Staying at Home (Written 12/21/05)

Today was an interesting, yet really uneventful day for me – but that was definitely a good thing. For the past couple of days I’ve been leaving my place and going into town – not coming back until it was dark or getting dark. Yesterday, I even walked down my long road in the dark because someone decided it was time for the power to go out yet again. Oh yeah, and just as I got to within a couple of “blocks” of my house it started to pour down rain – so I decided today I was going to stay put and take some “me” time in my new abode. So I woke up at about 7:30am and decided that was way to early so I went back to sleep and didn’t get back up until about 10am. I cleaned up a bit around the house and then did something I haven’t been able to do a lot of during my 3 months of training in the village – read the Bible. I finished reading Judges, Ruth and now am working my way through 1 Samuel. For a culture that is so religion oriented its good to have a good understanding of what it says in the Bible because I’m starting to realize that a lot of the Old Testament type view of life is evident in the Samoan way of life – both the good and the bad. So after reading a couple of chapters I decided it was high time I got into my computer lab and made sure everything was in working order before the new year so I can have an idea of what I am working with. I know I went over some of the details of the lab with Michael before he left but there’s nothing like being left to your own devices to try and figure stuff out and get a good perspective of what you are dealing with and let me tell you – I’m not in America anymore. For the most part the computers are good, but a lot of them feel like they’re on their last leg. While I may not have to get to work on replacing the computers right away I know the Samoan environment will definitely wreck these computers sooner rather then later. All the computers, save 2, are running on Windows 98 – that gives you some idea of how “out-dated” these computers are. Also, I’m going to start fixing up the second computer lab which does not have a full compliment of computers yet – so I won’t be just throwing computers out if I get new ones. That’s also a concern I have about replacing these computers when/if I eventually get enough to do that – since this isn’t America, the recycling of computers (which is just starting to take off back home) is virtually nonexistent. We may keep bringing computers into this country but at some point they are all going to fail and then what? Never been in a position where I had to worry about so much at seemingly the same time – it’s a very scary feeling. Luckily, I found a way to relieve some stress – by playing “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?” one of the games that Michael received from a donor before he left. I was testing it out to see if it would be suitable for use inside the classroom (maybe for a Geography class) and it definitely brought back some memories of my first few years working on the computer. Carmen Sandiego was one of the first games I ever played on the computer and it was a treat to revisit my old stomping grounds through that game. It could be useful to the students if it were more text based instead of audio based (the computers don’t have speakers on them and I don’t currently have enough headphones for them to use). So like I said, today was a kind of boring today but in a good way.
I also would like to say that one day I hope to actually “cook” in my house at some point – currently, I have no propane tank in which to ‘power’ my stove and thus I have to rely on my hot water heater to feed me some Ramen (just like the good ole college days!). I’m not starving by any means (I have also been eating out a lot the last couple of days which led to me wanting to stay home tonight) but I also don’t have a lot of variety in my diet – hopefully that will all change very soon. L8r!

12 Days of Homestay:
On the 9th day of homestay, my family gave to me:

Iva palusami
Valu fasimoli
Fitu Mamoe
Ono sa’evae
Lima Vailima
Fa ula vai
Tolu ofu tino
Lua lavalava
And pea soupo ma le mulipipi