Quick Update: What's going on November 2019

Lately I've been busy at site, and instead of delving into a massive blog post about it, I'll just throw some bullet-pointed things here to fill you in on what's happening!



We're coming to a close on term three at school, the final term of the year. School closing and Year 8 graduation is taking place later this month on November 27th. With only a few weeks left in the school year, per usual I'm stressed but busy with lots to do before summer break starts in December.

• In October, I returned from my 1-month home leave. 
• I was welcomed back to the island with a massive hug from the headmaster's children/nephew, Marky, Nemo and Jameson. "It's been too long!" cried out Nemo. I arrived as it was getting dark, and when I shined my flashlight into the grass around my house, I saw two pairs of glowing eyes. I called out for my cats, Leikai and Makala, and they recognized my voice and galloped towards me. 
• Everyone was SO curious about my brother's wedding, so I made a little video summarizing my time home (including mundane things like grocery shopping or pumpkin picking) so they could see what it was like. They loved seeing pictures and video of Jenny & Eric's wedding, especially all the food (even if they didn't know what it was, it looked yummy to them!).
• I still pop into classes 2 & 3 doing daily phonics lessons with them for about 30 minutes each. Class 2 students are more difficult to work with than the kids I'm usually used to teaching (classes 4, 5 and 6), since the wee ones are just starting to learn Bislama (English begins in class 4), and their main spoken language is the local Nakanamanga.  Also, due to their age, it's a lot harder to hold their attention for a 30-minute activity. Despite all this, the kids are still fun to work with, and they enjoy all the phonics actions ("take out your bush knife and let's chop up this word!") with giggles and smiles.
• I've been working on a MASSIVE mural on the wall that was built last year as a gate for our school. 
• Having a blank canvas is great, and I love that it's pretty open what I do with it. 
• It's going slowly but steadily. I enjoy the creative outlet and a way to be somewhere where people come visit me (no one comes to me at my house, but the wall is on the road, so everyone walks by and says hello). 
• Everyone gives me compliments and I think its hilarious how everyone thinks I should be taking breaks all the time. Usually, on a Saturday, I'll work from 10am til sundown at 6 with no breaks. With music on my speaker and something to keep me non-stop busy, there's no motivation for breaks!
• It is both fun and exhausting. As a creative person, one of my frustrations is being motivated and having a project to do yet taking forever to complete it. I want a final product already! 
• I finished outlining today all the way to the end of one wall (it's longer than the other) but I still have to paint it (with assistance from students and teachers) and I need to do outlines. 
• The wall is both decorative and educational, and I can't wait to share pictures with you. It has maps, the alphabet, the solar system, the human body, shapes, colors, the history of the Vanuatu flag and its meaning, and more.
• Classes 6, 7 and 8 are rehearsing a TON for an end-of-year Carol Night that we'll be hosting as a school fundraiser. The handyman is busy building a stage on school grounds (completely from scratch, using tree stumps and timber), while Ms. Leilau, the class 3 teacher, is spearheading the event and busy teaching loads of songs and scene lines to the students. They've been rehearsing since April (!) so I have no doubt they'll do great. The big night is on Saturday, November 23.
• Last week was Halloween, which is my favorite holiday. Unfortunately, since the term has been packed with carol night rehearsals and lots of interruptions (more on that later), I didn't want to disturb with too many activities. Instead, I worked with the class 3 & 4 teachers since it was revision week leading up to exams. We did Halloween activities based on subjects the teachers told me they needed the students to study. 
• With class 3, we did time/clock stations, one of which was me writing a time and the students matched it on tiny analog clocks. The other station was the teacher showing a time on an analog clock and the students writing the digital time on a mini slate. The third station was unsupervised, and the students looked at pictures of zombies holding clocks (see? Halloween!) and had to write down the times on a piece of paper. 
• With class 4, we did English stations. The teacher did a card game in which there were sentences on cards and the students had to conjugate the verbs into past tense. I supervised a group with my favorite activity for reading comprehension: Students have a chart of pictures of "who, what, when and where" and I read a short story to them. They have to move a piece of coral onto the pictures that correspond to the story I just read. It's really fun and a super easy way to test their English listening skills and reading comprehension. Finally, one group was unsupervised with a worksheet I made with Halloween nouns they had to pluralize (werewolf becomes werewolves...) and an adjective matching activity. On the back there were Halloween word problems to practice their math skills.

