Sports Days

A part of the curriculum for Primary School students includes a PE section.  To fulfill this requirement, most schools in Samoa hold Sports Days each Friday.  All of the students at the school were split up into four teams: red, blue, yellow, and green.  So for instance, the red team would consist of 6-7 students from each year with a two Year 8 Prefects acting as coach to the team.  Each Friday, the teams compete against one another and whichever team has the highest cumulative score for that Friday wins!  There are several different sports that my school plays: soccer, soccer ball throwing, volleyball, and rugby.  The most entertaining for me are the rugby matches.

Growing up in America in highly protective schools were when one played football, one played TOUCH football since there was no way the school was chancing a lawsuit if a student got tackled and hurt in PE class, it was extremely entertaining to witness students body slamming each other on the field outside my school.  And when I say body slamming, I mean it.  They’re out there full force tackling so that they both spin to the ground, grabbing onto shirts and whirling them to slam into the ground, and looping arms around necks in an effort to stop them.  The whole while, all of the watching students and teachers are laughing and having a jolly good time.  I have to say, it was more fun that I have any other day.  The best part is the boys love to do it!  It’s their favorite sport to play and they really enjoy (I’m assuming) mitigating out body slams all in the name of sport.  Even the Year 3 students who played went full force into the game as even though they didn’t quite know the rules, they all whole-heartedly joined into the body pile-up when someone had the ball.  It’s a long ways from the overly protective schools of America.

Here are a few of the better pictures I’ve taken on Sports Days:

Soccer races

Team pride!

Year 2 and 3 pile up

Vice-Principal Alapati giving a pep talk

Look at that face!  Now that's some serious rugby

Uh oh!  He's coming for you!

Parent Teacher Conferences

When I was going through Elementary, Middle, and High School, I was the perfect angelic student that all parents dream of (pffft yeah right…) and Parent Teacher Conferences were not something that I dreaded.  Now that I’m on the opposite side of the conference in the role of the teacher, I was overwhelmed when I was first asked to write report cards and conduct Parent Teacher Conferences with my 75 students’ parents.  So two weeks before the event I began to gather my resources and come up with phrases that’d serve me well, such as:

His/her reading has improved.  Ua aloalo i luma lona faitautusi.
He/she is smart but talks all the time.  E poto tele, ae tautala so’o.
He/she needs to work on… E tatau ona galuega i…

This way I could write out the reports for the kids that not only included the grades for my midterm and homework reports, but also attempted at showing the parents what I thought of their children.  For the most part, the children were all exemplary but of course there are always a few that needed a few extra comments on my part regarding either behavior or alarming grades.

One of the report cards

Once the report cards were written out, all that remained was the daunting aspect of approximately 75 parents wanting to discuss their kids with me, in Samoan.  I was confident with my phrases but the thought of unknown questions coming at me in Samoan brought back the fear sweat that I had during my language exam during training.  So when the day came around, I had my stack of report cards on one side and my list of phrases and vocabulary on the other.  The line of parents quickly formed and the first woman sat down.

“Malo le soifua lau susuga” Very polite hello.

“Malo le soifua, o ai lou tamaiti?” Hello in return, who is your child?

And the exchange went on and on and remarkably, I was able to hold my own.  It’s a true marker of how far my Samoan has come that I was usually able to understand although I was not always able to form a response.  That parent looked through her son’s report card, his exam, signed the report card, thanked me, and left.  As simple as that, the first was over and done with and the next woman slid into place behind her.  Meeting with the parents, I was able to finally connect faces with the parents of the children that I teach every day.  Almost 2 hours later, the stream of parents was slowing down until finally my last one came and left.  Not quite all of the parents had made it but my goodness it was a huge chunk.  Afterwards, all of the teachers gathered for a celebratory lunch with food provided by the parents and chatted about the different things that had happened.

The next day, one of the students in Year 5, Ioane, came by with a gift for me.  His parents were particularly thankful for the teachers and sent him to school with a lavalava (wrap-around skirt) for me that read, “We love you Mum”.  I was so touched, I instantly pulled off the one that I was wearing and replaced it with his.  For the rest of the day, Ioane had the brightest smile on his face whenever he looked at me in his lavalava.

I’m so proud of the improvements in all of my students.  They all performed so well on their midterms in my class.  I had many students place first in their groups who had never placed in first before.  I even had one boy in my Year 6 At-Risk class who broke down into tears upon seeing his first place score on my grade wall.  This is the reason I joined the Peace Corps: to see improvements in the learning of the children and to affect their lives in a constant, positive way.  Ou te alofa lo’u tamaiti aoga!  Malo lava outou!!

My wall of exam scores

Faitala, my #1 student in Year 4 At-Risk Group

Orion, my #1 student in Year 6 At-Risk Group

Time Change

Spring forward, Fall back.  Most people use this simple phrase to remember the time changes that occur each year.  I forgot one simple thing however, I’m south of the equator!  This means that those months that I usually associate with winter are now summer and visa-versa.  This really messed with my brain when we had our time change a few months ago.  In my mind, it was spring which meant the clocks were going forward an hour.  This was obviously not the case and the clocks went back an hour since of COURSE, March, April, May are fall months.

Samoa has a very interesting view on time changes.  I happened to be in Manase during this last time change on a vacation.  I was at my friend Kiri’s house on a Sunday and she woke up for church at her regular hour (with the time change taken into account), and woke up to find that her family had already left for church.  Apparently the vast majority of activities in Samoa just shift their start and end times by an hour.  So if something had started at 9am, it now started at 8am.  Which made no sense at all to us confused foreigners.  This continued at the resort the next day where we informed that dinner would no longer be served at 6:30 but would be at 5:30 instead.  Why even have a time change if you’re just going to shift your start times????  When school started after break, sure enough, school was starting an hour early.  However not everyone showed up that early so there wasn’t much structure for the first hour.  It seemed a haphazard way to go about the time change.  I wonder what it’ll be like in October?

Honestly though, I can understand why it’s done.  The sun in Samoa is particularly brutal and the traditional Samoan day starts at sunrise.  So no matter what the clocks say, people will get up with the sun and go about their schedule like normal.  So maybe its us foreigners that are odd about enforcing a time change?

Yogurt Maker

Coming across foreign food in America is fairly easy if you’re willing to spend money.  For instance, yeah you can get a carton of strawberries but it’ll cost you an arm and a leg.  Yogurt is another one of those things that you can buy but runs around 15USD for a carton of it.  It’s one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast in America and it’s a great kick-start to the day (also it works wonders on your digestion while eating an unfamiliar diet!)  When I was over at Allyson and Josh’s house in April I saw that they had a yogurt maker with them.  I asked about it and apparently they had bought one while in Apia.  And so began my quest to find the ever elusive yogurt maker.  It was apparently sold at a store called Myna’s and for weeks on end I went up the hill each time I was in Apia trying to find it.  Well last week I finally did.  Last night I made my first batch of Peach Yogurt and it was amazing this morning when I opened it up and had my first taste of yogurt.  It was pure heaven in a bottle.  Thanks EasiYo!