, I was only participating in the last stretch of a week-long walk around the entire island that the students, staff, and volunteers were doing in order to raise money to buy a bus for a local high school. Without a bus, the students must rely on local transportation which, while definitely willing to take the students where they need to go, is general for bringing people to the markets or the wharf. Many high schools have busses which alleviates the strain on the general busses. But getting a bus requires…money (of course). So this school planned this fundraiser and earned the money by walking around the entire island of Savaii and singing through the villages. They publicized the event and so actually got quite a bit of money. In true Samoan form, they also got boxes of canned fish and canned corned beef—delicacies here in Samoa. I walked with my good friend and fellow PCV, Madi and other people from her village. It was a fun event and a great way to spend a Saturday. 

A tiny fraction of all the students

The support van

One village had niu (drinking coconuts) for the volunteers!

Gathering at a church near the end of the walk

Aisa Karimi! (Ice cream)

The sign at the gate to the school

Peace Corps, Samoa: English Day Protecting Our Environment

Here's a video of the English Day activities. The kids had a great time!

Village Song

This is a video of my kids singing the village song on the way back from English Camp.

English Camp

Ali, the PCV from a neighboring village, and I put on a 2-day English camp for our villages. We each invited 20 students and had all but 3 show up. I was a bit nervous in the weeks and days beforehand but it actually turned out quite well. MESC (Ministry of Education, Sport, and Culture) got involved and made the whole process a nightmare. We had to fill out a ton of paperwork and have a bunch of meetings that wouldn't have been necessary had we chosen to have the camp away from the school. But we can just mark that up to had-I-known-then-what-I-know-now. The camp consisted of one day at my school and one day at Ali's school. We played games, had English activities, and sports. The kids seemed to really enjoy it and we both learned a lot about what we want to do for the next year and a half. (For me that probably means no more camps.) Here's a video of the opening activity for day 2. It's also the activity in the first picture below.

Traffic Jam Game