Last Day!!

This is going to be my last post. I know I didn't update this very often but I hope that whoever did read it got something out of it or enjoyed reading it somewhat. Tonight is my last night in Pohnpei. We just finished with high school graduation which was a great success. David and I were the senior class sponsors so it was our job to call all of the students down to get their diplomas. Even though I didn't even teach half the of the seniors it made me very proud watching them graduate. I am definitely going to miss all of them, some more than others, but all of them nonetheless. I'll be seeing a lot of them at the airport when I leave and I am excited to see them all one last time and hopefully I don't get to emotional or David will never let me live it down. Well its been a great year and I have learned so much in my short time here. Not only have I gain more knowledge but I've gotten more confidence and most importantly learned more God and what is really important in life. I'm hoping my journey with God will continue well as go back home and continue to learn and grow in him. Thank you for all the prayer and financial support this year. I cannot thank you enough.

Parent Visitation

When we have report card days that the school (parent teacher conferences) not very many of the parents show up. In fact i teach over 60 students and the last report card day I talked to a total of 2 parents and one of those parents was of the student that has the highest grade in any of my classes. So what our principal decided to do was since none of the parents were coming to see us that we would go and see them. So for the last 6 weeks we have been going out twice a week driving around the island meeting with parents and getting to know them just so we can know the parents and personally let them know how their kids are doing and to pray  with the parents. It has actually been going pretty so far. Sometimes we will go to a house were the parent will one speak Pohnpeian and we will just still there and Franky will do all the talking. So far we have only been visiting the seniors so David, Pastor Tim and I have been going on these trips with Franky. For some of the students they have had improvements in class after we talked to their parents and others it hasn't done much of anything. Even if a student doesn't really change it is good to get a perspective of what the student's life is like at home. From these visits I have learned a lot more of what the Pohnpeian culture is like and how people really live here.
It wasn't until this week when I really started to appreciate the visits. We had to drive out to a part of Pohnpei called U (pronounced "oooo" yes that is really how it is spelled) to visit a couple of students parents and the last parent we talked to was one of my Precal student's mom. He is one of my better students and he tries hard in class and actually wants to understand but still talks a lot, but I talked a lot in class so I can understand. When we were talking to the mom she was working at the time a little drive up mini store which these things are all over Pohnpei. I already knew a little bit about that student like that he had lived in Hawaii up until 6th grade and had an older brother that was in Hawaii going to school but as the mom talked to us more she mention that her husband had died over 16 years ago and he had been the main source of income for their family. I could tell that it was still very painful for her to talk about it. While they were still living in Hawaii they had to move back to Pohnpei because she could not find work in Hawaii and afford to keep her kids in school because she had never finished her education. So then her goal was to just work as much as possible to give her kids whatever opportunities that they wanted. I was just so shocked at how grateful she was towards us just for having helped her son with just school. It seemed that any little help from the outside was a huge blessing since she had been carrying their family for the last 16 years. 

Here on Pohnpei it is easy to forget about any hardships that you're going through so I had not been thinking about what many people that have death in their families or very tough times in their lives. It made me think that even though we have our problem which everyone does we can just trust God to guide what we say to be an encouragement to those around us that are going through tough times even if it is not a big thing. If we do not know what people's hardships are we will not know what they need to hear without God.

I just thought this would be blog worthy right and I don't really have anything to do right now because the seniors are taking the COM test right now which is the entrance test for The College of Micronesia and most of my classes are seniors so today I really only teach two classes. So I have a feeling its gonna be a good day. The sun is finally out today. It has been very rainy lately which by Pohnpei standards is a lot of rain. We are going to have a potluck/BBQ with all the staff this afternoon out at Nett point so I am excited to have some time outside of school just to relax and swim.  

Hurray a new blog post!!!

First off I would like to apologize to anyone that reads my blog. I realize that I haven’t posted anything about what I’ve done in the last few months. I am always thinking about writing something in my blog but I always forget or whenever I go to post something I forget what I was going to say. If you really know me in anyway I’m not the type of person that’s likes to write stuff down or keep a journal, I would rather tell someone about what I am doing personally but that is kind of difficult because of time, bad internet, and time differences. So I am sorry for the lack of blog updates but I will try harder to at least write something more often.

