Ready, Set, Action

Well, it is already the end of another week. This week was a tougher one as Saturday was the day our two friends in Denver tied the not. God decided to give them the gift of 11 inches of snow for the big day. From what we heard, it just made everything that much more beautiful. They are currently in Antigua on their honeymoon. We are so happy for them. Huge Congrats again Derrick and Krista!

This was also the weekend our new nephew Shane Pavelko was baptized. Congratulations Katie and Eric! I am anxiously awaiting new pictures from the weekend.

We had our first Peace Corps site evaluation this week. Two members of the staff came to observe us teach and talk about our work in the village. Our principal said some very nice things and we were so happy to hear that he is happy with our work. Peace Corps is just happy Ryan and I are working well together and haven't killed each other yet. Evidently, there was some concern about the two of us teaching together at such a small school. But, they were excited to see how it all was going and told us that our principal, Tevita, requested that he only get married couples from now on. Our apologies to the future couple who takes our place :)

The only other happening this week was with the damn rats. On a particularly muggy night, Ryan and I decided to take refuge in our bed under the mosquito net to get away from the hoards of mosquitos in the house. Ryan was happy as a clam as he is still neck deep in the Game of Thrones series (still top of the shit list Flood). After about 40 minutes of reading, Ryan and I were disturbed by a rat falling off the window beam onto our heads. As you can imagine, we freaked out. Thankfully, the rat did not fall into bed with us as we were protected by the mosquito net. It didn't change the fact that a rat dropped on our HEADS! The screaming was totally validated in my opinion. Two nights before this, Ryan and I awoke to the rats chewing through the plastic and eating the poison we had purchased to try to get rid of them. We were hoping this meant they were now dead and not coming back.  The package reads "zero tolerance." This seems to not be the case. Rentokil has now moved to #2 on my shit list. God I hate rats.

That's about all from Tonga. Ryan took some pictures of us in the classroom this week, so thought we would share some of them. Our kids are just so cool. They truly are the highlight of every day. Hope you all had a wonderful, rat-free week :)

Here is our class 3/4

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And class 5/6.

  

Even in Tonga, I still found a way to make kids read books :) 

        

 

This is the stray dog who has decided to stay in our yard. We named him Lucky because he is the healthiest (fattest) dog we have seen in the village and no other dogs try to fight him.

 

   

 

 

Slow Night, So Long

Hey everyone,

Its been a nice slow week here in Vava'u. The weather has been beautiful. Again our thoughts are turned back to America, where our good friends Derrick and Krista will be married this Saturday in Denver. We are heartbroken not to be there.

Since there is nothing new to report, we thought we would address some comments we received regarding our library. There is no doubt our school's library is incredibly nice and we are super lucky to have such a great space. We are very thankful for it. Unfortunately, this beautiful structure was born out of a tragedy involving our village and the Peace Corps. In 2006, the first PCV to serve in our village was killed by a shark in the Port of Refuge, which is the body of water that sits in our backyard. It was a terrible tragedy for the kingdom, the island of Vava'u and most of all, for our village. However, her family and friends came together to build an incredible library for our students which they are still using today.

Abby and I certainly feel a kinship to Tessa, who lived in our house and held the same job as us. We are happy that the library honors her memory.

Here are a couple of articles about the incident:

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/former-colorado-student-dies-in-tonga-shark-attack

http://www.tonganz.net/home/foundation-continues-tessa-horans-work-in-tonga/

Sports Day

Last Friday Ryan and I had the opportunity to attend Sports Day with our students. Admittedly, we thought sports day would not be anything special. We expected it to be disorganized and frustrating. How wrong we were. Our principal picked us up early that morning. Our students were decked out in anything they could find to wear with white and royal blue (our school colors). They were more excited than even seems possible. We sang all the way to the event field. Ryan and I couldn't believe how awesome the field looked. Large tents were set up for each of the four schools participating in the event. The lawn had been mowed into distinct lanes for races. 

We helped the kids get organized and ready for the day's events. As soon as we lined up, we could see how nervous the kids were. Ryan started dancing and slapping high fives with the kids to help them relax a bit. Watching opening ceremonies, Ryan and I quickly saw that our wonderful little school were the underdogs of the day. We were by far the smallest school with the fewest resources. All the other teams had uniforms and banners. Our team had white people. Ryan and I spent the whole morning cheering as loud as we could for each student competing in each event. Luckily, our tent was right near the finish line stretch, so kids could hear us loud and clear. Pretty soon, the whole team was into cheering. We quickly became the loudest team. It was so neat to see our students work as such a team. Older kids would pull younger kids aside to give them a little inspiration and hold their hands when they cried because they lost. We were a unit, singlehandedly taking on the larger teams. Soon, we began to overtake events. We dominated hurdles and field events. Soon, parents also started cheering for the kids. This was a turning point in the day. The kids glowed in the praise offered up by parents. The day became all about supporting kids to do their best.

