Inactive Shots from an Active Week

Its been pretty busy around these parts lately. We went from tropical storms to blazing heat, but the mornings and evenings are starting to become very mild and very enjoyable here.  We have been dragging our mat to sit in the back yard and watch the sun go down just to enjoy the amazing weather. This is a nice change for sure! Here's hoping you over there in Amelika start to get a little bit more sunshine and warmth in your life!

Things at work and in life are good. Half the time we feel content, happy and proud to be working in Tu'anuku. The other half we spend crying over the lack of turkey sandwiches, ice cream shops and Starbucks in our life. Its a delicate balance to say the least.

Ryan had a great experience working with the Tongan government and the Red Cross on Disaster Management Training. He was able to help Vava'u plan for disasters at the highest level of government (the Governor's Office) and the smallest level of government by working with individual village leaders. He was also asked by the Governor's Office to submit some DM proposals on their behalf to His Majesty's Government, which was exciting. Putting that MPA to use! Disaster Management has really emerged as a passion for Ryan and he hopes to continue making it cornerstone of his service with Peace Corps.

We leave for Fiji in less than two months and could not be more excited. Its been eight months said we've had a vacation and it will be nice to leave Tonga, if only for a week.

Last Sunday began faka'me in the Weslyan church. This is a month long celebration of the family unit. It started with a celebration of the children. We were so happy to be able to go to the celebration because many of our students were part of the services. The kids presented the Bible readings and lessons in the form of skits. It was really cool to see them do their thing and they were really happy we came. After the 4:00 church service, we attended a tea hosted by the congregation. It was really amazing. It was a cool night, and the hot tea, cakes, jelly sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, and cookies were incredible. Somehow I ended up leaving the event with pink frosting streaked all the way down my white puletaha. Weirdly enough, Ryan's white shirt emerged intact. Loser.

We returned from the wonderful event to a house that literally smelled like it was rotting. We figured our luck with the rat poison had run out and one had died in the roof. After having the door shut for a few hours, we were unable to breathe because of the awful stink in the house. Unsure of what to do as crawling into the creepy depths of our roof was NOT an option, I decided the only way to handle this situation was with the "sniff test." We stood on chairs and walked all around our house to see if we could find the source of the permeating smell. We finally narrowed it down to the area behind the fridge, but, seeing as how that wall was a single piece of drywall, we were confused. Ryan had the idea to move the fridge and dig around in the back of it. Bingo. He found the dead, rotting carcass of Rat #4. After bludgeoning Rat #3 on Monday night and having to dig Rat #4 covered in flies and maggots out of the fridge, I will no longer ever accuse my husband of being "girly." He has earned the full title of manly. :)

Not much else is new. Classes are going really well. We have our kids working in differentiated learning centers to try to help them have more autonomy in the classroom and build collaborative communication skills. This has been going really well. It is cool to see them interact with English in lots of different ways. We just benchmarked our class 5/6 kids and almost all of them have grown a full reading level! Exciting stuff. I also had all of the kids come to our home this weekend to participate in an English interview with me. These also went really well. Our students are really starting to try to use their English language outside the classroom to talk and engage with us. No words can describe how cool and awesome it is to do this work everyday.

My 16 year old friend Mele came to our house on Saturday to bake muffins with me. Somehow, she turned out with a pan of beautiful muffins made with fresh oranges that are plentiful in our village this time of year. Mine were small and a bit burnt. Mele thought that was funny :)  Ryan did not.

We had a nice visit with our Peace Corps Safety and Security Officer. She came to conduct a routine check of our standing in our village to make sure we were doing okay. It was fun to chat and hear word from the main island. She told us that ten new volunteers have accepted their invitations to serve in the next group of volunteers here in Tonga. We are excited to have 15 new PCVs join us in the field this September.

That's about it here. We wish we had some  cool pictures to share, but since we didn't think you wanted to see our dead rotting rat, we don't have much new to show you. But here are some "action shots" from life in the fast lane:

Ryan has let Lucky breach the perimeter. Ryan often smells as bad as the dog. Man, am I one lucky girl or what?

We found this bug in our house one night, It was truly the biggest bug I have ever seen. The picture does not it justice. No one has yet been able to tell us what this evil, mutant moth is and no one will, because I made Ryan kill it.

Our class 5/6 kids finished their American pen pal letters this week. I was so excited to see them taking risks and straying from just copying the template. This was one of my favorite in the"strong voice category." Or, maybe one for the "most inappropriate pen pal closing" category. 

     

Finally, Ryan and I started a night class with our class 6 kids. Getting Ryan to stay at school until 6:30 one night was feat enough. After a crazed night of trying to teach the kids how to make paper airplanes and having them test fly them, Ryan may never come back. Who doesn't love mobs of kids screaming and throwing airplanes?