MJ Live

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Prizegiving Daughters of the King (Written 11/25/06)

Even though this was the final week of school, there was no shortage
of things for me to in these closing moments. We'll start on Wednesday
when I went to St. Mary's to help out with observing some of the Group
77 trainees teach an actual class (this project was called 'Model
School'). The trainees (which for me were Dylan, Chris, Craig and
Aaron) were given some topics to cover – mainly dealing with computers
since they are going to be computer teachers – and then placed in
front of the girl students of St. Mary's (Candice and I were observing
the classroom, while Sara was observing the trainees in the computer
lab). It was very interesting seeing the varied types of teaching
styles – some were interactive, some were high energy, some were
matter of fact – but the one thing they all kept saying at the end was
how impressed they were with what the students already knew about
computers. And that was just a recognition of the hard work that Sara
put in this year getting the girls to know a lot about computers – she
made their job a lot easier. Something tells me it won't be that easy
when they go to their schools where there has not been a computer
teacher there before them. Overall, it went really well and it
definitely gave them a rare opportunity to try their teaching skills
in an actual school environment (not all the trainees got that
opportunity during their volunteer visit) and I'm sure this was a lot
more fun then just reviewing a whole bunch of information for a test
as happened during the OJT (On the Job training) visit. After I was
done at St. Mary's, I decided it was time to actually get some
shopping done – it had been a while since I went shopping for food
(I'm a survivor – I may not buy a lot of food, but I know how to find
something to eat!) Anyway, after I got all my shopping done I finally
caved and bought a Digicell phone (the new deal is $50 for a new phone
– no connection charge – and you get a backpack, a shirt and $10 in
prepaid phone time) – this will come into play later, so remember it.

Thursday was just a day dedicated to getting all the certificates
ready for the prizegiving on Friday. Thank goodness for Microsoft
Excel/Word and their mail merge ability – saved a ton of time when
creating the certificates and putting student's names on them.

Friday was prizegiving for the school. Prizegiving is like a
graduation in the states – only a lot more emphasis is placed on the
grades. Like one person told me that some of the parents are told
ahead of time whether or not their child got an award of some kind and
they will come with small gifts for them. But if their child was not
winning an award, one or both of the parents may not come and instead
they'll send someone else – it's crazy man! Before the program began
though, we finally got the Chanel College Magazine (aka Yearbook)
which looked really nice – last year it was pieced together at the
school on the cheap but this year we took it to a professional printer
and it looked a lot better and well done – something you could impress
people with. This was important because we wanted to sell as many as
possible to the parents before they left (since it was the last day of
school). This is how the awards were distributed: each class had a
1st, 2nd and 3rd overall in the class plus a teacher award and a
religion award. There were also some special awards and scholarships
given out throughout the program – there were a ton of prizes given
away, but unlike the prizegiving in Falevao this really felt like a
graduation instead of a beauty pageant competition. For Year 13, they
also had the 1st, 2nd and 3rd overall in their class but then they
also got awards for individual subjects and leaving certificates (aka
a diploma). The final award is called the Dux (don't ask me why) and
it goes to the top year 13 student who has accumulated the most points
out of all the subjects they are taking. All Year 13 students take
about 5 subjects so the max amount of points one could get is 500, so
with over 400 points the Dux (aka Valedictorian) for Chanel College
2006 was Leuta Philatelic Tutaia (who is related to Rosie, a Peace
Corps Volunteer whole left about a week ago). She was also one of my
better computer students, so I was really happy to see her win the
overall award. After the prizegiving was over, I think that's when it
finally hit me that I wouldn't be seeing my Year 13 students again –
they're moving on to the next leg of their journey. You put so much
time and effort into making sure they do well and instilling knowledge
to them that you really become attached to them and look forward to
seeing them everyday. I guess this was just a small taste of what this
is going to feel like next year…..

