Finally at Site!!!

Well it has been four weeks without Internet. Man, its crazy how much you can live without it but miss it at the same time. It’s just hard when you want to look something up and you can’t. Plus, I have no idea what’s going on in the world.

Life at site is great. There is so much to tell but I am not sure if I will be able to get it all down. So here we go.

First, I will start with my family and house because they are truly a blessing here in Vanuatu. I share a house with my host family. This is different from other volunteers. However, it is great for me. I love living in community and I am used to living with other people. (Thank you Tiffany, Aunt Theresa, and Uncle Randy!) First, I will start with my Papa. He truly is the best and a great man of God. My Papa is a great handy man. He can fix anything and I mean anything.  He rebuilt our bush kitchen because it was knocked down in the cyclone. It was awesome to see it being built. It amazed me how he cut the wood and would hammer and saw stuff without any equipment you would think would be necessary. My papa is always on the go. He cannot sit still. He is very well known in the community and does a lot for the community. He is always helping someone and he talks with everyone. When we go walking in the community, everyone stops to talk with him. He reminds me of my Papa from the states. I believe he is almost 70 but works like he is 25. We talk a lot about education and the politics here in Vanuatu. It is great to hear the reasons why they do certain things here. He is always very religious. He leads us in praise and worship and prayer time every morning and evening. He also preached one Sunday and he made it a family thing. I read the scriptures (I was so nervous that I spoke way too fast.) and my mama prayed. I am very blessed to have him as my Papa.

Next, my mama is the best. She takes awesome care of me and I am truly spoiled. I don’t even want to write what she does for me but I will. First of all, she is an awesome cook, so food is always so good. I am learning a lot about how to cook vegetables where you actually want to eat them. She is teaching me so much about cooking and using what you have. However, I do not think I will loose any weight. She will make noodles and rice on the same night. So I am eating carbs on carbs. My mama is a homebody so she stays home and cleans. She always wants to clean my room. I tell her no all the time. But when I come home from school, she has cleaned my room and washed my clothes. She doesn’t like that I don’t make my bed, so she does it. LOL! She hardly lets me do the dishes. I tell her all the time that I like doing the dishes and that she cooked so I can clean them. Sometimes she argues and sometimes she doesn’t. (Mostly now she doesn’t argue, we kind of have a rhythm now.)  She also knows how to fix anything. She is also great with the bush knife. She helped Papa with the bush kitchen as well. We also have great conversations about schools and life. She is very wise and I enjoy spending a lot of time with her. She talks about how we are supposed to live like Jesus. So we talk a lot about Jesus.

I also have a puppy. His name is Juju. He follows me around. It’s great. He listens pretty well. He walks me to school in the morning. He also walks with me when I go down to the village. It’s like I have my own bodyguard. Even though, I think he is more fright than I am.  We also got 5 baby chicks to raise and eat them. This is part of the relief effort post cyclone. So we will see what happens with that. Mama and Papa tell me that I will have to kill one. I am not sure if I will be able to do it, so I will keep you posted.

My house is pretty sweet. It is concrete with four bedrooms, one bathroom, a living room, and a small kitchen on the inside. Then there is the front porch that we normally use for a dining room but it was destroyed in the cyclone, so Papa is going to fix that next. Then our washing area is in the back of the house. Then we have the bush kitchen. We have two water tanks. One is huge and the other one is small. I do have a toilet and a showerhead but it is not running water. We still have to fill up buckets of water to use for the toilet and for the shower Papa pours water into a big tank and it comes through a pipe. Right now it is cold season so taking a cold shower SUCKS!! But it is all good. They gave me free rein of the house. So I can do whatever I want. Papa is going to hang my hammock soon. It’s hard because all of the trees by the house were destroyed and there is no shade anywhere. So we are waiting. But everything is great!!!

