Bridesmaids

Term two is officially over, meaning I’ve survived half the school year! That’s crazy. I’m almost at 9 months in Samoa and it does not seem possible. It somehow turned out to be a busy term, so this will be a rather long post. It’s going against everything I believe in blog posts because I would never sit and read this long of a post, but here we go anyways. Thanks for reading!

School had some exciting moments this term. The U.S. Embassy contacted me and arranged to bring the dance group iLuminate to visit! They came in third place on America’s Got Talent. They’re the group who dances in the dark with lights on their costumes. Anywho, it was awesome! They came and performed at my school and then my students got to teach them some Samoan dances. It was one of those surreal moments seeing two cultures come together through dance.

My students dancing with iLuminate!

I was also busy this term when I got invited to work with the Ministry of Education, Sports, and Culture (MESC). It’s an honor to be attending meetings with the directors of education for an entire country! MESC is bringing six of us volunteers on board to do professional development. We’ll be training teachers on literacy and numeracy along with creating assessments to be used with both. It’s pretty crazy to think that I’m involved in creating a math assessment for an entire country!! I’ve been missing my math, so this is the perfect cure.

MESC professional development team.

More exciting school news came when I attended a training with SolarSPELL. Professor Laura Hosman and Bruce Baikie flew all the way to Samoa with solar paneled digital libraries and tablets for all Peace Corps Group 87 volunteers. This library requires no Internet connection or electricity! It is pre-programed with all different resources targeted for developing countries, and more specifically, Samoa! There are teaching resources for every subject as well as Wikipedia and a Medical Dictionary. I am amazed at how much time and energy was put into designing the contents and hand-building each SolarSPELL that was brought to Samoa! I’ve already begun professional developments in my school to train my teachers how to use it and I’m excited to see what the rest of the year will bring.

Thanks Dr. Hosman!!

Along with school life, my family life was also quite busy recently. My host cousin got married!! I was able to attend a wedding with my Sa’anapu family during training, but it wasn’t a real Samoan wedding because the bride was from New Zealand. This time I got the full experience! The pre and post wedding ceremonies were all held on my family compound, so we had lots of weeding and painting to do to prepare! My Kingsley Pines professional painting skills came in handy as I painted every chair and bench in our four family houses. I’ve never seen more fine mats, pigs, cows, and corned beef than I did the week of the wedding, and the ceremony hadn’t even happened yet! To my surprise, I was chosen as a bridesmaid, which was such an honor. Of course, I had no clue what this meant. The night before the wedding was the dress rehearsal, where my partner and I perfected our walk down the aisle. He had to kneel and I had to put beads on his head! Don’t worry, I crushed it. At around midnight I saw my dress for the first time and had my dress fitting. I’m not sure what we would have done if it didn’t fit since the wedding was 8 hours away, but all worked out. I guess it’s tradition to not sleep before the wedding because that night we also learned four new dances to be performed. Needless to say, I was quite exhausted when the actual wedding came around. I seemed to do everything right and as far as I can tell my host cousin got married. Of course I didn’t understand much, so it’s still unclear. After the church ceremony, there was lots of food, cake, and dancing. All in all, it was a very fun experience and I’m super happy I was able to be part of it! 

All pink everything!!

To finish off this massive blog post, I also had family visitors!!! My real, American cousin came to Samoa with her husband and four kids. Her husband is Samoan, so that just happened to work out in my favor. I went to stay on their family compound in Lotofaga, Upolu and then they were able to come to Sili! My host family was ecstatic and we had a dance night where my real family showed Hawaiian dances and my host family showed Samoan dances. It was another neat instance of two cultures coming together through dance! Having family visitors is so incredible – thank you, Maile!

My American/Samoan visitors!

In other news, I'm off to New Zealand! Fā Sāmoa.