Learning

Today was all about learning. I got about 9 hours of sleep last night. Felt pretty good. I'm not sure if our days are just so full that I'm tired, but it's probably some of getting used to the the time difference. Oh well, it's going smoothly. Day started with a session from some men who work in the Department of Education office here. They discussed some basics of standards and expectations from their department OICA - Office of Instruction, Curriculum, and Accountability. Next, we had our first Samoan language lesson. We have two instructors, and we covered vowel pronunciation and greetings today. The vowel sounds remind me of Spanish, and each letter has only one pronunciation like Spanish, which is handy. Otherwise, the words look completely different. Not many cognates here. Cognates are words that look the same as their meaning in English.

Made myself a sandwich for lunch today, and then went with Sarah to try to open our local bank accounts. Too long of a line today, but we'll have plenty of time to take care of that later. I really enjoyed talking with her. She's lived many places throughout her life and decided to do this program on a bit of a whim like myself. I know some of you are probably curious what the ratio is of our volunteers. We have 8 men and 22 women volunteers serving here in American Samoa this year, 10 of whom will be on the outer islands. Our cohort also includes 3 married couples.

As Sarah and I were riding the bus at one point together today, a gentleman behind us introduced himself. Tye was a lot of fun. His nephew currently is playing for the New England Patriots and previously for the Cincinati Bengals. He's actually a Dallas Cowboys fan, just like my brother. Tye also said he's a Cornhusker fan when I told him I was from Nebraska. He has a niece who teaches at the school I will be working at and said one of his other nephews currently plays football there. Tye was born in American Samoa but lives in North Carolina. He's down here for a while though visiting some family that still lives here

Finally, our field director Veronica engaged us in a session on our role as WorldTeach volunteer, some expectations, and introduced us to some ideas for classroom management and challenges we may face.

Right now is the coolest it is going to get here all year long. It was rather sticky out today, but still not hot temperature wise. Still cloudy out a lot, and rain comes and go throughout the day; it rains for 5-10 minutes, stops, and comes back. Here's a shot of rainbow that popped up right behind the school we are staying at yesterday. Can you see the double rainbow?

Tonight was our first smaller group cooked dinner. Had taco salad with tortilla chips for dinner tonight. Very delicious! Was nice to have some lettuce and tomatoes. I was part of the dish cleaning duty tonight, and it resulted in a nice conversation with David, one of our volunteers from the UK. He volunteered with WorldTeach three years ago in Guayana. We talked a little about his experience there and what we are teaching here.