Work: So I am here to work with reading and speaking in English. I am at Else Primary Central School. We have classes 1-8. Students for classes 1-6 are from all the villages by the salt water (Beaches) on Nguna. Students from classes 7-8 are from the whole island of Nguna, Pele, and some of the villages on south Efate. So Else Primary serves a lot of villages. I spent my first two weeks observing and assessing all students except for class 1. Class 1 is only in Bislama so I will not be working in that classroom right now. The students are still really shy around me. They laugh at me all the time. But as I am writing this, they are starting to warm up to me. After I finished with my assessments, I noticed that all the students need some support in phonics, so that is where I started. I will go into all the classes for about an hour a week and do a lesson on phonics. Then I will pull small groups from classes 2-6 to reinforce the skills or work on phonemic awareness. Then with classes 7-8 we are working on grammar rules for now. This is what she wants me to focus on. Once, I am finished with my classes in the morning, I spend time creating the things I will use. I have to get created because I cannot copy things and I do not have a lot of resources. So I am drawing and cutting a lot. It has been interesting. Every other Friday, my headmaster wants me to have workshops for the teachers. The first one I did was Shared Reading. I ended up doing this on Monday, June 1^st because there were issues on the Friday before. It went pretty well. I talk to fast, so I think I overwhelmed them. I felt horrible. But most of them seemed to like it and were happy that I gave them the information. I also gave them Sour Patch Kids, so that was a hit. (I know teachers like food during trainings/workshops) I will eventually set up individual meetings with the teachers to focus more on what they want whether it is lesson planning, reviewing assessments, etc. My goal is to make sure they know I am here to assist and not take over.

My headmaster is great to work with. He pretty much lets me do whatever I think is right. I am not sure that is the best thing but it works for me. LOL!!! He works very hard for the school. Our school was hit pretty hard from the cyclone. The school lost one classroom, the library, and most of the teacher housing. Some of the teachers are staying in two classrooms. So the school is down three classrooms. When I first got here, the school was doing double sessions. Since then, UNICEF came and brought two huge tents to use as classrooms. So now all the classes are running full days. Construction on the classroom and library should be happening soon. Else had a wonderful library with a librarian however, 80% of the books were destroyed in the cyclone. So I am trying to figure out how to get some books here. We need a lot of books for the older grades. I will post about my thoughts about that at another time. Our school also is getting a computer lab. It was supposed to be here in March. Well you know what happened. I am told we will get it in August. I go to a computer workshop with the head of school council in August, so hopefully that will come soon. Once that gets here, I will then be a computer teacher too. I am pretty excited about this because the kids are really excited about it. The community is also excited to learn how to use the computers. I don’t think we will get Internet for a while but teaching people to use technology is awesome and I am hoping to turn some of the kids and adults into writers. That will help with their reading.

Down Time: Well there is a LOT of down time. I have been reading a ton of books. I have never read so much in my life but I am enjoying it. I finally read the first Harry Potter thanks to one of my students from the states. Now I am waiting to go back to Vila to get the second book. I also play volleyball with the students on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturdays. This is always fun. I am not that great, so the kids laugh at me even more. Plus I yell and scream, as I am sure you can imagine and that makes them laugh. The kids are so funny to play with. They kick the ball or use their heads to hit it over. It is a great time. I also walk around the village and try to talk Bislama with whoever is around. This is always interesting as I am still not that great a speaking it. Plus, Nguna has its on language, so they mostly speak this than Bislama. I am taking lessons from one of the teachers twice a week. I also found a mama who likes to drink Kava, so we drink Kava together twice a week and practice Bislama. I also spend a lot of time doing things for school. Other than that, I listen to music and nap.

                           

Well, I think that is enough for now. I hope you can get a glimpse of my life here. If you have specific questions or request on a topic for a blog post please email me at shannontheresa83@gmail.com.

The sunrise on my island!

Sunrise...

My baby chicks that I will eat in a few weeks.

My washing machine!

My dryer!

My view in the afternoon!