AmSam Funnies

First off, manuia le aso fanau to the best brother in the world! Connor is turning 21! Have an amazing birthday, brother. I sure do love and miss you!

AmSam is one funny place to live. While I am constantly smiling, I'm also constantly laughing. This island is making my heart happy in so many ways. Whether it's my students saying something in class, or it's Mavaega running out of his class to say hi to me when I walk by his school in the mornings (yes, he really does do that!), or it's the prices of food (yes, this makes me laugh because it's that SAD. Abby and I found a jar of Nutella for $12 at KS Mart the other day...and a pint of strawberries is usually around $9. BOO!) I just laugh a lot here! Let's look at some specific stories that really stand out:

1) A bird pooped on me on my run this afternoon. Super gross but super funny (at least to me!)

2) The skin on my neck and face is really sensitive. If I barely touch or scratch it, I turn bright red. At least once a day, one of my students will be staring at me with huge bug eyes. I'll ask what's wrong, and they'll go, "Miss, what happened to your neck?" The poor kids think something attacked me or scratched me. I laugh and explain to them that my skin is sensitive and that nothing is wrong. I guess I would be worried too if I had Polynesian skin and it never turned red! Now that I've explained it so many times, I've got a couple kids that will sigh and say, "she has sensitive skin!" HA.

3) Hearing Savage Garden on the 'aiga buses is always fun and super funny. Brings me back to slow dancing in sixth grade!

4) We played Jeopardy in class today to review everything that we've learned about The Great Depression (and to give them a break from reading/presenting). One of my categories was "Things you know about Quinn.'' I definitely stumped them. One of my questions asked "What animal did my parents replace me with when I moved here?" I had never mentioned Frederick the duck before, but I wanted to see what animals they would guess. The 3 most common guesses were dog, cat, and horse. I also got quail in almost every single class (this made me LOL because they actually remembered me trying to describe a quail from the very beginning of class when we played the picnic game...) When I eventually told them that Jan and Dale got a duck, they weren't that excited. They don't have ducks here! They don't understand how cool ducks are!

5) I finally got around to having my students guess how old I am. I don't know why I was so apprehensive about telling them my age? I finally gave in. When they would guess 23, a lot of my boys would all open their eyes really wide, sit up in their desks, and giggle to each other in Samoan when I told them that I am 23. BAHAHA. Little cheekies. While this was funny, it's also kind of helped - a lot of them have been better students. Some days I feel like I'm 20 years older than them, and other days I feel like we're all the same age. Most of them are 16 and 17 - not THAT much younger than me. Weird!

6) I've gone through almost 3 jars of peanut butter in the month and a half that I've lived in Leone. Addicted much? Geez.

7) I can't go a day without listening to a rap song. ME? Listen to scary/hardcore/what is going on RAP? It's true, I now love it. I gave in to peer pressure (or student pressure). I still get a kick out of the fact that any song that isn't rap makes a lot of my boy students cringe.

8) There's currently a gecko chilling on the wall in my bedroom. He's just a little baby! Have I mentioned the gecko's before? We've got quite a few that live in our house. They're cute little crawly things. At least they eat the bugs! Maybe they should start eating the spiders and cockroaches too...

9) I had my students play rock, paper, scissors in class today to decide which team would go first in Jeopardy. They played it, but they said rock, paper, scissors in Samoan. I thought it was hilarious because it sounded so different!

10) I'm still getting called Party Girl and Miss America, and now I'm "pounding" fists with just about every boy that walks by my classroom in between classes. It's just what we do.

Alright. I've got some lesson plans to write up and a ukulele to practice! Fa'afetai tele lava for being avid blog readers (and for all the comments! I'm glad my suggestions worked!)