Our entire village came to the day's event. We got to spend time playing with our students, chatting with women, and conversing with the men. At lunchtime, many mothers thanked us profusely for coming and helping their kids feel so successful. It was the first time we were at a whole community event and just really got to be ourselves and enjoy without over thinking things. We really felt like a part of the community.

After the finals, Ryan and I strapped on our back-packs to prepare for the long walk to town. We were meeting our friends there to bring them back to our village. When the women asked what we were doing and we had told them, they quickly had a town pow-wow. One minute later a woman came forward and told us she was taking us to town. It was such a wonderful treat. We sent them on their way with a couple of cold cokes and all was well in the world :)

Here are a bunch of pictures from the day!

Getting ready for the day.

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Like all social events, men and women are seperate. The men sat behind our team tent, and the women under. Since Ryan and I are both teachers, we were told it was okay to be together with the kids.

  

Having a wicked awesome time under the tent.

  

  

  

Ryan calls our principal Tevita "the happy warrior." He is such an amazing man. Every day Ryan and I feel so happy to work with this man. Here he is giving the kids some encouragement before the finals round.

And finally, here is Ryan with his new girlfriend. Her name is Sela. She is in our church family. It has taken her about 6 months to get used to us, but her and Ryan are now fast friends. Both now routinely get scolded at church for playing around while the priest is talking. Ryan is a wonderful influence on the youth here :)

 

School Daze

Well, after a week of nothing but rain, we were blessed with a week of full sun. It was so wonderful to enjoy the sun again and use it to try to rid many of our possessions of mold. It was a pretty hot week here, but after such a long period of rain the sun is such a necessity. It was a pretty quiet week here, but here are some of the happenings: 

- Two of the teachers at our school had their 30th birthdays in the last few weeks. Ryan and I thought it pretty cool that all four of us at our school will turn 30 this school year. To commemorate such an occasion, I went all out making cookies. We are talking frosting and sprinkles and everything. Ummm.... did I mention it rained for 7 days straight? it never ceases to amaze me what we will come up with to occupy our time. Needless to say, the whole tray of cookies was finished in 5 minutes flat. So, I guess they liked them!

 

                                                                              

- Our students are beginning to make contact with a class in Lakefield (my hometown). Kelly Ackerman, the teacher with whom I am working, had her students write little intro paragraphs. So this week we had our kids do the same to email back. It was so cool to watch the kids take the assignment and run with it. They had such heated debates about how to make their sentences sound smarter for the kids in America. It was such a fun thing to see them engage with. I was completely lost for half of the class as the students debated in Tongan. Luckily, a few of the higher students would stop the discussion and tell the class to be quiet while they translated their conversation for me in English. They were so proud of their final products! I was so proud of them. I then had them try to type their emails. It was the first time they ever touched a computer! Two days of typing and two students finished :) But, again, it was neat to watch them problem solve and do something they had never done before. Ryan and I are inspired daily by watching these students push their own comfort zone. It helps us to do the same.

- The community asked if we would teach a night class for the youth who go to high schools in the city. We started on Monday and had 20 kids. Since Monday we have had  a steady stream of kids who come to our house every night for help with their English. Some students get off the bus, change, and come here to hang and work. Ryan and I may have had to eat our dinner in the kitchen one night because their were so many kids here we had no other choice. Ryan and I feel good about the fact that the community has found effective ways to utilize us here in the village. It's good to be busy.

- Sadly, three boys in our classes lost their father this week. He died of cancer. He was fairly young and left behind 4 boys and 2 girls. It is incredibly sad. On Thursday, the whole school went up to the putu, which is what funerals are called here in Tonga. We were able to pay our respects to the family which in Tonga involves kissing the forehead of the departed. One of the boys named Osika is especially close to Ryan. He seemed really comforted when Ryan stood by him and just put his hand on his shoulder. I was glad we got to be a part of it. After the funeral, we went back to the school to all eat lunch together. The kids were so cute. They politely shared lunches given to us by the funeral procession and just enjoyed being together. It was a nice ending to the week.

                                                     

- Well, that's about it. This weekend we have our good friends coming to stay with us. We have Peace Corps reports due soon so we decided to pow-wow together and get them done. It has been three weeks since we have seen them, so we are overjoyed that they are coming to stay. 

We hope you all are having a good week and that you too have warmer weather. Here is a picture from our classroom. We have taken this picture before, but I never get sick of looking up during a lesson and seeing this. Magical is the only way to describe it. Happy weekend!

 

                                     

 

Oh, and Ryan Patrick Flood, I know you are reading this and I want you to know that you are officially on my shit list. Why? Because you had the hairbrained idea to send my husband the 'Game of Thrones' series in your care package. He has now become a lump who constantly says, "Just one more page and I will get up and help you." I now have to haul my own toilet water in the dark, which I hate. I also had to stoop to hiding his book at school the other day so he would actually come to class with me and teach. #1 on the shit list Flood. I will deal with you 1 year and 7 months from now.

