Language Lessons, etc.,

10-7-08 So, I have been here exactly two months. Yippee. That makes for eight months left. Not that I want to leave or anything, don't misunderstand me--but two months feels like some sort of accomplishment. A little accomplishment, perhaps, but an accomplishment nonetheless. Today was a wet and windy day; sometimes the rain came down so hard that I couldn't see the corrugated metal roof of the building outside of my classroom. (By that point water was coming in the windows and so the windows had to be closed, or else all of us and our books, etc., would be drenched.) Each week has sort of a "camp" feel to it; each day in the week sometimes seems almost unendurably long, but Sunday rolls around, and it's like, "What? We're at the start of another week AGAIN?" and so we dive right back in.

Language lessons. I mentioned that I would talk about them a little more in length in another post. Well, I am taking weekly lessons with Mama Rose, our pastor's wife who is quite motherly. The lessons consist of her writing down a list of words, teaching me how to pronounce them, and then making me memorize them. I am on my second week of words--and what's cool is that I don't have to learn the language. I don't, but I still am--because I want to. It's sort of difficult; I have my age and my nationality against me, but I do have tenacity and willingness to laugh at myself or to be laughed at when I flub once again at pronouncing a word whose vowels are pronounced in a completely different way than in English. Megan's also taking lessons, and since she's practically tri- or quad-lingual, it's a lot easier for her. Me, I just have the high school Spanish I took three years ago--and this language is completely different. Still, I want to learn, and that's key to it. Also, it makes telling kids what to do just a tiny bit easier. Some of them don't understand English, and some of them pretend to not understand English--and so it really shocks them when I whip out a word or a phrase of Marshallese. For example, one of the seniors (yes, the seniors) was pushing the boundaries of the rules and was standing up when he wasn't supposed to. I told him to sit down a few times in English, but he persisted in not doing it. (Yeah, yeah, probably should have sent him to the office.) Anyway, I got tired of it, and said, "Jijet, Peterson!" and he looked at me, shocked, and did. The class applauded. (It was actually pretty funny.) Yesterday I had to say, "Jijet kia" and that worked, too. ("Jijet" means "sit down"; it's pronounced "shee-shet"; "kia" means "now" and it's pronounced like we would say it in English, "key-ah".) SO, that's your phrase for today.

Whenever I log onto Facebook or MySpace or whatever, all I see are status updates that include the words "cold" and/or "snow". We don't get that here. We're way too close to the equator for that. We have two seasons: the rainy season and the dry season. Right now we're in the rainy season (hence the rain at the beginning of the post), and I've been told that dry season starts in about February. The kids were asking if we were going to cancel the afternoon portion of school because of the rain--and of course I said no. The kids treat rain like kids in Indiana treat snow--they wake up, hear rain (or see snow) and wonder if there's going to be school. I asked them if rain has to be shoved out of the way so that people can walk or ride the taxis, and they said, "No, of course not." And so I replied, "Then you can come back from your home after lunch and go to school." And since it was the seniors, I went into telling them about REAL weather that can shut down a school. (Of course, our resident Albertans would have been like, "Pfft! Your winters in the States are nothin'!")

It has been rather awesome to read my fellow SMs' blogs--and not just Emily's blog from her time here on Ebeye. I mean, I really enjoy reading the blogs of my friends who are in rather far-flung parts of the world right now, friends are reaching similar two month marks. If you have time, I recommend reading the blogs that I've listed down the side of this page--you'll find an assistant dean in Kenya; an English teacher/everything and anything in Tanzania; teachers in Majuro, Marshall Islands; a third grade teacher on Palau; people living in the jungles or on the rivers in Peru--and if I've forgotten anyone, I'm sorry. I'm typing up this blog at home. It's nice to see that, even though our experiences are vastly different, they're more similar than we'd probably guess. God bless you all!!!

Oh--just got my air mail from Southern today. Thanks Andrea, Krystin (I hope I spelled that right) and Nate for the lovely little notes--and double thanks for the copy of the Accent. Totally made me happy and wishing to be at school at the same time. Thanks!!!!!

Love,

Ashlee

PS. This blog was written on the seventh, and posted today because we've had wacky power recently. First time in weeks!