Showers

I realized I forgot to write about showers in my last entry about the coldness.

I literally feel like I'm freezing when the icey water comes out of the tap. But people here are adament about daily showers so if i skipped a day, they'd be all over me. In fact, most of them shower twice daily, but I'm a once a day person. But on the cold days, i really just want to cozy up in my bed with my 2 blankets. Nonetheless, I must shower, so now I have taken to showering in the middle of the day. After I eat lunch when the sun is strong I hop in the shower. I let the water trickle on me enough to get wet, and then i run out to change. I can't even imagine trying to wash my hair with that cold water. Last year it was so much easier when i didn't have any hair! I am now only washing my hair like once a week, but that's fine.

I could boil water over the fire and put it in a bucket to take a shower with, but firewood is a scarce commodity mostly reserved for cooking or heating up water for the babies to wash in. If I asked for hot water, I think they'd laugh.

What else is new? We had a staff meeting today that went from 10 am to 1 pm, but it was actually really cool, because all the teachers decided that we'd speak English in the meeting. it's an english school so they should speak english all the time, but a lot of them aren't confident in their english, but today they really tried. I was happy, and I think it'll help the students to improve their English if they hear the teachers speaking English outside of class time.

Also i'm not sure if I mentioned how the secondary school students (9th and 10th grade) finally moved into the dorms at school last weekend. The dorms (made out of bamboo and grass roof) each hold maybe 20 students or so. They should've been completed last year, but they just finished them this year. They also built a kitchen and dining hall out of various plant materials. Most of the secondary schools in Vanuautu are boarding schools I think coming from the fact that before there were only a couple run by the french and english governments so the kids all came from different islands. The sec. school here just started last year, and most of the students are from Futuna but there's 4 from another island. But even the kids that are from here sleep at the school. It's just the custom here to sleep at the school. They study at night together and do work at the school. Also if at the end of the year, they pass a national exam they can go to 11th grade and then they will have to leave our island and board at some other school so now they're taking it like practice sort of.

That's all for now.