And here are my students...

There were times when I loved my students.  I was so proud of their achievements as well as mine.  There were some days when I genuinely looked forward to going to school everyday.  Or I would really enjoy school once I got there.  There were times when my students' smiles and eager to learn eyes would give me such encouragement and the will power and drive to keep teaching.  It was these moments where my heart would melt (and it still does) and would make me feel like a worth-while human being.

And then there were other times when I would want to stab my eyes out, rip my heart into a million pieces, place my brain in a blender and shred it into a billion pieces.  There were days when I wanted a better job.  There were days when I would wish that my students would disappear (and it didn't matter in what way, as long as they were gone.)  There were days when their eager to learn eyes would stab a thousand daggers in any direction where goodness prevailed, and would destroy anything that represented happiness with a blink.  Oh man, there were some days I hated those kids.

But then the good always out-weighted the bad, and at the end of the experience, I will always miss my students.  They were always have a special place in my heart - even if they wanted to stab it out.

And here are my students. (Note the gang signs)

1st grade.  Haha - I got those kids reading!!

4th grade

3rd grade (Dashwood - the kid in the green, doesn't look to happy)

My beloved 2nd graders

Kindergarten

Max and his 8th graders

I am part of a involuntary blood donation to mosquitoes. I feel that they appreciate the service. You're welcome...

So Utrik had lots of mosquitoes.  Many many many many mosquitoes.  So much so that I felt that I have become immune to the itchiness.  The red itch bumps no long had any control (on a side note, now that I'm in Thailand, I have lost the power but I digress.)  Yes, I GOT THE POWER!!  But sometimes too much power comes with a price.  The ultimate downfall to absolute power is the forces that try to undermine you.  I wish I had the power of hindsight in the present, it would have cleared the way and given me the knowledge that I would need to know.

1.  I now think that 100% DEET will do absolutely nothing to me.  Seeing as though I would rub that stuff all over me twice a day.  You really glisten when you rub that stuff all over you.  And if you have some on your finger tips and eat a pancake, haha, what a great sensation.  Or I guess I should say, lack of sensation.  My tongue would go numb, my lips would go numb and sometimes they would stay numb for hours.  Try teaching that way.  Such fun!

2.  Mosquito nets become the ultimate sleeping fashion accessory.  And mosquito nets actually block the breeze and make your bed about 20 degrees hotter.  Holy cow, not fun.  Try sleeping in 80 degree weather, but now it feels like 100 degrees and you are literally swimming in sweat.  So not comfortable.

The old mosquito net.

The new and improved and "had-to-crawl-in-like-a-ninja" mosquito net.

And now mosquito nets remind me of wedding bride's veils.  So if I ever get married, no veil.  I've slept under a mosquito net, and honestly, I never want to be under one ever again.

3.  Still not quite sure about the Dengue Fever.  I had it.  I felt like shit for a week,  but then I was fine (Okay, I talked with the doctor and he was saying that the strain here on island was a weaker strain, and even he had no idea why everyone was freaking out about it).  My mom sent me some Tylenol (Thanks mom!!!).  Other people on the capital island left.  Why would you leave?  

On a fun side note, Max taught his eight graders about the signs and symptoms of Dengue Fever and what to do once you have it (honestly wait it out and take Tylenol).  But his lesson didn't go long enough, so he switched over to a writing contest about world peace.  But his students slightly mixed up the two.

How do you think we can get world peace?

- World peace can be achieved by taking Tylenol every 6 hours.

Apparently, Aspirin will lead to the opposite!

The 8th graders reading a chapter book!!!!

Do you know Victoria's Secret? Cuz, I'm pretty sure I don't

So Utrik is a very beautiful island.  Gorgeous blue waters (usually filled with an intense amount of bacteria), beautiful sandy beaches (watch your step on the giant rusty bicycle that litters the ground), and the incredible jungle (look out for the chicken/pig/human shit that you are about to step in), but there was one thing there that wasn't beautiful - the fashion.  Its like what Heidi Klum says, "In fashion, one day, you're in, the next, you're out."  Well the women here were never in, so then therefore they could never be out.  It was just bad all around.

