Part I - Always in my heart

My cool roommates

This is the first installment of what I’d like to call the ‘Busiest week of the year thus far.’ It so happened that we all had the brilliant idea to have all the programs in February… we have the High School Valentine’s Banquet last Saturday night, Math/Science Fair on Thursday, and then Sport’s Day on Friday. BUT! On the plus side, it’s all over now, so I can finally think about Graduation plans again. Anyways, here’s Part 1: Our Valentine’s Day Banquet.

Some of the lovely high schoolers

The banquet was on Valentine’s Day - aww, so sweet. The theme was “Always in my heart” and there were love songs in the air and hearts and balloons hanging from the ceiling at the restaurant we held the banquet at. In the typical island fashion, when I said it was supposed to start at 6:00, that means ‘start getting ready to leave at 6:00’, so we didn't make it there until 7:30 or so. Thankfully, the rest of the students also run on island time,  and there were only a few students that beat us there. The evening went well, and I was constantly running around trying to make sure this were going smoothly and that everybody had food. We brought cupcakes and toppings, (Jerom tried to walk away with the whole tube of chocolate frosting twice), and we made a photo booth with various props that was a huge hit. After eating we managed to wrangle up the kids together for some games. It can take a while to get these kids excited about something other than taking selfies and just chilling with their tunes, but when they’re finally into it, there is no calming them down – even if it is just a Valentine’s Day version of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey…

Minako

The first game we played was something called Shoe Story, which is when one partner goes out into the hall and the other partner puts one shoe in the middle of the room. When I yell “Go!” the partners in the hall had to rush back into the room, find their partner’s shoe, and put it on them. The last pair finished would have to do a quick dance just for funsies. Before the game started, one of the sophomores, Josh, asked me if any of the games would be embarrassing, and I told him that I doubted it, and the he would be fine. Unfortunately he and Minako where the last pair finished, and the rest of the students started whooping and hollering for them to go dance… and he was out the door and halfway down the stairs when I caught up to him. But since it wouldn’t be good for him to not show up to school on Monday, we quickly found a replacement – Felipe, our newest teacher who had just arrived the day before. He took Minako for a quick spin around the room, and our shy student was saved. The evening ended off with us announcing all the various titles and such that the students had won, and there were way more than I imagined there being. We had the typical King and Queen, and then a bunch more, like Face of the Night, Prince, Princess, Best in Gown, and a few others.

Defitson

Class of 2015!

On a different subject, I've found that I don't really enjoy working in groups sometimes, especially if I have to be the leader. The whole delegating tasks to people is something that I need to work on. I get caught up in everything that needs to be done and get so stressed that I forget that I can ask people to help me, and I can forget to inform people about what is going on. When things need to happen there is a big part of me that wants to do everything myself, because I’m scared that it won’t get done otherwise or that I personally won’t like how it was done (which is silly); and then there is the part of me that just wants to be the group member who just glues the information on the poster and then pays for the celebratory ice-cream. But I’m learning to be a little more trusting and am practicing the art of accepting it when things aren’t done my way. Life can be difficult in Chuuk, and teaching with so few materials is rough, but I know that being in Chuuk is equipping me for the rest of my life, and that’s worth any difficulty.