Once all the parents left, the teachers had a nice little get together
meal to celebrate the end of the 3rd term and the end of the year. I
hung around for a bit, but then had to bolt into town to get ready for
the banquet later that night. I headed to the office first to take
care of some photo uploading which is where I ran into Josh. Josh also
has a Digicell phone and he told me the main reason he got it was to
be able to receive international calls from his mom – which got me to
thinking, if you can receive them then you can send them as well. So I
decided to give it a try and called the one person who would be
absolutely shocked to hear my voice – my mom. So at about 4:30pm
Samoa/9:30pm Nashville for the first time in a year, I called home. At
first I didn't think it was going to work, but when she picked up the
phone I was both surprised and happy. It was definitely one of those
Kodak moments – so Digicell is alright in my book since I can now
communicate with the outside world without running up a huge phone
bill (the phones are prepaid so you only spend what you've already
bought). I had about $9.43 on my phone and the call lasted about 4.43
seconds, so that wasn't to bad but it definitely made my day. Which
made it that much easier to go into the 3rd leg of my day with a
smile….

The last part of Friday was dedicated to helping out with Peace
Chapel's Daughter of the King banquet. The church hall had literally
been transformed into a palace like area with beautiful purple and
white drapery and a chandelier hanging from the roof (the only
chandelier I've seen in Samoa so far). This conference was dedicated
to lifting up the women of Samoa, so for 3 days and 2 nights women
have been coming to hear other women from the states and New Zealand
speak to them. On this last night, over 250 women came to Peace Chapel
dressed in beautiful gowns and had little crowns on their heads – they
were truly daughters of the King. So, for probably the first time in
many of these women's lives, men were serving them dinner instead of
the other way around. I along with about 15 other guys from Peace
Chapel were dressed in a white shirt and black pants/ ie faitaga (E-A
Fy-Tonga) and were committed to serving these women like they've never
been served before. There was a lot of running around getting food
ready, making sure drinks were topped up and making sure the ladies
were comfortable. I got really lucky in that the tables I was serving
had a lot of people I knew on them – so I could be the nice courteous
waiter as well as jovial with them. In fact, besides me – there were 3
other Peace Corps volunteers in attendance: Robyn (74), Sara (75) and
Sally (77). So they got to be served by me and they were loving every
minute of it! After the dinner, there was a break in which the play of
the Bible story 'Esther' was done. The main actors in it came from the
church's worship team and youth ministry but it was extremely well
done and well acted – it looked very professional. Being able to see a
play of any sort in Samoa (that's well done) is pretty hard, so that
made this night even more special. During the play's intermission,
dessert was served and a mad dash to get the women something to drink
was on. Then the play began it's final portion and we got the tea
ready. I think that everything went extremely well on Friday – no one
dropped any food, all the men worked together and were as nice as
could be. The only bad part – no one tipped me! The one time I work as
a waiter in my life, I don't get a tip! The Pastor of the church
(Pastor Samoa) also announced that they are going to do this
conference every 2 years (so the next one will be in 2008), maybe
they'll be an even bigger Peace Corps presence there – we can only
hope. After it was all said and done, the men finally got to sit down
and eat together as well as help with the cleaning up of the hall. The
official banquet/conference ended at 10pm but we didn't get out of
there until 1am. So I rested well on Saturday…now, I can take a deep
breath – enjoy the weekend – and then get started on fixing the
computers and planning what I am going to do next year in school.
Ahhhh, the joys of having a committed work ethic! L8r.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey there Marques! What a great read!...especially the paragraph about the Daughters of the King! I'm really sorry that we didn't tip you when you served us hehehe....i'll make sure to note that for the next conference ....and at least you have another skill under your belt! :-) Thanks for being such great stewards on the night, and indeed we (all of us ladies who attended) were blessed by the church's wonderful hospitality! All the best in Samoa, stay encouraged for the King of Kings, and may you continue to be blessed from the great work you do!
Regards: One of the "Daughters of the King" in NZ!! :-)