So with the men's fashion, it was very typical American.  No grass shirts, and coconut bras.  Shorts and a t-shirt.  Usually the shorts/pants would be labelled "urban" or "city," and they were rather baggy.  Hair styles were extremely different from man to man.  Some had long hair, some had no hair, some had short hair, some had ...well... hair.

And now we are getting to the feature presentation of post tonight - the women's fashion.  These dresses (there were two different types) were the largest, most shapeless, tent like quality, blots of fabric that I have ever tried on.  Holy cow, I had no shape!  I was a giant square.  At times it felt disappointing  because I had no shape, but then I felt I had no unwanted, lingering eyes staring at me.  It was a blessing and not a blessing at the same time.  So as I mentioned before, there are two different types of women's fashion on Utrik - the guam, and the mu-mu.  A guam is what I considered to be the sweat pants of the Marshall Islands.  A guam is a very laid back piece of very colorful cloth.  The cloth is stretchy and has many different uses.  My favorite was when I wanted to clean my shower water from the well.  I would literally just pour from the well, through the guam, and into the bucket - and bam* the water is clean.  I love guams!!

Such a very colorful, large blob of fabric!

Please note that the other girl is also wearing a guam!  They come in many different shapes , but its pretty much just all one size - tent.

Mary Helen, myself and Kasey all looking stunning in our new guams!

Now the other fashion outfit the women would wear were mu-mu's.  A mu-mu has the same structure as a guam - large and tent like.  However, mu-mu's are made out of a non-breathable material.  Therefore, they are incredibly hot - as in temperature.  Geez!  And they don't stretch.  Now I was taller than almost everyone, and it was an unwritten rule that the mu-mu's and guams must go to your knees.  Well, it was so hard to find that.  And with the mu-mu's, they were just plain uncomfortable.  Oh, and mu-mu's were extremely formal and fancy (meaning I only wore them for church.  Every once in a while, I would wear them to school, but I never liked it.  So I would wear a t-shirt and a shirt.)

Looking good ladies!

Utrik's Top Model!

The beautiful girls on Ebon Atoll, Katie and Steph, in their matching mu'mus!  Work it hunny!!

And the best part was when I got back to the States - everyone had their knees showing!!!  Holy cow - I almost had a near heart attack!  On the plus side though, guams are an excellant cover up at the beach.  And plus it was rather fun to embarrass my family with the Igor the Tent Makers swim wear!

Crossed one endangered animal off my "Let's Eat It" list

So while in the Marshall Islands and on Utrik, I have had my fair share of unusual things to eat.  The list is rather odd, and I'm pretty sure I will never be able to repeat any of the items on it (and I'm not quite sure I want to).  So I already posted about muk-a-muk (see situational starvation), and I'm pretty sure I have eaten Dory and Nemo (both taste pretty good).  And I've had my fair share of coconuts.  But on island, the main thing I remember eating most of the time is pancakes!  So during the course of a week, a normal human being eats about 21 meals (3 meals a day x 7 days in one week - in case you need evidence of my math skills), and of those 21 meals, I'm pretty sure pancakes made up about 15 or 16 of those meals.  Yep, I never will eat another pancake again for the rest of my life.  Pancakes are just tasteless dough.  (Unless Jack Johnson will make me banana pancakes and sing me his song at the same time, then I think I would be obligated to eat another pancake).

So while we are eating pancakes, there are some things you can put on the pancake.  My personal favorite is when my parents would send me peanut butter (holy cow - I just want to thank you so much for all the care packages, and because of those, I have learned how to efficiently and effectively eat an entire bag of M&Ms in one day).  So peanut butter and pancakes are very tasty.  But before you know it, the jar of peanut butter is gone in one day (sometimes 2 or 3 if we managed to stretch it out by not eating or making pancakes).  So what makes a good substitute?  MAYONNAISE!!!  Yes that's right, white lard/fat/chemicals that often is added to sandwiches to a slightly better taste.  So now pancakes and mayonnaise taste good.  "But wait," you ask yourself as you are reading this, "doesn't mayonnaise need to be refrigerated? Didn't I learn in my middle school Home Economics class that if mayonnaise isn't refrigerated (or if I am going on a picnic and I made potato salad and left it out the whole night) then therefore everyone is going to get food poisoning?"

