Day 11

January 10, 2010

 

Day 11:

 

            I’d like to start off this entry by shouting out Mrs. Summerville, Derek’s mother, who apparently is an avid reader of my blog and uses it to keep tabs on Derek. I’ll let you know if he does anything out of line Mrs. Summerville!!

            Today was a relaxing day for me. I woke up later than usual, around 9a. I boiled some water for oatmeal and tea and then went to the porch for breakfast with Anna, Ben and Ally. They were working on their lesson plans and grading papers, so, feeling somewhat guilty, I started working on my lesson plan for tomorrow and how I was going to get my kids to understand the difference between subject, verbs and prepositions. I ended up looking through the English-Marshallese dictionary and giving myself a mini-linguistics lesson.

            Eric left around 10:30 to go to Tide Table to take part in the monthly yacht race. Since he had experience in sailing, he was able to walk-on to a boat. I took a taxi with him but was dropped off at the Laundromat. Edie had left for the resort earlier in the morning and Ally and Ben were going to meet her there before shopping for the beginning of the week. I decided to walk with them. It’s a good 40+ minute walk but it was nice and it seems much shorter with company. All along the way children screamed my name and tried to get my attention.

            My name seems to have spread like wildfire throughout the island. Everywhere I go now, taxi drivers, random kids, ladies at the checkout counter, everyone seems to know my name. So now, where ever I go, I seem to encounter members of my fan club. It’s quite flattering, and humbling but it’s also somewhat annoying. In one sense, I’d like to just blend in and be another American on this island but on the other hand, and I think I’ve said this before, my sphere of influences is large here and that makes for a huge opportunity to change lives.

            Anyway, I walked to pick up my laundry. Which, by the way, they wash, dry and fold for three bucks. Score!! I then returned to NTA (National Telecommunication Association) to use a little internet. I was lucky enough to find a connection good enough to upload pictures so I put a few pictures on my Facebook page. One of those pictures, I absolutely love, it’s now my profile picture, feel free to check that out. It’s a picture that Eric took of me at sunrise. The lighting is gorgeous and it accentuates the detail of the clouds in front of the rising sun. And then there I am, squatting in the foreground, with a silhouette of my body. It’s a great picture, check it out!!

            After that, I came back to the apartment and worked a little more on lesson planning, a little more Tetris and watched American Pie: Book of Love. Terrible plot line but it’s got some pretty hilarious parts in it. I then realized that I hadn’t taken a nap all week and that it was time for me to get some extra sleep. Around 4:45 I took a nap until about 6:30. When I woke up everyone but Peter was back at the apartment and the food that Ben and Anna were preparing was nearly finished. They made a special tomato soup, a spicy French toast and we reheated some chicken from the barbecue yesterday.

            After dinner we discussed the final cast for the play and Professor Garrod went over my article again. Professor decided that I needed a subtitle as well, at this point I felt like the article was no longer mine because there was input from so many other people that I didn’t even care what he put as the title or subtitle. He could send it in with Andrew Garrod on the by-line for all I care at this point. After reviewing the pictures from the auditions again and AGAIN looking at my article, I was free to sleep. Eric cued up the Shallow Waters episode of Planet Earth and then we all went to sleep. One week of school down, the first weekend out of the way and here we go into Week 2. Until next time, barloeeok from Majuro!