Presentations and Hiking with the Girls

A few of the girls that went with me on Saturday had their cameras and shared a few photos they had with me in them. Here is me jumping into the tide pool. Not long after take-off. Yes, I'm holding my nose. I don't like water up my nose, especially salt water. Sure it may look a little dorky, but no water up my nose. :-)

A photo from a different angle showing my entry. Toes are pointed! haha Dad, I hope your thoughts go straight to watching diving on the olympics and our discussions about some of the judge's calls.

Here is a photo of me jumping in with Tautala. Remember from my other post she ended up doing it by herself after I did it with her the first time. Yay!

Here is a nice group shot of all of us but one. I have no idea why Tavini is not shown here. One of the tourists that was walking by offered to take our photo. Thank you random man that sounded like he was from Australia. Filipo looks like quite the ladies man in this one. ;-)

Those who went with me are still abuzz on how much they enjoyed it and so thankful. First thing on Monday morning, one of the boys told me how as soon as he got home he wished he was still on the field trip.

I struggled to fall asleep Sunday night. I was up past 1am. Can hardly remember the last time I was up that late. Hard to believe I couldn't fall asleep as I had been up since 5:30am. "4 maybe 5 hours of sleep, here I come," I thought. Woke up, got ready, and really didn't feel too tired at any point during the day. Good thing too, don't need that on a Monday morning. haha

When we arrived Monday morning, we were told there was a breakfast for the teachers in the library. National Honor Society put on a breakfast for us for Teacher Appreciation Week. I remember doing that when I was in National Honor Society. Way too many good things to choose from, though. Cinnamon rolls, donuts, muffins, supo esi, koko rice, cupcakes, juice, water... I ended up taking a few things back with me to my classroom and ended up enjoying those for lunch as I only ate the fruit from the cafeteria. Wasn't really feeling the pizza.

Ranger Pa'i and Ranger Pua came in for my Marine Science class on Monday to share a presentation and activity about ocean acidification. They showed a video and then provided this little demonstration. They passed out some cups of vinegar, and then a little coral rock that the students placed into the vinegar and watched the chemical reaction take place.

Then, they worked on this little game that taught us about saving energy. The goal was to gain as many energy saving stars as possible. The students had a lot of fun with these activities. Thankful for my NPS friends for coming in again and sharing this with my students.

After school was another one of Miss Boschen's "field trips" - join Miss Boschen on a little adventure and see something new. Monday's plan - head up the little trail to Blunt's Point to see the WWII gun and admire the view of flower pot island. I had quite a few kids raise their hands during the day saying they were thinking about coming, but when the final bell rang I had six girls ready to go in my room - three of which had gone with me toward Vatia on Saturday.

An all girl crew, we headed out about 3:30 to get a bus Gatavai (about a 30-minute ride). We had to wait quite a while for a bus, though. Stood there for quite a while before one even came by. The first one we saw was full, the second didn't want to take students on the bus, but finally the third one let us all on. Off we went.

I had warned them the trail was a bit steep but not very far up. Some of them trudged right on up (including Matane, who had gone with me to Zumba a few times), and some of them slow-poked their way up. They all made it, and were all like "wow" when they took in the cool view.

It's fun to watch the girls be high school girls taking a kazillion photos. Here's a cute one of all six of them sitting on the WWII gun.

Here they go to check out the little bunker. Nothing too exciting, but it's a little creepy.

A group shot of all of us including the gun in the foreground and flower pot island in the background. This is a great group of girls.

Here they go playing around with photos. I did that a lot in college. I love it :-)

It's great to see them enjoying themselves while checking out a great spot on the island they've never been to before. Christina told me she loves my field trips and is going to miss me when I leave. I'm really glad I decided to start getting them out there some. They won't go do it on their own, and I have a few more trips planned over these next few weeks.

We stopped at Samu's for their homemade ice cream before catching our buses home. Knowing I hadn't slept much the night before, and I really like 8 hours of sleep on a regular basis, I was hoping I would fall asleep early Monday night to catch up a bit. Right after coming home from my little outting with the girls, I ate a little dinner, uploaded my photos, and laid down in my bed watching a little DC Cupcakes. Next thing I knew, I was falling asleep about 7:30pm. Yes!

Tuesday morning we were greeted with another breakfast, this time put together by the freshmen class (well mostly the freshmen class officers and their advisors). First thing I'm told is "this is breakfast and lunch, so be sure to make a plate to take with you." Oh boy. I enjoyed a mini corn muffin, a little yellowcake with jello, some pani popo (the delicious coconut bread, and Hannah finally got to try some), and some grapes. I was beyond excited about seeing some fruit there. Felt like I was eating so many carbs. For lunch, I took this brownie/coffe cake or something bar (not really sure what it was,  but the student that handed it to me said a brownie), some cucumbers and tomatoes from the salad that was out, another mini corn muffin, and more grapes. I also snagged a few oranges and an apple to take home.

It's nice to have all these things, but man almighty good thing it's not like this every week or I would be one carb-infested girl. Trying to not eat too much. Feels like Christmas when I walk in and see all these foods to choose from and want a little bite of like 6 different things. haha

Tina, the lady that works in the Tula Observatory out on Cape Matatula came in to speak with our morning classes Tuesday. She shared the same presentation some of my students were able to see last week introducing them to a handful of science careers. She has a background in physics and engineering. She talked about her work with NASA developing space gadgets (things that are attached to space telescopes and things), working on the South Pole with cryogenics, and working on the coast of Antarctica at the Palmer Station. She has some pretty cool stories. Living on the South Pole, the tip of the Earth, she experienced 5 months of 24/7 darkness, 1 month of sunrise, 5 months of 24/7 daylight, and 1 month of sunset. I knew all this because of the way the Earth rotates, but it's still weird to think about experiencing something like that.

She also shared some of her friends and their different careers in science including a chemisty in the U.S. military, a geologist that worked with earthquake monitoring in New Zealand, biologists that did penguin research in Antarctica, and a geologist that collected meteorites in Antarctica and now works as a curator of the meteorite collection at the Smithsonian. I learned quite a bit from her presentation, and it was cool to have the students be exposed to so many different jobs with people with varying levels of scientific backgrounds. Many enjoyed seeing the penguins :-) The penguins were my favorite animals when I worked at the Blank Park Zoo.

The bell rang a little early during our second to last class of the day. It was actually the final bell, which meant we dropped one class. An announcement was made that there would be song practice for the teachers for the upcoming parade or whatever I'm supposed to call it coming up on Friday. The DOE decided to have this ordeal this Friday of Teacher Appreciation Week, which includes this song and dance practice for many teachers to perform. Oye. That should be interesting. Weird for me to think about the teachers having to perform at their own appreciation gathering, but... guess we'll see. I know some of the teachers I know have made comments like that. Sounds like it should be fun or at least an interesting experience. We (the palagi teachers at my school) aren't participating in the song part, our principal said we didn't need to. I was at the first song practice, but it was hard to keep up with. I still have the outfit we were supposed to put together to wear, will be attending, watching, and participating in everything else.

Had an awful sinus headache that developed Tuesday afternoon, and apparently you could see it on my face as I walked into the office to clock out. I looked a little under the weather, but I explained it was just a really bad headache. Some may just go home and try to sleep, but I went back in for Zumba. For me, getting up and moving usually helps me forget about my headache. Zumba did the trick, although I was sluggish about halfway through the session today. Man, my body's been weird again this week. All manageable, though. I'm telling you American Samoa must be ready to get rid of me. haha Just kidding. I know parts of American Samoa are gonna miss me just like I'm going to miss parts of being here.

Hope your week is off to a good start!