day 30

January 29, 2010

 

Day 30:

 

            We still don’t have hot water in our trailer. There are many amenities that I can live without and hot water is probably one of them, but it is certainly the last one I would willingly give up. We got in touch with Cassiano though, and he came this morning to check out a few problems. The sink in the kitchen leaked, he fixed that; the ceiling in the bathroom was leaking, he fixed that; and the oven wasn’t working, he fixed that too. So for the most part, regardless of the fact that it took us a month to move in here, Cassiano’s been on the ball. I stayed behind and waited for him to get here before going to school.

            In school we finished up our stories. I’d say about half of the kids are done and so I have to go to Copy Masters tomorrow to buy paper and markers for them. I had to leave fourth period a half hour early because there was a gospel choir concert down at the Seven Day Adventists School. It rained ALL day. I called myself being prepared but quickly found out why no Marshallese use umbrellas. I opened it up right outside the high school on my walk to the Middle School and immediately the wind disrespected the hell out of my umbrella and inverted it completely. I snapped it back but noticed that one of the rods was bent. I walked across the courtyard with no umbrella and –not that the umbrella would have prevented this but – my ankles and the cuffs of my pants were soaked up to about mid-shin and I did my best to avoid the big puddles.

            The concert went great. The bus nearly left me as I ran over from the middle school. One of the girls saw me and stopped the driver though. Once we got there the drums were already set up and such so Eric and I warmed up as we waited for the concert to begin. Samifua had the kids warm up in the pews for a bit and then they all took the stage. This had to be the easiest crowd ever! The first two songs were acapella and they really were pretty. I hadn’t heard either of them being that Samifua never asked Eric or I to come practice with them. So that was nice. The next song was “Soon and Very Soon”. When the second verse came in and I started playing the drums the kids went crazy! It was like they’d never heard live drums before. They probably haven’t. The energy was great though, I think everyone fed off of the energy. The next song was “We Exalt Thee”. As soon as Florence took the microphone and started singing, the kids screamed! It was like they had seen her on TV before or something. Eric and I were cracking up the whole time. Overall, the concert was great. The energy was amazing, the choir sounded good., the accompaniment was solid and we got out of school for it! After the concert I came back to the trailer and did some work before falling asleep for a nap before dinner.

            I woke up around five and decided to go check out the end of play rehearsal. When I got there Derek and Edie looked like they were going to die. They were all making hand gestures suggesting that they were on the edge! Derek got up and met me at the door before I got comfortably in the room. “What’s going on man?” I asked him with genuine concern. “I just needed a reason to get out of there!” He responded. I started laughing, “Is it that bad?” He then went on to explain how ineffective the rehearsal was because so much of the cast was inactive. We walked back in together and I sat next to Edie who had very similar things to say. Being that the mood was SO dead, I decided to add some comic relief. So I made a few jokes under my breath that some of the kids heard; picked with some of them; and just tried to liven up the crowd a little bit. I was there about a half hour before practice was over.

            After that a few of us decided to walk to the resort for our Friday dinner out. Myself, Edie, Anna, Ally started South towards the resort. About 20 minutes in, we met up with Eric who was walking back from the movie theatre where he had taken his whole class to see a Marshallese film that debuted the night before. The whole walk Edie and I talked about racial inequality at Dartmouth. I hadn’t previously realized it but Edie is a history major with an emphasis on minority inequality issues in America. It was really interesting talking to her about it because she was raised in Britain and so she never had to deal with these issues and comes at it from a completely biased perspective. She said she didn’t even know many of these issues and distinctions existed until she took Professor Garrod’s ED 20 class freshmen fall. She told me that she had devised a plan for Dartmouth that would include minority groups as well as majority organizations and would highlight sensitivity issues on campus. I thought this would be a great thing for NAACP to get involved with so we talked about ways in which we could implement changes in NAACP and agreed to meet with deans and faculty in the spring to make these changes happen.

            At dinner I got the Mexican buffet and got to 7 tacos before we left. We got there right before happy hour ended also so I got a half priced drink that I enjoyed with the group. After dinner, we headed back to the trailer but not before picking up some beverages for our house warming party. Haha. We had some more drinks at the girls trailer while the productive ones did work in the boys trailer. It was so funny! I had never drank with any of those people before and it was very fun to see them not in teacher mode. We played a couple games, watched a couple episodes of TV shows and before we knew it, it was 4:00 a.m.