Christmas and Pisar and New Years Resolutions

Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year. I thought it would be hard since it would be my first Christmas away, but there was a lot going on, and I really have been grateful for this break away from teaching. Here is what has been going on this vacation:

Christmas Eve Eve and Christmas Eve
It's a tradition at Xavier for the students who are left here for the break (the ones that don't go home because they can't afford the plane ticket) bake cookies with the staff. These students are also allowed in the faculty lounge and porch, which they really loved. The freshman were amazed they can even join us for meals this break. It was really great because the whole student/teacher boundary dissolved just a bit, so we were all able to relax around each other and get to know them better.
We cooked in the student kitchen and made three types of batter. However there was a bit of lice in the flour. We tried picking it out, but we all had the mentality of "well, more protein. They'll be cooked." So it actually didn't phase us, so we cooked away. And of course, the food fights started by throwing dough and flour on each other. An egg flew here or there. Afterwards the students were rapping to the key board (which they're really talented on) in all of their native languages. It was awesome, and I joined in, which I think gained me a lot of street cred with them.

On the actual Eve, the JVs (oh, the day before Eve Eve two JVs from Pohnpei, Tom and Ashley, came to spend the week with us. Really nice guys.) went down shopping for the students. Fr. Author gave us some money to buy small gifts for the 30 or so students on campus. We bought little things like sun glasses, water guns, hats, and also cans of spam and other lunch meat. When we got back to Xavier we spent a long time wrapping all of the gifts, listening to Christmas music and watching A Wonderful Life.
The Christmas mass was really wonderful. The students and Jesuits set up a really beautiful altar on the roof of Xavier. The Sapuk community was invited as well. The altar was surrounded by white christmas lights on the floor, some palm leaves on either side, a nativity scene and other colorful drapes covering it. There are some pictures of it in my blog. The mass was very beautiful, and I even saw my friends that I met on CSP. I gave all of the kids chocolate after mass.
It is also the tradition to give out the presents to the students after mass. So after sharing some snacks on the roof, Chris Dwyer dressed up as Santa, which was really funny, and we gave out the presents to each student. It took a while, but we were all having a real fun time. Afterwards we all watched Toy Story in the faculty lounge, which the students at first didn't want to watch because they thought it was for little kids, but they ended up loving it. Late that night a few of us picked up Joe's parents from the airport.

Christmas
Christmas morning we all - staff and students - went down to the hospital and the local jail to sing Christmas carols. It was a really nice time. The students sang beautifully, and I didn't do to badly myself. The staff and some of the patients at the hospital were very grateful, which was very heartwarming. The local jail was not that big of a deal. The "prisoners" we sang to were just in there for petty crimes, nothing big, but they were also very appreciative, even though they didn't speak English, unlike the hospital patients.
The rest of the day we just relaxed with Joes parents, then we had a fabulous Christmas dinner the Jesuits cooked, delicious ham. Afterwards we watched Toy Story 2 with the students, which they really got into.

