Sunday, November 21, 2010

Hello, Yeah, It’s been a While

The last week has been busy. Time has sped up to a fever pitch, and keeping up with everything seems impossible. Several times this week I’ve felt like I briefly stopped paying attention to the calendar, and without my knowing, two days had past. Now that exams are over, school has become far more casual, and the rest of the day is spent either preparing to go back to The States, or finding new ways to remain in denial about going back to The States. Either way, the blog has been put on the backburner, and I apologize. The following is a brief re-cap of the week:
    Monday, 15 November
    Teachers start turning in their marks to me to be compiled by my fancy Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. It’s becoming an increasing problem that I have not taught anyone to use said spreadsheet. At 5:30 p.m. I meet up with a bunch of the 81s who’ve gathered to see Erin and Chris to the airport. We (i.e. Me, Koa, Dan, AJ, Blakey, K8, Erin, Chris) take a taxi van to pick up Chris’s cat, and then we all head to the airport. It takes Chris about an hour to sort out registering her cat as cargo. It provides a nice preview for checking Scout. Blakey and Dan sleepover at my house.

    Tuesday, 16 November
    More compiling marks at school. Blakey and Dan are still at my house when I’m finished, so the three of us walk to Pinati’s for lunch. I spend the afternoon napping. Dan comes over for dinner, which consists of uncooked toast (i.e. bread) and over-medium eggs. Dan falls asleep in the middle of “Rain Man” while I finish marking my science exams. I finish marking around 11:30 p.m. and proceed to watch 5 hour-long episodes of “Six Feet Under”. An important character disappeared, and it took 5 hours to resolve this. I couldn’t turn it off.

    Wednesday, 17 November
    I show up at school briefly to hand out print-outs of compiled marks, and collect a few more mark sheets from teachers. I sneak out to attend the Avanoa Tutusa Health Fair at the National University of Samoa’s gymnasium. Jordan and I end up leading aerobics classes for two hours. I’m all about the cardio-kickboxing. Later in the evening, a bunch of us go out to dinner and drinks with Kaelin’s friends who are visiting from America. My camera disappears. Sad.

    Thursday, 18 November
    Teachers become increasingly annoyed with me as I am the keeper of the marks and I show up late. I can’t help but cop to being ka’a. I rent a car for a day so I can move some stuff out of my house. Most of my books and DVDs go to the Peace Corps office, and I have $35.60 worth of glass bottles to return to Apia Bottling Company. After running errands I take the rental car to the south side of the island and hang out with my host family in the training village. No photos since my camera disappeared Wednesday.

    Friday, 19 November
    I told my school the day before that I would be late on Friday. It takes a while to get from one side of the island to the other, and I roll in around 11:30 a.m. School has essentially finished for the day at this point, but my vice pule wants print-outs of all the compiled marks. This takes an obnoxiously long time because besides me and the vice pule, the secretary and the librarian get involved, and there are way too many cooks in the kitchen. I return the rental car and head to the Peace Corps office where the 83s are in a state of shock over visiting their permanent sites. After they head back to their host villages, a bunch of us head back to Blakey’s for dinner.

    Saturday, 20 November
    Saturday morning involved a heated exchange between me and the Samoan Port Authority. I probably shouldn’t get into details in this forum, but I will say that all ended happily, and there was an incredibly fancy lunch once the situation was resolved. I spent the rest of the day napping and accidentally watching a bunch of “Six Feet Under” episodes out of order.

    Sunday, 21 November
    Blakey is housesitting this weekend, so I have come up the mountain to watch TV and mooch hi-speed Internet off the hotel next door. Although can it really be considered mooching if I had to pay for my log-in? My conscience is clean.
It’s true. If I had budgeted my time better, I probably could have posted this week. But time management is not one of my strong suits right now—not with time going by at warp speed.

I’m not clear on how the camera situation will resolve itself, but I hope to start uploading photos later this week. Maybe not til next Saturday. I hope you’re well.

1 comment:

Arseneault Family said...

okay, i admit, i have not been regularly keeping up with the blog...but how did i miss you getting a Tattoo?? When did THAT happen??