Headed to the hospital again...

The hospital and I are getting to be quite close. Today when I woke up, my eyes were swollen shut and my lips were swollen and covered with tons of red bumps. Initially I planned to go to school like normal, but once Tami saw me she convinced me to skip. When she went down to let Jesse know, he told her that they were going to take me to the ER. To pass the time I looked up my symptoms online and am pretty sure that it's an allergic reaction of some sort. The only thing I can think of is the water. Last night when I went to get some water out of my water bottle, I noticed that the bottom of my water bottle was covered in dirt. I'm the only one who drinks tap water, and just keep refilling the same water bottle over and over. Anyway, I found out that the dirt was actually on the INSIDE of my bottle and it was just settling from the water down to the bottom...mmmm. So here I am now, waiting to go to the ER yet again. Sometimes I feel so pathetic here, like my body can't take the things I want it to. All I want to do is be healthy so I can teach, especially this week because it's almost Thanksgiving and my mom is coming!

Real missionary

I feel like I'm a real missionary. Living around a power and water schedule helps me empathize with people who never have water or power. We wake up and try to get ready, no power. When we get home we try to make dinner, no water. At night we try to skype, no power. It's rather annoying, but it could be worse! At least we have power most of the school day, so that means AC! Oh bummer, no water after school, guess we have to go out for lunch!
In other exciting news, Jeanine has started teaching my least favorite class, math. She only has a half day because it's kindergarten and she really wants the chance to actually teach kids things. From the few times I've subbed for her, I can completely understand how she would be frustrated. They just can't have coherent conversations like my 2nd graders can. So, it worked out that she would love to teach my math. That is such a blessing because, though I don't mind, I really don't know how to be so creative when teaching math. In most other classes I can teach them the material in at least two or three ways, but not math.
Though I'm still in love with teaching, it's really wearing me out. I start the day off so happy and excited to see my kids. They've even started lining up in front of my door in the morning, and I never told them to do that! By mid-morning I'm usually toning down my hyperness, and by lunch I'm just normal. After lunch, their antics begin getting slightly annoying, and I don't like that feeling. Things that would normally not even get my attention start to drive me crazy. I hope that it's just this week, because I haven't been getting much sleep. Hopefully I'll be back to my chipper self soon.
I wish more things would happen. I want more pictures of things and more things to write about, but honestly there isn't much to do. We do have a list though, of everything we want to do before we leave Palau. That should be fun to work on! I'm also trying to plan something for Thanksgiving for my kids. Today I asked them if they knew the story of Thanksgiving, and none of them did! I told them all about the pilgrims and indians and the first Thanksgiving. I also started planning a Thanksgiving meal for them, and also a battle, where some of them are indians and some are pilgrims. It should be a blast!

If you're wondering where I've gone...

So things got interesting after 1 pm. Last night one of the generators in Airai blew up somehow. Apparently there was a huge fire and all of Airai lost power. To try to put out the fire, the firemen depleted the water supply here in Palau, resulting in no more water coming out of the sinks. This means no flushing the toilet, no taking showers, and no washing dishes. By morning we thought it would all be back to normal, but unfortunately the water was still all gone. At around 1 pm today we lost our power. Because Airai has no power, the government decided that Koror could share their generator with them so we can both have power. This is a problem that can only be fixed by a new generator, so for at least another month we will share with Airai. That means that from 8 am-2 pm Koror has power, 2 pm-8 pm Airai has power, and so on. It should be interesting to have no power from 2pm-8pm, because that's when we do our cooking and other important things. Today we literally just sat around and stared at the ceiling. We also got to take a nice walk in nature and there was even a breeze! It's just so bizarre that a whole island can literally use up all their water source on putting out a fire, or lose power for a month. Needless to say, life is always an adventure.

Paradise

Saturday is always sunny here. I'm not quite sure why, but the sun is always shining as we leave our apartment to head over to the church. Church this week was extra long. It was the last day of the prayer meetings, and the sermon was all about health. It was interesting, for the first hour. The second 45 minutes was very long and I just wanted to go eat! Once church was over, I realized that I was supposed to skype my parents in only 10 minutes. Luckily, Jeanine brought me back some food from potluck.

I'm so happy that I got to talk to my parents. After that we played games and relaxed until sundown. Then we started cooking! We were invited to go to a celebratory harvest party and a lady's house, so we had to make something to bring. Though I'm a HORRIBLE cook, we made some delicious mashed potatoes with onions. Once we got to her house, we found out that there was no power. Apparently the generator had blown up, leaving Airai with no power and a small fire. So, we headed back to Eunices house (which is literally across the hall from our apartment). It was so much fun talking to the ladies and other girl sm's. It was nice just finally getting a girls night and some great food! We had green beans, potatoes, and some sort of squash casserole, plus apple crisp and pumpkin pie! Oh yea, and everyone loved our potatoes, so MOM I CAN COOK! Just needed to throw that out there.

