Lisa's Apartment

We Turn Heads

Headed to Wuxi

I made it to Shanghai without any issues. Customs was a breeze. As I came out of the baggage claim area, I searched the crowd for Lisa. I couldn't find her anywhere. After pushing my bags back and forth in the arrivals terminal for a half hour, I finally saw my sister running up to me. I've missed her. Lisa helped me navigate all of my luggage from metro to taxi to train and then to her apartment on her scooter. I am really impressed with how much she already understands the language. At first I wondered if she was faking it to impress me. I would have done that to her. Getting all of my luggage from the train station to her apartment was quite an adventure in itself. She wanted to fit all of it on her scooter with us. I didn't think it was possible. I sent her with my first bag while I walked. Her apartment was fairly close. When she got back, I sat backwards on the scooter and pulled the suitcase behind me.

Kyle and Janelle

Sleep felt good that night. Lisa gave me her bed but I was only able to stay asleep till 4:30 AM. At 6:30 the building next door thought it was a good time for fireworks. Lisa told me they were welcoming me. Later that morning Lisa took me to the grocery store to stock up on food. We ran into Kyle and Janelle Kay at the grocery store. It was nice to see some more familiar faces.

Around 2:30 we began our trip to my school. We loaded up all of my gear on Lisa's scooter to head to the train. This time I had more confidence in the scooter and we took everything in one trip. Maybe I felt more confident because I saw someone with a cabinet the size of a baby grand piano on their 3-wheeled scooter. As we rode to the train station we turned so many heads.  I'm already getting used to being stared at. Maybe it's from growing up in Rwanda and always having locals trying to pet my red hair. Lisa went with me to my school in Wuxi (WOO-SHE) . This school is about a half hour out of the town of Wuxi, in the mountains. It makes a good first impression. Its definitely isolated but I'm sure I'll adjust. I woke up at 2 A.M this morning. Jet lag is a bummer. I teach my first class in about 3 hours. It's a geography block class from 8:30 to about ten with a ten minute break. Then my first day of teaching is done.

Packed.

You would think that I have it figured out by now. I don't. No matter how much I try to keep it to the bare minimal, I usually end up feeling way over packed. The airlines are very strict on your checked bags: L+W+H can't exceed 62" and they can't weigh more than 50lbs. The trick is to fit everything else in you carry-on (pictured left). I'm sitting in the San Francisco airport getting ready for my flight to Shanghai. My sister, Lisa, will be there to pick me up and take me to her place for the weekend. My trip started at 4 A.M. today and by the time it's over I will have been travelling for 22 hours. I'm starting to feel very excited about my time in China. As my good friend Zach told me "you shouldn't not be excited." In about two days I will begin teaching at the Wuxi Guanghua Private School. The plan now is to teach ESL, Geography, and P.E. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated. Keep me in your thoughts.

Scooters, Sailboats and Still loving it here.

It’s been a while since my first entry, I’m sorry. Things have really started to become a routine here. I’m trying to stop that. I mean it is nice to have a routine and to know what you are doing but I want to keep things new and interesting. That can be a challenge in the classroom but I am trying to come up with ideas. It’s easier to think of things outside the classroom to keep things interesting. We just had Parent-Teacher Conference day last thursday. It was really nice to meet the parents and get more of an insight on their kids. 

We had a four hour break between our PTC meetings so a few of the other guys and I decided to rent a couple of honda scooters to ride around on. They cost about $25 each for 24 hours. So we doubled up on the scooters and rode for about an hour. We had more meetings then we rode some more that night. I was riding with Barbie who is from Australia and he forgot what side of the road we drove on so he pulled out directly into traffic. Nothing was hurt except for his pride. We didn’t have school friday so Barbie, Jon and I got up around 6 in the morning to go for a ride around the island. Jon has a Honda XR 200 so we had a little bit of a hard time keeping up with him on the little scooters. About halfway around the Island Barbie got a flat so we filled it up again at a gas station. After riding for another 10 minutes his tire was flat again so we left the bike and he hopped on with Jon. The dogs here are insane. When they see us coming towards them on the bikes, they start running straight at us and try to bite our feet. You just have to lift up your feet and honk and try not to run over them. It keeps things exciting. I think they should rent out little whiffle ball bats to defend yourself with. My back tire would wobble when I went slow but it stopped wobbling the faster I went. We found out later that a bunch of the spokes were broken. If I had known that, I probably wouldn’t have gone 95 kph down some of those hills. We returned the scooters later that day and we didn’t have to pay full price because they didn’t do a thorough safety check on the scooters before they rented them to us. We had a bunch of fun and it didn’t cost us more than 5 bucks per person. 