• I had the entire school participate in a "count the corn" contest, in which I jammed as much candy corn as possible in two large jars, and students had to try and guess how many were inside for the chance to win the candy. Classes 1-4 competed for one, and Classes 5-8 competed for the other. Class 1 was precious in their guesses, with most of the class putting "100" and about 4 students not understanding instructions and writing "1234567890" on their slips of paper. For one of those students, I asked her which number she chose as her guess. She looked at me, the jar, the teacher, then me, then said, "four." 

• We ended the week with a Halloween Movie Night. The movie was "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween" and the kids came to the school grounds at night with jackets and mats to cozy up under the stars for the movie. I sold popcorn (made by a couple teachers), rice crispy treats, cookies and cake. Popcorn is sold at 20vt and all the treats range from 50-100vt. We made about 6500vt, which is decent enough! I brought sprinkles from the states just for the occasion, and I saw students picking them off and tossing them on the ground; they'd never seen shaped sprinkles before and assumed they were plastic or inedible!
• I sewed up a skirt with some alphabet fabric I brought back from the states, and everyone has complimented me so much on it and are amazed that I did it by hand and without a pattern or being a professional. I promise them it's all just lots of measuring and math and looking at a skirt I already have and trying my best to replicate it. I think I might do a sewing workshop with the mama's club with whom I do my nutrition workshops.  We'll see.
• Just a few days before I returned from the states, there was a tragic boat accident with people from my island. One night, a captain was drunk and turned around and came full speed at another boat, scraping against it and instantly killing a passenger, who was struck by the boat. They looked around for his body but couldn't find it, despite the fact that he had been wearing a bright orange construction vest. 
• The following days, including a few upon my return, were spent with boats from all four nearby islands, searching the waters looking for the body. Nothing was found, and they had a burial with his flip-flops and backpack, which were the only things recovered from the searching. It was horrible, especially since the victim was only about 21 years old. 
• Two of his siblings are students at our school. School was cancelled for a couple days during the searches, despite the fact that only adults were going on the boats looking for the body.
• Days after the accident and even after the funeral, people are still talking about it and how possibly "black magic" came into play (an island version of voodoo). There's talk about how the boy was hanging around other boys that seemed to disappear on the wharf before he got into the boat, and they were all acting very strange on the bus ride from town. There was also the question of how his body so quickly disappeared under the water, and how they couldn't find him even with flashlights in the night. With things like this, I usually shrug my shoulders. Accidents happen, and I don't personally believe there was anything more to it.
• Thanksgiving is coming up, and I'm looking forward to my third annual celebration on the island wherein I make turkey day classics such as mashed potatoes and gravy or apple pie. I already bought some cranberry sauce in Vila for a whopping $9 for a single jar.
• With Christmas break quickly approaching, I am planning how I'll spend it. I think I'll have a couple other PCVs come visit me here on my island, and we'll do fun Christmas-y things like bake cookies. It'll be a fun and cheap way to celebrate.
• I also have been planning to make an advent calendar for my host family for the month of December using all my pill bottles (PC gives you an abundance of bottles, between vitamins, prescription meds, malaria prophylaxis, and all the antibiotics). I've spray painted them a uniform color and when I was back in the states, I got lots of tiny little goodies to fill them with so there's a fun surprise each day!
• Leikai, my older cat, is pregnant again! She had babies at the end of March (Makala was the only survivor) and appears to have her belly hanging low again. 
• Through having cats here in Vanuatu, I've learned so much about them. Her gestation period will only be 50-60 days, and when you can already see the huge belly, it means she is almost at the end. 
• I got Leikai from a woman in the village named Leikas, and Leikas has informed me that Leikai's mother has since disappeared (presumably dead) so she's seeking a new one. I told her that she's the first on the list for Leikai's newborns, and she'll get one after a month of Leikai's breastfeeding. With this timing, it'll probably be a Christmas gift! 
• I am anxiously awaiting their birth. I want little kittens around! Especially since I have  a love/hate relationship with Makala who can be a real bitch sometimes, haha.
• Currently, the animals hanging around my house are my cat Leikai, her daughter Makala, the neighbor's cat Minu (her owners are both out of town for several months so she basically lives at my house now), and occasionally Juju the dog, who comes and goes as he pleases, and who has lost a lot of weight in the last couple months. I honestly thought he would be dead by the time I returned from the states, but here he is, alive and kicking! Island pets are quite resilient creatures.

That's everything that comes to mind at the moment. I've been stressed but I am able to contain it on my planner and on the app Google Keep. Highly recommend that app for everyone, it's great for lists and notes and it's easy to keep it organized and searchable.