Pisar
So on Dec 26th we set off for a small island called Pisar that is a 40 minute boat ride from this island of Weno (remember, pronounced Weda). We loaded up the truck with a bunch of food and headed down to the Xavier dock, which is actually just a 10 minute walk. We waited for 3 boats, and us 5 JVs, the Pohnpei JVs, Kieran and Luthi, Makoto (Japanese volunteer, awesome guy) and Joe's parents headed out in the lagoon. Riding on the motor boat in the lagoon is always an amazing experience. It was a beautiful day, and just sitting on the edge of the boat, having water splashed in your face, riding those hard bumps against the waves, and enjoying the spectacular view around us is unforgettable. As the main island got smaller behind us, more islands appeared in the distance. Some were the size of an acre, others much smaller. So after 40 minutes, we arrived to Pisar, which is right on the edge of the atoll.
This small island, the size of a football field, is taken care of by a family that owns it, and whenever guests arrive, they leave. It's a beautiful island but obviously doctored up to be a resort. There are a few houses, a great grill, some bathrooms, a big hut to chill in, and the sand is clean and everything is perfect. I wish I could have stayed there all week. Check out the pictures. You will be jealous. Sometimes I wonder if I'm really volunteering or just got amazingly lucky with my surroundings.
So we basically chilled, swam, snorkled, and explored the other two desserted island adjacent to us for the next three days. Needless to say, it was very beautiful, incedibly relaxing and a lot of fun. Here are the highlights, and they are glorious:
-Spear fishing: I finally did it! One of the true Micronesian experiences I was really wanting to do is now done. We don't use a gun, but a completely make-shift spear. You take about a foot of surgical tubing so it can stretch, but a small wire in both ends to connect it, use string or guitar wire to tie the wire tight to the tubing. You put the small wire end into the small groove at the end of the spear (the non-pointy end) and stretch the tubing far infront of you, and then all you have to do is let go and the spear goes flying in the water. That was a bit confusing, but rest assured, it was awesome. We went snorkling and practiced for a bit in the shallow. We only had two spears, and it was mostly Joe, Dwyer and I that did all of the spearing. I didn't catch anything the first day. Joe and Dwyer did. It's real hard, since you have to get the spear real close to the fish.
On the second day I was determined to catch something, so I went out by myself to the right side of the island (the front was facing the lagoon, where most of the coral was, the back was facing the Pacific Ocean and another small island that we were able to swim to, and the left side faced the third small, desserted island. It was very shallow surrounding Pisar. You had to swim out about 100 yards until it got significantly deeper, about 10-15 meters). Anyway, I went to a small strip of coral between Pisar and a small sand bar. It got to be about 5-8 feet deep, and I floated around, waiting to catch something. It was absolutely beautiful (one day we'll get an underwater camera) and there were small fish everywhere, but the small spearable fish were about half a foot long, nothing impressive, but the bigger ones were much farther. I just wanted to catch one. As I was swimming around, something big caught my eye. I saw this foot long blue and silver fish swimming about 10 feet away from me. I slowly crept forward and the fish suddenly changed shape, became rigid, touched the coral is was floating above and turned color to brown, black and yellow. It was a small octopus! I slowly pulled the tubing back, aimed, and fired. I wasn't as close as I should have been because there was shallow coral between me and the octopus, so I just skimmed it or the spear went through it. However, the octopus squirted out lots of black ink and jetted out of there. The big black cloud of ink freaked me out, but it was pretty awesome. I did, however, spear my first fish, only a few inches big, a few minutes later. I was very proud.
The next day I speared two more fish, still small, in the shallow coral. So I headed out to the drop off where it get a lot deeper. As I made my way to the drop off, I was overwhelmed by all of the bigger fish that were waiting for me to spear them. I looked a few feet down and saw a decently sized fish chillin near the bottom of the coral. I swam down few feet under the surface, aimed, and got it! However, it was a blowfish, and the second I impailed it it puffed up twice the size of what it originally was. It struggled on the floor for a bit, and after it stopped I swam down, picked up the spear, and swam back to shore with the blowfish and spear out of the water. I didn't want the fish to struggle more under the water. It was an awesome catch. However, we couldn't cook it (like we did with the others) because it's poisonous. Still, it was amazing, and I can't wait to do it again.
-Night Spear Fishing: Yup. Take all of those experiences I just talked about with spear fishing, except it's pitch black out except for that underwater flashlight we each had that luminated a small beam in front of you. I should have been more scared to be in pitch black water, not being able to see 15 feet in front of you, or anything to your left or right, for that matter, but it was too exciting. Joe, Dwyer and I set out after dinner, the mighty hunters that we were, and made our way out to the drop off. Someone set up a latern on shore so we would know where the island was. It was hard to navigate through the shallow coral because we couldn't make out the paths between them. After scraping our hands and knees for a while, we made it to the deep. It was eerily majestic under the water. It reminded me of those under water National Geographic specials where all you can see if the diver in front of you and his little beam of light. What was also weird was that all the fish were sleeping, so there was not much life out in the water. The smaller fish were sleeping within the cracks in the coral, and the bigger fish were closer to the bottom near the drop off, which is where we spent most of our time. Joe and Christ caught a few small fish, a little less than a foot long (interesting note: here in Chuuk, when you want to measure things with your hands, you do not hold your hands apart. Instead, you hold out your arm and indicate with the other hand on your arm the length. Because if you use both hands to measure, that indicates you are describing the lenght of, well, something else on the male body. So be careful with that!) . My light went out, which is my excuse for not catching anything. But it was an amazing time, really adventurous and thrilling.

