First of all, a huge congratulations to Em & Cory! I cant believe the two of you are having a baby!!! So exciting. I cannot wait to meet him/her when we get home.
Also, we want to wish Grandma Cassie a very Happy 90th Birthday!
We recently learned that Lucky loves to swim. So we took him down to the beach despite the obvious issues with the ocean near Tu'anuku. We excitedly walked down there to find a dead pig floating in the water next to two sea snakes who were mating. We decided against going in and Abby forbade Lucky from eating the pig under threat of yanking his napping inside privileges. He got the message. The teacher death glare works on him too.
It has been exciting to crest the year of service mark. But, in so many ways, that has only made another year of service to go daunting as hell. So many things are a thousand times easier than when we first moved here. Mostly, we feel happy that Tonga finally feels like "home" in many senses of the word. We have settled into a life here. The day to day just....happens. Being a part of the community is so much less stressful than it used to be. We no longer wonder what lessons this experience will teach us as every week our "shit I learned in Tonga" list gets longer. Our students continue to remain a joy. In the last two weeks, they have taken 4 grueling, hour and a half long English tests. Right after the testing session, our principal has us work them though a debrief session to better help them understand what they need to do differently next time. And yet, they still smile and get excited when we come in the room. They still come to us at the end of the day and ask why we didn't have English after lunch. I tell them we had English for 4 hours in the morning. They look at me blankly and ask, "Soo... why didn't we have English after lunch?" They are troopers. I probably will never again have the pleasure of working with students with as much zeal as these amazing kids.
Ryan has also made a new buddy at school. His name is Soela. Soela is currently in class 2 and will be in our class 3 next year. He has had the privilege of coming to the library to retrieve things or have copies made. He has decided Ryan is the coolest person in the world. He runs up to Ryan, slaps him high five as hard as he can and tries to initiate Ryan in play fighting. Ryan always indulges him. I almost died laughing the other day when Soela returned to the library to haltingly yell to Ryan "Later DUUUUDE." So funny with his cute Tongan accent. This is now his greeting of choice with Ry. After every interaction, I look at Ryan with my mean teacher glare and suggest this may not be the best way to assimilate class 2 students to working with us. He pretends to ignore me. God help you if you ever chose to live and work and live and work and live and work with your spouse on a small island. Mo'oni.
Here are some of the younger kids. Soela is front and center on the right..
Many of you have inquired as to how we are REALLY doing here... all cute blog quips aside. Honestly, that is just about the toughest question in the whole world to answer right now. We really feel like life here is like the craziest roller coaster ride ever made. It is hard to describe, but our emotions can run from sky-high-on-top-of-the-world-Peace-Corps-is-the-most-amazing-experience-ever to missing America so desperately we feel like we can't possibly do this another day. Case in point. This morning I was trying to haul a bunch of buckets of water so Ry and I could bathe before our big day in town. I dropped an entire bucket in what I call "the creepy area" in the bathroom. This flood of water caused a bunch of rotting gecko corpses to surface from beneath the floor mat. The smell was unbelievable. Looking at the sewage that seemed to appear like magic and more water than I knew what to do with, I decided to take the mature route and bawl like a baby and scream at Ryan to get his lazy ass out of bed he never helps do anything! Yep. Priceless moment. 5 minutes later Ryan had promised to divorce me yet again, I was still hysterical, and the gecko corpses were being attacked by cockroaches. But, then I heard the laughing voice of Laea. He was on his morning bike ride to come by and make sure Ryan was up and out of bed. He LOVES giving Ryan a hard time for how late he sleeps. He cackles and yells things into the house until Ryan appears. If he really has just gotten Ryan up, he cackles loud enough to wake the roosters and rides his bike down the road yelling "Epi sai aupito. Ryan kovi!!" (Epi is very good, Ryan is bad.) This has become one of my favorite morning routines ever. So, after the appearance of Laea, I was laughing and back to thinking no day will ever begin like this ever again and I am so blessed to have this experience. Every moment of every day is something like that. It kind of makes you feel like you are on crazy pills and eventually everything will just even out. Nope. The roller coaster is ever alive and present.
Overall, Ryan and I feel so thankful and blessed to be able to be living this experience. We both agree nothing quite like this will ever exist for us again. So, we try to remember that in the moments of lows. This is supposed to be hard. The hard is what brings the deep introspection. The hard is what makes service, service. We feel like we never get to say thank you to all of you enough. Thank you for your emails, you letters, your text messages, and your care packages. You have no idea how those things effect us here. Without all of you, living in Tonga would be a lot more overwhelming and sad. So, from the bottom our hearts, thank you.
P.S.- To Alexe Mericle. In the last month, I have been forced to "borrow" the crap toilet paper from school because my husband has spent the t.p. money on phone cards. He always claims the company takes his money somehow when he only sends a text now and then. Yet, whenever I ask to see his phone, his text inbox and outbox is cleared. Suspicious, no? This type of shenanigan will not fly in New Zealand my friend. You owe me 3 rolls of t.p. Charmin. Extra Soft. Make it happen.
Here are some pictures from our visit from Michael (a representative from the Tessa Horan Foundation). They are sort of like class pictrues.... Tonga style :)
Class 5 and 6:
:
Class 3 and 4
Class 1 and 2:
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