First Week/Nu'uuli Falls

Well, I made it through my first week of school unharmed. It actually turned out to be quite a great week. I would say overall there are 3 classes that I absolutely love. The kids are great. Sure they're rowdy but they're still fun and for the most part listen to me when I speak. I think by the end of the week they really started to become comfortable with me and I with them. We played some really fun games in class that they enjoyed, though I think they assume that we're always going to play games since I'm a drama major. But I will be saving them for special occasions.

I still have one trouble class that I cant seem to get on the same page with. No matter what I do they don't want to listen. I did have one of the local teachers from the Science department who students are a little scared of come into my class on Friday to give them a little pep talk. I didn't want to have to resort to another teacher coming in but I think because these kids have such a low level understanding of English, it helped to have someone come in and speak in Samoan to them about their behavior.



All in all it was a good week. I'm spending the majority of this week assessing their levels on reading, writing and speaking so that I can better tailor my semester syllabus for them. We're working on small autobiographies that they will hopefully present to the class at the end of the week. Unless of course our Friday gets shortened by the possible "Welcome Back to School Dance" I heard about rumbling around the school today.

Over the weekend we visited an awesome waterfall in Nu'uuli. It was so cool. We had to ask permission to go because it is on someones private land. All the land here is privately and communally owned so you always have to ask someone before you do anything. However, they rarely say No.



Posted amongst the blog are some pictures from the Falls. It was really cool. Fresh water falling off the mountain. Cold water that after a while made you want to get out and warm up from the hot air. It just seemed like it was one of those secret treasures on the island that most locals haven't been to, though there are a lot of kids in these pictures, people that I talked to have not been before. It is definitely a place that we will return to because it was such a nice and relaxing scene.