So that was basically it. When we walked to the edge of the atoll, we watched the huge waves of the Pacific crash down on the coral. We tried getting close, but the waves were too powerful. Looking on the map of Chuuk back at Xavier, we noticed that it starts off 10 meters deep where the waves are, and only a few dozen yards away, the depth drops to 200 meters! Imagine that.

On the third day the students came to the island, since it was there turn to relax on Pisar. All of us left back for Xavier, leaving behind that wonderful island. I hope to go back there soon. It was very relaxing.

The next couple of days were spent relaxing at Xavier, dropping off the Pohnpei volunteers at the airport (I can drive stick now, by the way. It was very hard learning on these rough dirt roads with all of the pot holes and in the old, blue pickup). We spent the last few days just taking it easy, playing some board games, watching movies, doing some work and reading. I really feel relaxed. We were supposed to have three weeks instead of one week vacation. I guess I would have gotten bored after a while.

Thoughts on Teaching

The students come back today. It will be actually nice to see them again. I think I got enough time away from them. I, along with the other teachers here, needed to get away from them. I definitely feel a lot closer to the ones that stayed here over break, and I think they are also a little more relaxed around me.
Some things I will have to work on this semester (I guess my New Years resolutions for this whole experience) are to not be too hard on myself when it comes to the frustrations of teaching, and not to be too hard on the students. Ashley, the Pohnpei volunteer who is also a second year, gave me that good advice which I plan to follow. I do need to be more patient with the students and remember that they are not originally English speakers, they are away from home, high school is tough for them, and they are normal teenage punks, like all teenage punks around the world. I do, however, have to remember not to be too easy on them because Xavier is one of the, if not the, most prostigious schools in Micronesia, and we are training future leaders of this country, which is hard to imagine. All of the teachers here are underqualified, most staying for at most 2 years, so teachers are always changing. But we are all willing and passsionate, which is amazing to think how the best school of this country operates on that. Anyway, I need to enforce some rules that I was a bit lenient on last semester. For instance, we are supposed to report any student who is caught speaking in their native language. We do this because they are supposed to speak English to improve their skills, and speaking in their own language isolates them from others. But it is hard for an American to come in and tell them to not speak their own language. But I need to be more strict with that rule, for their own good, I guess.
Overall, I'm looking forawrd to this semester. I'll be spending the entire third quarter on writing research papers with the Juniors. For the Sophomores I will be teaching the middle ages, mostly the crusades, black death, and then expansionism and world exporers. I'm not too familiar with that time period, and honestly, it doesn't seem as exciting as the Greeks and Romans. Oh well, I'll learn a lot.

So that's what I've been doing, and it's really been great. School will start on Tuesday (today is Saturday, New Year's Eve) and I completely feel well-rested, which is great. I need a new boost in energy. Today Joe's parents and aunt and uncle are taking us out to Blue Lagoon for New Years. We will have to watch out for the drunks (well, more than usual), but it should be a fun day. Then I'll spend Sunday and Monday grading and lesson planning. Anyway, thank you for all of your Christmas greetings. Love you all.