Highlights from the Final Weeks of Training

Fun at Home
My favorite niece Vannett turned 13 last Tuesday, and over the course of the week we had a lot of weeknights where I was home with the kids/teenagers. One night I made dinner!—a can of black beans, chicken, and salsa sent by Mom from Trader Joe’s served over the omnipresent rice. It was delicious and the family liked it! The other evenings we tended just to hang out, play with my ipod, cards, or camera. There were a couple of good photo shoots which revealed both new camera settings and unusual Pohnpeian proclivities (namely, that Pohnpeian boys like to goof around by dressing in drag). [Photos to be included if the internet will agree to load them!]

Schooling the Teacher
Last Thursday we had a teaching practicum. My partner, Amanda, and I were assigned to a 7th grade class of about 40 kids. We did a lesson about parts of speech and parts of a sentence, and then had some time left at the end to play a few games. The last one we played, Amanda put the words “The Federated States of Micronesia” on the board and we had them make as many nouns as possible using the letters on the board. While I was expecting stuff like “chair” and “ears,” the kids came up with a bunch of proper nouns, many of which were names of other countries and continents. So they taught me that Africa, Asia, America, Canada, etc, were all contained within the FSM.

Lukop at First Sight
On Friday, the day after the practicum and a week before swear-in, the trainees split up to shadow one of the 5 current PCVs on Pohnpei for the morning (Erica and I went to Awak to see Kate’s school). On the way home, we spontaneously decided to stop at our sites—Saladak for Erica and Lukop for me. By the time we got to Lukop, which is a ways off the main road around the island, it was almost 2pm on a Friday afternoon. Pohnpei is not known for having full days of school on Friday, so I was incredibly surprised to arrive to classrooms full of students quietly listening to their teachers. I talked to the principal briefly, and he told me that school goes until 2:30 every day. I was over the moon!

“Block Party” Kamadupw
On Saturday I went to another kamadupw on Temwan, but this time I got to see a kinder side to the ritual. The Nanmwarki was not there, and it seemed to be a smaller gathering all together. Ruthanne and I decided that this was more of a “block party” affair, since everyone seemed more relaxed and there was significantly less to-do: people got there later, the food was already ‘individually’ packaged, and there were NO pigs to slaughter! Also, there was catchy music and dancing, and lots of sitting around with sakau. Needless to say, we all had a great time.

Coming Up This Week:
Language Proficiency Interview on Thursday
Swear-In (with a traditional dance performed by the Trainee-Volunteers) on Friday
Meet & move in with my new family immediately after Swear-In.