Living the American Samoa dream

A lot has happened since I last wrote and that was only 5 days ago. Why not update you with bullet points?

·         I gave 3 solo lessons to groups of Samoan high school students, all of which went really well! The WT crew had 20 minutes for each lesson which was pretty tight to work with, but it gave us time to try out different activities. My overall topic was imagery and of the three, the students seemed to love the auditory lesson the most. I had them listen to a 2 minute Daft Punk song from the Tron soundtrack and they had to either draw or write what they thought was happening in the song. I had them share their ideas and almost all of them thought the song had to do with war, arcade games, and flashing bright lights…I haven’t seen Tron, but I know that the movie encompasses all three of those things. I was amazed and so were the students when I told them that the song was from a movie about arcade games.

·         WT ended our orientation with a bang at Sadies by the Sea, a nice little restaurant on the water. There’s nothing better than sipping pineapple juice and feeling the ocean breeze on your face. Following a “meh” breakfast, my friends and I stopped by the gas station that supposedly sells the best ice cream on island. Cookies and Cream ice cream before 11am? Works for me!

There are many perks when you live on a tropical island...especially the views.

Not a bad place to have breakfast!

·         Saturday was move out day! After a deep clean of Nu’uuli Vo-Tech High School, the Leone teachers and 3 of the teachers that will be moving to the outer islands boarded a school bus with all our suitcases and headed to our new home. Our house is wonderful! It looked so tiny from the outside, but it’s actually quite big. Pros of the house: we have an oven, a coffee pot, a toaster, a microwave, and a full size fridge/freezer, all of which are luxuries that I didn’t expect. My room is the biggest bedroom and I have a full size bed! Our house has two bathrooms, a cute little living room/dining room, and plenty of space to host guests…please come visit! Cons: I’ve killed plenty of spiders but luckily they were all small. Pictures to come soon…

·         School starts in ONE WEEK! AHH! I met my principal and the vice principals today – they are all extremely fun and are excited to have WTers at Leone. I saw my classroom (my very own classroom!) from afar. I am so anxious to get in there to clean and decorate! I will be teaching 5 American Literature classes, all for juniors. 3 are proficient level (their version of advanced) and 2 are mainstream. I’ll only have prep for one class, and I’ll just tweak the activities a bit for the mainstream classes. Hurray!

·         Adventures: There are lots of places to explore in Leone, one of which is Sliding Rock. My friend Cat and I went there this afternoon and had fun crawling on big rocks, peering into crystal clear tide pools, watching crabs climb around, and soaking up the most amazing view of the Pacific Ocean. I'll make sure to post pics in the next post.

This is going to be one amazing year and I am thrilled that I can spend so much time outside!

AmSam has its own CostCo. It's called Cost-U-Less but everyone calls it Cost-U-More. I was overwhelmed when I walked in...too much stuff!

Can you see the irony in this picture? 

 These are two of my WT friends: Courtney on the left and Heidi in the middle