Last Tuesday we went out on the boat to go surfing and snorkeling. The surf was really small but we had fun. When we were coming back in Bryce, the guy who was driving, noticed that the boat really wanted to turn to the left. So he decide to just let go of the steering while we were going and the boat did a doughnut and almost flipped. Everyone was a little ticked at him but oh well. We ended up seeing this neat 50 foot sail boat that had just come to port. An elderly couple were on it and we got into talking to them. They were from Seattle and they decided that they wanted to buy a boat and “Get out of Bablyon.”  They had never sailed before so they hired 4 guys to help them sail to Hawaii and then they sailed from Hawaii to Pohnpei on their own. Sounds like something my parents would love to do. 

Today is a pretty lazy Sabbath for me. I probably will just end up eating some of the curry I made last night then nap for a couple of hours on my hammock then maybe go for a little longboard ride around the school if it stops raining. I’m loving it here but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss it back home a little bit. 

Time has flown here in Pohnpei.

Well, I’ve been here for about a month and a half. Some of you may be interested in what I’ve been experiencing since I got here. Let me catch you up. 

We landed on the Island of Pohnpei Thursday August 6.  After we got our bags and, after walking through customs, we were greeted by several of the school and church board members. They gave us lay's and we loaded the school trucks and bus with all our bags and they took us to the school. We picked our apartments and started to move in.

The first week and a half was just for us to get adjusted and start to figure out lesson plans and clean our classrooms. We also had some time to do fun stuff like going to some waterfalls that we could jump off of and a wharf called Nett Point which is now one of my favorite swimming holes. 

I’m teaching 8th grade with Alex Eller so we decided to split our classes in half so I took math, english, and literature and he took bible, social studies, and science. It has worked out pretty good for us so far and it cuts down on lesson planning. When I look back at my elementary school years I can’t even imagine how my teacher, Mrs. Veverka, was able to teach all 8 grades. 

Between Alex and I we have a total of 36 8th graders. Teaching can be so much fun one minute then so frustrating the next. One of my first really low moments here was when I was grading the first math test and I realized how many of my students hadn’t understood what we had been going over the last couple weeks. I hate giving kids bad grades. I enjoy worship in the morning with the kids. They really are good singers. I have a hard time getting the girls to sing sometimes so some of the boys take the girls parts to help them out. It sounds surprisingly good. These kids have so much energy and it’s hard to keep them on task. They love to talk so it makes for really good class discussion. 

I’ve had to be my own cook here so I haven’t been having the most extravagant meals. I’m cheep too so rice and beens have been keeping me happy. I’ve gotten a bunch of vege-meat in the mail too so I haven’t gotten hungry since I got here. 

Here are a few really fun things that I’ve done since I’ve gotten here: 

Spearfishing in the middle of the night- We went out with one of the SM’s island dads (we all have island parents) and we partnered up with flashlights and spears and caught a couple fish. The local guys caught a bunch and we all ate raw fish in the boat afterwards. We got back to our apartments around 2:30 in the morning.  

Surfing- The waves haven’t been really big but that’s ok since I just started learning here. We went out the first few times with the Pohnpei Surf Club and now we take one of  Mr. B’s boats whenever we go out. I’ve improved so much since I got here. 

Trips to waterfalls- We’ve gone to three waterfalls so far and I’m planning on going to a bunch more. 

A weekend trip to Ant- Ant is an atoll of islands and we camped there a few weekends ago. We got to do a bunch of snorkeling and we slept in hammocks over the water. I saw two sharks, a dolphin, a sea turtle, a stingray and countless fish all in the same day.

Day trip to Nahlap- Nahlap is an island here that you can catch a boat out to for 5 bucks. We went there one Sunday and helped kids learn how to surf and we got to do a little ourselves. 

There are a bunch more fun things to do here and I’m sure that this isn’t going to be a boring year. Pray for me because there are tough times. I hope to keep this blog updated so keep on checking it out.