Anyways, my experience here has been going pretty good. I am actually in my class room typing this out while my precalculus students are taking their test. This is the exact same test that I gave them last week because when I gave them the test last week the class average was a 45%. I really enjoy teaching math because it is very interesting to me and I love it when my students understand what I am trying to teach them. We are already very behind what I have been planning for us to learn in the class and I feel like almost every day I have to do their homework for them because they say they don’t “understand” or it “too hard”. I realize that Precal or anything math for that matter can be very difficult for some people and they may never understand it. But I really think the main reason behind their lack of understanding is their lack of caring. Slowly after talking to many of my fellow sm’s and even locals I’ve come up with some reasons. For many of my students high school is the most schooling that they will ever have and when they graduate they will spend the rest of their lives on this tiny island trying to find a job in their terrible economy living off of others in their family and trying their best to get everything they can while working as little as possible. Even students that do have a future of going to college just shrug of studying. Many of my students just play the blame game. If they do badly on a test, didn’t do their homework, or don’t understand what is being said in class it is always someone else’s fault.  Even when it is them showing up to class every other day and talking to their friend the entire class period they are here. After grading this last test I was going through the test grading them and it actually made me really depressed at how bad they did. I think I have only had one test average above 50% this whole year. I do realize that I am not the greatest teacher in the world but it is just very sad when you spend all this time during school and every day after school to help them but they do not have a will to learn. It seems like they think someone else will do all of the learning for them.  I’m sure this is a challenge that all teachers face but it seems especially bad here. That is one thing that I am having trouble with right now and praying about every night.

Beside school this island is amazing. We just spent the last 3 days on an outer island called black coral. Activities on this island included cooking food, eating food, climbing coconut trees, eating coconut, sleeping, eating, snorkeling, sleeping, cooking, eating, napping, spearfishing, eating the minnow sized fish we caught and more sleeping. Needless to say, but this place along with the help of our Chaplin Pastor Tim I have really learned to eat, relax. I had a lot of practice doing just that this weekend. I know that is one thing that I will miss when I go back to my busy college life in the states so I am soaking in the relaxed lifestyle as much as possible, even though it was never really much of a stretch for me anyway.

I am very grateful for this opportunity and hopefully I will remember to write in this blog thing more often and for all of you that contributed with money with encouragement I am very thankful and happy for this opportunity. 

Waking up early tomorrow morning to go to Ant. Ant is an outer island that is supposed to be one of the most beautiful islands that you can go to that is close to Pohnpei. It is 1:40 am right now and we have to leave before 8 so i should probably finish packing so i can at least some sleep. But never the less I am very excited about this trip. Hopefully I will have a lot of pictures when I get back.

Scuba Diving!!

Finally got to fulfill one of my life goals this weekend of scuba diving without a wet suit on while we out on an outer island called Black Coral and it was just as awesome as I imagined. Unfortunately it was to deep to bring my camera down so I couldn't get any pictures underwater but it was still amazing. Even scuba diving down at 60 feet the water was still close to 80 degrees with up to 100 feet of visibility. It was pretty great.

6 waterfalls

Hiked the 6 waterfalls trail today. It took us about 5 hours to hike the whole loop and it was really awesome. It was about an hour to get to the first waterfall and the rest were pretty close but they were all very unique and massive waterfalls. Unfortunately you couldn't jump off of them very easily or safely but there were some places that we could still swim and jump from. I'll try to post some more pictures soon but I have to finish grading all my kids tests so I can turn in quarter grades. Which is what I should have done today instead of going on the hike but I am sure I will still have time. It was a pretty good. I am pretty sore and really tired now so I'm pretty sure I am going to bed. David is in the hospital right now because he is getting stitches on his knee from swimming around during the hike so we'll see how that turns out.

Sittin on my front porch just relaxing and enjoying the last bits of Sabbath. Last friday we went to Nalap for the highschool picnic and Mr. Bryson and I went snorkeling around together. I have quite a bit of tests to grade this sunday for  our quarter finals that we just had. Hopefully my kids did ok but we'll see. Here's a couple pictures from our snorkeling adventure.