Finally, we want to congratulate our good friends Ted and Jess, who will be married this weekend in Iowa City. Ryan and Ted have been friends through high school, worked at Palmer's Deli together, through college where they both went into the School of Journalism and had plenty of adventures like traveling through the Sahara Desert in Morocco together. Ryan is pretty heartbroken not to be there this weekend. But, the silver lining is that Ted and Jess will be honeymooning in New Zealand next December and we have plans to meet them and celebrate their marriage with them there. We are so excited! Congratulations Ted and Jess!

Sai Ange

In Tongan, Sai Ange means "feeling better" which we certainly are. Abby has gotten medicine and we are both on the mend. You would have thought my dear wife learned her lesson during the great e. Coli scare of 2012. But nope, she still managed to eat a Tongan meal containing a parasite (I abstained) and paid the price. Did she ever pay the price.

This week featured our first tropical storm and it was a doozy. Without fail, Abby has told some of you how excited she was to live through her first storm in the tropics. As we found out this week, things are a smidgen more aggressive than she anticipated. The winds are crazy, the rain blows sideways, there is no school, no power, no running water and nothing to do but pray your meager house does not blow away. It was quite an episode!

Of course, most PCVs spent their time during the storm reading, watching movies on their computer and relaxing. Unfortunately, my time was spent with this person lesson planning. If you are thinking to yourself, there is no way Abby would force Ryan to look through every single one of those books for teaching ideas, then like me, you would be sorely mistaken.

 

One benefit of the storm was we had the chance to repay some community members who have helped us setup our lives here. Simi, the villager who oversees our house recently helped us re-build our tattered pig fence. So my little Betty Crocker made him two delicious-looking loaves of bread to enjoy with his family during the storm. The Tongans go nuts for fresh baked bread and Simi's family is of meager means and has no oven. So when I came hurdling through the rain with two fresh baked baked loaves, he was literally speechless with joy.

One big highlight for me was overhearing a comment from one of the high school girls who Abby tutors at night, named Mele. She is a good student who is always at our house seeing what is what.  I repeat, ALWAYS at our house. However, one of the most touching things I have heard is Mele talking about Abby. She told her father, a migrant farm worker in Australia who is returning to Tonga for the first time in 7 months next week, that the only thing she wanted him to bring her from Australia was candy she could give to her new friend Abby.

We are in right in the midst of school and have a lot of great things to look forward to. Our school will start competing in "Sports Days" against other schools in the western district every Friday. When its not raining, I have been using my exercise clubs to prepare our students for this. (You should see my homemade hurdles...pictures to come!) In addition, we have the Easter Holiday (never underestimate how big church holidays are in Tonga) and our first school break. After that we have a Peace Corps conference in Tonga* and in June we have our big trip to Fiji. We could not be more excited to spend a week on Fiji's Coral Coast relaxing and away from our Peace Corps duties.

That's all from here. If you happen to see the sun in America, please tell it to drop by Vava'u, as we sure do miss it! 

 *Fun fact, we never refer to Vava'u as "Tonga" (its a pride thing, folks). Tongatapou, the main island where we did our pre-service training is the only place called "Tonga" here in the Kingdom of Tonga. So when we refer to visiting Tonga, we mean going to the main island. Confusing, I know.

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I just had to add this picture of my husband to his post.  He did not notice me with the camera but I happen to think I captured a priceless moment. We have both been talking about how much we miss running water and showers more specifically. The good thing about a rain storm is that we have a beautiful working outdoor shower. The Tongans call this "kaukau uha" (bathe in the rain). Along with our neighbors we take our soap and take care of buisness. It is funny to look across the way and see our neighbors taking their turns using the natural runoff for showers as well. Gotta love all that rain. P.S... our fancy new pig fence is in the background. Take that you fat oinkers :)

 

The Tongan word for sick is...

...Puke. Yep, the Tongan word for sick is puke (pronounced poo-kay). 

We mention this because at the moment we are very puke. This week featured torrential downpours everyday (though it was still hot as ever) which got us, and the rest of our students deathly ill. Suffice to say we look forward to the sun forecasted this coming week.

Today (March 2nd) marks the 6 month mark since we've been in Tonga and the year and a half mark of our marriage. Its crazy to think both have lasted this long! So far Peace Corps has been the most challenging, frustrating, rewarding, enlightening and hottest experience of our lives. We could not have gone this far without the love of our parents, sisters, families and friends. To all who take the time to read about our little adventure, we sincerely thank-you. Writing about this stuff makes it that much more enjoyable!

We will see you again next week and hope to be feeling much better!

Love,

Ryan & Abby

P.S.~For a good read (and a shameless sibling plug) please click here, its written by my sister about the future of America's space program.  Cass is again speaking at DMACC's iWeek on the subject.

http://www.dmacc.edu/ci/magazine2013/welcome.html#/14/