This morning we woke up early, me at 5 and Tami at 8, and went to Surangles. We bought stuff to make lasagna and other stuff. We're trying to cook now. Hopefully it lasts longer than the puppy did. I'm also getting ready for my mom to come visit! I'm so happy that she'll be here for Thanksgiving. It will make it feel so much more like home.

It's funny, because most SM's that have been here in the past say time goes by so slow at the beginning. Not for me. These past 3 months, plus some, have flown by. Even though I miss home like crazy, I will want time to slow down. I want this year to last as long as possible! I love being here and I love everything about Palau. I will be SO SAD when this year is over. It hurts to even think about it. On the other side, I can't WAIT to leave for Christmas break. I will be so nice to just have a break from school forget grades. But how much can I really complain? I'm in paradise.

On to the child of the day...This is Ichiro Matsutaro. This is his second year in 2nd grade, and he's doing so much better this time. He has the most beautiful handwriting and is one of the most creative kids in my class. He started this year telling me, "I don't know how to read". Two days ago, he read a paragraph in class. Sometimes I hesitate to call on him because I don't want him to feel bad, but he was great! He also did a whole math page on his own with no help! I was so proud of him, and he was so proud of himself. It was such a great feeling. Anyway, he is really funny and does this thing where he pretends not to understand me and then laughs with such a goofy grin on his face. He was the only kid who's parents didn't show up at our parent-teacher conferences. I gave him his grades in class and you should have seen his face light up. He's never gotten grades like this before!

Starting the weekend!

This is Kylie Whipps. She is the first kid in my class that I met in Palau. The first Sabbath here I helped her pass out forks during potluck, and I never knew she was in my class! She is so sweet and completely hyper. Her Grandparents own Surangles, the biggest store here in Palau, and her parents own Mason, a part of Surangles. She reminds me so much of my sister Janelle. Her desk looks like a bomb blew up and scattered her stuff everywhere, and even though I make her clean it at least 8 times a day, the next minute it's totally messy again. She is really loving and runs and jumps on me any time she sees me, no matter where we are. "Teacher, can you help me" is her favorite thing to say, but I don't mind.

Today was randomly different than most Fridays. Instead of teaching 2nd grade, I switched Jeanine and taught Kindergarten. It was her idea, because she wanted to have kids that actually listened to her. Great... It was quite fun actually. Though now I know I'll never be a Kindergarten teacher, it was still fun to get to play with the adorable kids. We started with Bible, and just drew rainbows! Then we did a page in reading where we learned that G is a the beginning of goat, gate, and green. For math we practiced counting 1,2,3,4, and 5 objects. Then it was snack time! After that came recess and my 2nd grade was out there. They all ran up to me and told me how much they missed me. It was cute! After recess we went back in and learned the letter T for phonics and drew pictures of more things. It was fun, even though they were not the best listeners, but at least I got some nice cereal for snack.

After school we went to Emimalei to eat as per our tradition, but I just got some coffee. Trying to save money for Manila and all that. We came back and cleaned our apartment. After we were finally all done, we were about to relax when we noticed that our apartment smelled HORRID. Remember our short stint with a puppy? [Note:Well, I don't remember what I wrote on here before, but Austin gave me the puppy I wanted and I was super happy. After having him (his name was Dozer) for about three days, he had peed everywhere, destroyed tons of stuff, and cried all night. He also started getting violent (Rottweiler) and it just was not as fun as we thought it would be. He even chewed my computer power cord. After the three days I decided that Austin could have him back] Anyway, when the puppy peed all over the place, I used an old shirt to clean it all up. Then I put it in the wash pile to be cleaned later on, and didn't think about it again. Apparently today, Jeanine used that shirt to mop the floor. Our apartment was covered in puppy pee! So then we had to go to the school, get a mop, and clean it all again. It was quite the inconvenience, but at least our apartment is clean!

After that we decided we really needed a reward, so we went down the massage place and got massages! It was such a nice Friday treat and felt so good! It was pretty cheap too. Compared to the $150 I paid for one this summer, it was the best deal ever. Then we bought some ingredients for potatoes, because the lady that took us to yoga invited us to a harvest party tomorrow night. That should be something else fun to do!

Jeanine and I were talking last night and we decided we need to do more things here. We made a list of things we need to do before we leave, like invite over our host families, go to all the churches in Palau, and visit Peliliu. Its fun to plan things that we want to do so they can actually happen.

dao shi shi, shao shi shi

I am turning into my mother. I would just like to proclaim to the world that I am now realizing how similar we are, specifically because I am teaching. I call my kids sweetie like her. The kids from 6th grade come to talk to me about "life" and "love advice". It's just ridiculous how similar we are without me trying in the least. Fortunately, she is a fantastic teacher and amazing person, so I'm doing pretty well. Just thought I'd share with the world my current realizations.

