My First ENGLISH DAY!

The last few weeks have gone by ridiculously fast and have been some of the most stressful/exciting yet during my time in Samoa.  About two weeks ago, my principal approached me and said that that week was the last one for me to teach my lessons. He told me I was to start preparing the English Day for the school and all of the village and it would take place in three weeks (the last week of school in term 1).  I was: a) totally shocked he wanted me to stop teaching, because hello, I’m here to teach,  b) super worried what I was going to do for three weeks while I’m “preparing English day” because seriously, how long could that take? And c) feeling really out of the loop because I have never heard of English day before.  I guess it’s not a very common thing when you live in an English speaking country. So I did my last two lessons, feeling really sad that those would be the last days with my students for the next month.  I’m still feeling really worried that they are going to forget everything we learned. Oh, and then I came down with laryngitis.  Which was mostly just annoying because I couldn’t talk for two days and it was accompanied by this nasty cough/runny nose type of deal….which has lingered and I’m convinced is never going to go away. 

So after I rested for a long weekend and asked a lady from the Peace Corps office to explain “English Day” to me, I started the preparations.  For those of you who don’t know what English  Day should include, let me tell you.  All years (classes) should prepare a song with dance moves, obviously! It’s Samoa! The upper levels (years 6, 7, 8) should prepare a play.  There should poetry, so I made that a poetry contest.  And then there should be advertisements. 

So we will start the day like normal, with our morning devotional/prayer service.  But on this day, it will be done in English.  The kids will do a song in english, read an english scripture, and say a prayer in English.  Then I will give the welcome speech, which ironically enough, is supposed to be in Samoan.  Funny that I’m the one giving it, especially since it’s ENGLISH DAY.  But whatever.  So I’ll give this welcome speech.  And then all of the kids will perform their songs, skits, advertisements, poems, etc.  I’m going to show a couple videos on the projector just because I think the people will like it.  And then we have a student giving the closing remarks in English and that’s it! It has taken me literally two weeks to finalize the program because there have been so many changes, but I think we finally got it! 

I had to write the plays for the students, which anyone who knows me and my creativity skills is laughing right now.  Luckily the topic that we chose is “God is Good” so all the skits are taken from bible stories, which made writing them a lot easier!  One thing I love about Samoa is that we can have a theme about God and everyone things it’s fabulous.  So all the songs are Sunday school songs, too.  It’s cute. 

Preparing English Day has really helped me to continue my progress with my patience skills.  There was one day particularly where I was already having a bad morning and then came to school and had about five thousand things to do, most of which revolved around making copies and printing things.  The problem was that there was no paper and the principal (the only one with a key to the office where the paper is) didn’t come to school that morning.  So I had many teachers coming and asking me to make copies and coming and asking me where there song lyrics were, and every time I had to say “There is still no paper” I got a little bit more annoyed.  So after the morning tea, the principal finally came and I got the paper.  Well that just added to the amount of people coming to ask me where their stuff was, which added to my bad mood.  20 minutes later I finally delivered all of the copied songs to the teachers and as I was walking around visiting the different classes, I heard the sweet voices of the kids in year 4 singing “Jesus Loves Me.”  Which has to be the sweetest song to hear a child sing, because it’s so true and it’s so important for kids to know. I actually got teary eyed.  I just stopped walking and took a deep breath and said a little prayer.  I was reminded, YET AGAIN, this is why I am here.  I’m here for these kids. I’m here to try and show the love of God to them and I can’t do that when I’m a bad mood or when I have annoyed thoughts in my heart.  So since then, I have been writing advertisements, making up dance moves for kids (which is a real sight to see), making copies, typing papers, reading and correcting poems, and doing whatever other things need to be done to make this english day great and doing it with a much better attitude.  I am really excited for it! The kids have been working so hard and I feel bad because I feel like they get their excited, happy spirits beat out of them when they make a mistake and it’s hard for me to watch that but they somehow manage to get back up there and try again.  I love them!

A few funny side notes:  My principal told me if the English Day is good the village will stop gossiping about me and my boyfriend.  (this is after he already told me that I should break up with him because he heard gossip about him).  He said maybe I should I write a poem and read it to the village. I asked my peace corps friends for their thoughts on that, Zach replied the following:  Roses are red, Violets are blue. Don’t gossip about me, or I’ll cut you.  I’m contemplating on sticking it in right between the skit on Daniel and the Lion’s Den and “He’s got the Whole World in His Hands.”  We’ll see.

A lot of my kids can’t seem to remember the correct response to “How are you?” But have no problems remembering every word to the “Lazy Song” by Bruno Mars.  “Today I don’t feel like doing anything….”  I think it’s kind of appropriate for Samoa. 

I got attacked by six (not exaggerating) on my jog a couple weeks ago.  I had to scream and throw rocks to get them to leave me alone, that and the fact the owner came out of his house.  That helped too. 

I got a package from my mom with like six new shirts in it,  I was more excited about than I am when I go to the mall and actually have money.  I basically just doubled my wardrobe!