The time of internet is drawing to a close...

We are approaching the end of the school year here which means soon I'm not sure if I'll be able to use the internet. Tomorrow we are going to go to a beach on a different part of the island and the kids will all perform/ sing in a Christmas carol night. The next day we will have a picnic on the beach. I don't think anyone will be singing "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" unless they mean white sand beach. It's interesting that in the States we often associate Christmas with winter/ snow. You see Santa riding his sleigh through the snow, but us in the southern hemisphere/ tropics don't get that image. Maybe their Santa is riding a surfboard.

Christmas on Futuna should be good. One of the villages is opening a new church house so there will be a big celebration for that. Also there's a couple weddings at the time (Christmas is wedding season here). They say that for Christmas everyone on the island goes to one village to celebrate. Also a bunch of the Futuna people who live in Vila come back to the island for the holidays so I'll get to meet a lot of new people. However, some of the teachers and students who are from other islands will go back to their own islands so I won't see them again until January.

School officially starts up January 26th. This is like summer vacation in the U.S. So I'm not sure if I'll be online again before then. But you can email me and I'll get it eventually. Or write me a letter!

Poison Fish

Things are going well on Futuna. School is winding down for the year. On Saturday we had a staff picnic on the beach. We used a large net to catch a bunch of fish. Well I grabbed one to throw it in a canoe but it's tail cut my hand. I didn't think much of it until my hand started throbbing. Then I swam to shore. My hand hurt extremely bad. It was bleeding a little bit so some kid chewed up a sweet coconut and spit on it "to stop the bleeding." Then my ears started ringing and everything got blurry so someone helped me to lie down. After that I was just in excruciating pain for the next few hours as they put various custom leaf medicines on my hand. At night I went home and went to sleep. The next morning the pain had subsided but my hand had swollen like a balloon and I could not move it. It was my right hand which made eating with a spoon rather difficult because I could not hold anything. But now, Wednesday, my hand has returned to normal and I am able to use it again for all those important activities (like typing).

Also this week I caught a nasty cold which is not fun at all. I am spending my days lying on the concrete floor because it is the coolest place in the hot weather. My nose is running and tissues do not exist here.

Also I finally received mail from the U.S.! You can send directly to Futuna if you want. I think you could write Alyssa, Futuna, Vanuatu, South Pacific it'd get here, but to be safe you can write:

Alyssa Thiel- Peace Corps
Ishia School
Futuna
Vanuatu, South Pacific

The sun has returned

For the last week we have had sun, sun, and sun. I really like it. Before that all we had was rain. Now I can do my laundry without worrying too much about it staying wet and growing mold. Also when it rains here it gets extremely muddy which also isn't too fun. But now it's sunny!

We are now entering the week of exams. In Vanuatu in 8th grade students have to take a National Exam and the results of that exam say whether or not they can proceed to secondary school or not. It also tells what secondary school they'll go to. Vanuatu ranks the secondary schools so in order to get into the good ones you have to score high on the test. The students will take exams in English, Math, Basic Science, and Social Science. There are also exams for 10th graders (but we don't have any 10th graders at my school). This exam will tell if they can go on to 11th grade. It's quite stressful if you ask me. Also even in many of the primary grades (elementary) the students have to take end of year exams. I think it's a little absurd to ask an 8 year old to take a test about everything they've learned the whole school year. The school year here goes from January- December. Our school officially closes November 27th so after that is school break until it starts up again at the end of January.

Nothing too much is new here. I ran my first workshop for the teachers at the school last Friday on helping slow learners and I'm running another one this coming Friday on teaching spelling. I have been eating lots and lots of fish lately. However I'm quite inept at it. I seem to frequently choke on the bones, especially in the small fish. Oh and I ate a snail the other day too. It was interesting, rather chewy and slimy. They call it local chewing gum here. This coming Saturday we will be having a staff picnic so we will all go to the beach and cook things over the fire to eat (like fish, crab, coconut, banana, etc) and then we will go swimming. It should be fun.

Also interesting to note that I thought it would take so long for me to hear the results of the election, but I actually spent that whole day on the internet and the people here heard Obama's speech on Radio Australia. I think it's interesting how Obama made the comment in his speech about people in far away corners of the world huddled around radios. It just made me think of my life here.

Alright well that's all for now. Send me an email if you want!