A Few Busy Days' Worth of News

12/1/08 I am officially an open water diver, as of last Wednesday night. I did relatively well on my last paper test. Thursday afternoon I went and ordered my fins, boots, mask and snorkel (it cost me $140 total for the gear, but it's worth it) and Friday we had School Picnic.

Thursday, as you know, was Thanksgiving. We had a half day of school (we finished at 11:30) and then went home. We began cooking food for our Thanksgiving potluck (I had been assigned the green bean casserole). During a lull in the cooking (and grading, of which I did most of mine), four of us walked down to Hidao's and ordered our gear. My total expenditures on scuba diving so far have been two hundred dollars for the class, and one forty for gear. But I know it's been well worth it so far. Back at home, we feasted on various Thanksgiving dishes (I even got two pieces of pumpkin pie!) and watched a movie. We had invited the three American missionary teachers from a tiny school at the end of the island, near the causeway, and one came. Her name was Amy, and she's from Kentucky. I think she was sort of nervous, coming into our "family," but it was fun having her there.

Friday was our School Picnic. The third through twelfth graders (as well as the teachers) had been split up into four teams--and I was on the gray team. We mustered our troops some time after 8:00 (they were supposed to already be there at 8:00) and began our events after a short prayer. We had relay races, strange food eating contests, and some track and field events. Yours truly was the only female staff member on the gray team who was participating. Therefore, yours truly had to run both the 50m and 100m races (against the other participating female staff, my housemates). Hey, in the bargain, I got to wear my shorts without having a skirt on top. It was worth the aching quad muscles to wear shorts out in the open. I got second place in the first race, and third in the second race. However, Megan fell during the first race (and scraped up her leg pretty good) and Lorraine stopped, and that's why I won (having been focused on the end of the race, and not on my fellow racers [read: I didn't even see that Megan had fallen until I crossed the line]). In the second race, there were only three runners (because Megan was tending to her wounded leg). So, on the whole, I'm just not fit for running, especially after almost four months of absolutely no running whatsoever. It was the first time I'd put my tennis shoes on since getting them in the mail! We had a potluck lunch with our sponsored classes, and Emily and I ended up combining ours because her class didn't have a tent of sorts to make shade at Beach Park.

Sabbath morning I ended up (quite unexpectedly) teaching youth Sabbath School. I wasn't supposed to teach, but there we go, flexibility in action. Also, prayer in action, too, for you can bet that I was sending up little prayers the ENTIRE time (because I haven't taught a Sabbath School class since the spring of 2006). I suppose that's what the "official" role of "assistant youth leader" means, anyway. It went pretty smoothly, and some of the students even offered their own ideas as answers to questions--and that was truly exciting. I also was the Scripture/prayer person at church (which is the first time I've been up front during a church service).

Sunday I went snorkeling with Emily and Ryan near Beach Park--and saw lots of fish: clownfish, little shiny blue fish that swarmed, black fish, orange fish, fish that looked like Gil off of "Finding Nemo", little saltwater snakes, purple coral, blue water, etc., It was truly awesome and I really wanted to stay longer than the time it took for Ryan to take some sweet photos of the reef inhabitants. I am totally going to take some of those pictures before I leave.

Today was Monday, and the island had the kickoff for Disability Awareness Week. The kickoff was a parade of schoolchildren going around the island, followed by the official ceremony, wherein a bunch of people spoke in Marshallese and some kids danced and they gave food to the students. The parade consisted of the various schools on the island--including ours. We had the 8th-12th graders in the parade. Happily, it started promptly at 9:00 this morning. We looped around the entire island and the kids kept trying to escape down alleys and side streets. Two of our kids even tried to bribe me with a portion of five dollars (the rest of which they wanted to use to buy water with), and of course I had to say No (even though I thought it very funny). After the ceremony, Emily, Ryan and I went to the post office to see if there were any packages--there were ten boxes, none of which were mine. However, three of them were Landen's, and since one of the boxes of mine that haven't arrived yet left shortly after Landen's, it should be arriving any week now.

That brings me to the evening. Seeing as there was no class this morning (due to the parade), I have nothing to grade and I have already updated my grades. I may just go to bed early. More later.