Thursday, June 13, 2013

Any given day....

The church bells ring at 5:00 am for the morning service. (we definitely don't get up for that).

Morning classes start at 6:00 am for the older students. ( they are preparing for a secondary school entrance exam, which is both extremely difficult, and quite important. Their scores will impact how good of a school they get in and attend the next 7 years..a lot of pressure for an 11 year old.) The test is in October.

We get out of bed sometime around 7. We eat breakfast (we have three options- oatmeal, omelets-mark wants me to make sure you know that it is without cheese-or, if we're lucky, cereal with warm milk powder) together (which is a huge blessing!).

Mr. Cooprider quizzes me on my Tongan, and corrects all my incorrect sentences.



(our current words. We try and update every other week, but sometimes we are lazy. Funniest current word-fakapuopuaka. This word means dirty like a pig. If you haven't lived around pigs ever, you can't know how big of an insult this is. I find them most disgusting when they are squealing for their food)

(my students have been watching through the windows, in the doorways, and occasionally-because mark forgets the boundaries-from in the living room. Trust me-boundaries are important! Last week I was, to put it gently, busy, in the bathroom. That didn't stop three different kids from coming and asking me random questions. Can't I even poop in peace?!)

The school bell rings, well, it is rung, at 830.


(the school bell)

Sometimes we have assembly, sometimes we don't.

Mark sets off on his walk to Matamaka. I clean up breakfast.

I teach my class 1-3 (kinder-second grade) and my class 4-6 (third- fifth grade) before lunch.


Mark and his students


My class 4-6

I eat a quick lunch, then play with the kids during their 1 hour lunch break.

After lunch, the kids brush their teeth. I yell at them not to waste our precious water. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. Sometimes the other teachers join in the yelling, sometimes I go it alone. Last week I lied and told them we would return to America if we ran out of water. That scared them for a few days...

School is over at 3:20. Mark is usually home before or right at the end of school. We started po ako (night school) a few weeks ago. ( yes, these kids are in school way too much!) It starts at 5:00 two days a week.

The rest of the time we Eva pe ( wander around), read, work in our-or really-Mark's garden, play the uke, try to send text messages,lesson plan, floss, bake, stare at the ocean, try to remember the words to songs like "I'm yours", and talk.

We end the day reading ( currently Lost on Planet China, and up next, When Helping Hurts) together, then tuck ourselves into our mosquito netted bed, listen to the mice playing under us, and watch a tv show on our ipad (currently The Wire and Once Upon a Time).


Alissa

1 comment:

  1. once upon a time....yay!! that's got to be one of my favs! asdfkjh that was koda, one of our cats, stepping all over the keyboard...guess he wants to say hi...lol :-)

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