On another topic, my class was in charge of chapel today which went really well. We sang Blind man, This Little Light of Mine, Jesus Lover of my Soul, and Jesus Love is Bubbling Over. At first we were supposed to do a skit. It was all about this class that gets an assignment. They are supposed to draw a picture of someone they hate and then pin it to the board. Then they got to throw darts at it and try to mess up the picture. In the end, the teacher takes away the pictures of the people the kids hate, and there is a picture of Jesus underneath. The skit was too short so I asked Mesikt, an elder in the church, to come speak for our chapel. Once he got up to speak, the first story that he told was about darts, and throwing them at people he hated. I was so surprised! He didn't know anything about what we were planning to do, but still delivered the same message. When I told him, tears came to his eyes as he noted its importance. There must have been someone there today that needed to hear the message about being nice and not hating others.

The rest of the day went on as normal, but after school we went to yoga for the first time! I assumed that it would be really easy, but it was a bit more difficult then I expected. It was fun to get out and do something active instead of just sitting around. As soon as we got back we got ready for our Micronesia:All the Islands of the Sea meetings. We went and sang and it was really fun!

So, I've decided to steal from one of my good friends Beth, and do a blog on every one of my kids. This is Mandy Kuo! She is the sweetest, most adorable 2nd grader on the face of the Earth. I love her with my whole heart! Every day she clings to me and hugs me and kisses me any asks for "piggy rides" or "huggy rides". She just loves me so much, and it's so fun to run around with her on my back. She is also extremely smart! She always gets the answers the first time and usually gets 100%. She sits quietly in class and gets along great with the other kids. She taught me "dao shi shi, shao shi shi" (except its written WAY differently)in Taiwanese, which means "big gorilla, small gorilla". RANDOM! Today one of my kids brought a fake spider left over from Halloween to school, and they tried to scare her with it. The first two times it didn't work, but the third time she scream and it scared her so much that she started to cry. It was so sad, but still extremely cute.

Mom's coming, mom's coming, mom's coming!

Affirming my choice to be happy, I got a package today! I've been waiting for the package Redwood sent me for a few weeks now and it's finally here! I was surprised how quickly it brought me to tears just knowing that people put together a box for me, and it was so much better after I opened it! There was a tape recorder with the Redwood kids singing Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas, and America the Beautiful. There was also a DVD with a video of them and I got to see my sister! That was quite exciting! Just hearing them talk brought me back to the feeling that I was home. I also got some amazing food and cool stuff that my kids will love. It's just what I needed after a long, rainy day.
Though were not doing a skit, my kids and I practiced singing today because they have chapel on Wednesday. After Bible I attempted to teach them counting money in math, but some kids really can't see that a quarter and nickel are NOT the same size! After Math they had Palauan so I got a break! After running up to the apartment to grab breakfast, I just sat in the gym and stared out at the kids playing. They are all so happy and stress free. I really love the kids here. Every time they see me they scream "Hi Miss Chelsea!" or run to give me a hug. Weather it's a kindergartner, 3rd grader, or even an 8th grader, they still make time to say hi and give you a smile. After that my kids came out of Palauan and they had recess and PE. For once, no one got hurt in kickball! One boy cried, but you can't win them all. After PE, I realized that unfortunately, my AC was not working today. Luckily, it was what the kids consider a "cold day". They all came to school in heavy jackets and boots. There was MAYBE a light breeze and it was a rainy 80 degrees. I laughed to think of what they would do in Washington. The other annoying thing about the rain is that my roof leaks right over my desk! Too bad today the grades folder was in that spot...oh well. At least it wasn't my computer. Anyway, we started phonics in a AC-less classroom and then spelling. Lunch time! The best time of the day! Not really...but I got a nice hot pocket from my Palauan mom and my kids didn't spill any food! Did I ever mention that I got two new kids? Daichi and Ivan came last week, and so far so good, so that's a blessing!
After lunch I gave them a quick recess before starting social studies where we drew pictures of animals in the forest. Then we did reading and dreaded skilpack. I only gave them one page today, but it still took them 20 minutes. Then they had their last recess to get all their energy out! Some girls from 2B came over and we had piggy back time! Then we went in and did handwriting, and a long language assignment! They complained, but they all got it done and did it's correctly. I had them read science in their heads and quizzed them before they could clean up to go home. Then I went into the gym to do PE for Tami's 6th grade class. They didn't want to play soccer, but eventually started playing after I promised free time later. A few of them just came and sat beside me and we talked about life and stuff that I could never talk to my 7 year olds about. It was really fun and they even asked me to be their teacher! I think it was a joke...
As I write this all it seems like my day was so short, but it was not at all. Even though I enjoy what I'm doing, it still does not go by as quickly as I would like. On the up side, the package came and I even cooked myself dinner. Usually I just have some crackers or juice, but today I made ramen. Don't laugh. I know it sounds weak, but I cut up meat and mixed it in and vegetables too. It was quite scrumptious. MOM, I ATE A VITAMIN. Just letting you know. Oh, another thing I'm excited for: my mom is coming here in 18 days! That is my fuel right now. Mom'scomingMom'scomingMom'scoming!