NO!!!  I ate that unrefrigerated mayonnaise all the time and did not get sick.  So therefore I am going to assume that all health food exports are liars and don't know what they are talking about.

On the plus side, I discovered how to make a pancake taco.  Take a pancake, add some rice in the center (to be more authentic, have the rice be left over rice from the night before) and then add some mayonnaise.  If you have fish or spam, please add it, otherwise the taco will be okay without it.  And Enjoy!  Its the closest thing to a taco I could come up with...

And for a random fact - dog tastes good.  Actually, very good.  I would totally eat that again.

And now for the reference to the title of this particular blog - what endangered animal did I eat?  Sea turtle!  And I have to say, it is such a weird taste.  It has the taste of fish, but the consistency of something I don't know how to describe.  It was incredibly chewy - like the type of chewy where you chew, and chew, and chew, but what is in your mouth hasn't changed shaped and you are not sure if you can swallow or not.  Yep - its exactly like that.  And now sea turtle isn't on my list of favorite foods.

But you can enjoy the pictures of some people preparing a sea turtle (a rather large one).

It may not be Oprah's, but it was my book club.

So while on Utrik, there were many things to do.  My social calendar was so full, I was so constantly busy and holy cow, I just couldn't keep up.  (okay, I'm kidding.)  I had a lot of free time on my hands.  And somethings to keep me busy - watch Filippino soap operas (Luisa and Carding!!!), write epicly long letters to my friends.  (Fun side note story, the one time the plane was broken and I started writing a letter to my friend Holly (thinking the plane was coming later that week, but alas it did not come).  Well, what was originally going to be a 6 page (front and back) letter turned into a 30 page journal saga novel, and I honestly spent 6 pages talking about open faced sandwiches.  Poor Holly...)  And besides writing letters, I read - ALOT!

I was actually surprised the amount books I was able to read in such a short span - way too many.  I feel like I filled my quota for life.  But I like the over time work because I love reading.  (In fact, one of my main goals in life is to read all 7 Harry Potter books in 24 hours)  And it got to the point on island where I was reading anything I could get my hands on.  Thankfully my parents love me, and would send packages filled with books!!!  And Utrik's past WorldTeach volunteers left many many many good (and not so good) books for me to go through.  And let's just say I had a great variety and selection to pick from.

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One book that got me thinking about life was The Animal Dialogues by Craig Childs.  It was all about his different encounter with animals (as well as some information about each animal - and the information was information one would not normally find or know.  For example, mountain lions' mouth and teeth formation is perfect for biting at the base of your head. The teeth are perfect for driving into the nerves and essentially ending your life with one bite.  Or that crows are incredibly smart.  Or that mosquitos have a sci-fi tech system.  They can identify if you are male or female, spot you across a football, and can identify where you are the sweatiest.  Its rather remarkable).  But after reading this book, it dawned on me that I don't have enough experience in the wilderness.  I need to get some.  And I don't have enough experience living in a ti-pee.  But it was a very good book.

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Another book that I liked (in the lieu of many many many many I had read) was Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life by Jon Lee Anderson.  Okay, I feel that I need to warn you first.  The book is broken up into 3 parts (and this book is incredibly long and in the middle of Part 1, I had to stop - where I read 3 crime mofia books but part 1 (for me) took a while to get through.)  The 1st part focuses on Che's beginnings and his life in Argentina.  The 2nd and 3rd parts focus on overtaking Cuba and life in Cuba, and his political and physical adventures in Africa and Bolivia.  This book made me get a different outlook on how I viewed the United States, and my opinions on Cuba.  It was well worth the read.  And now whenever I see someone wearing a Che shirt, I always stop and think - do you really know what he represents? Do you really know?

And on a funnier note, my host family had some books - mainly books explaining the different stories from the Bible, and they had a Mormon bible.  I tried to read it, and put it down after 1 page.  Yeah, no thanks.
But there was this one book -

 And honest to goodness - one of the questions inside was...

Yeah, so in the words of Mean Girls - you have your cousins, and then you have your first cousins...

Let's go to the movies!!!

Well, if Utrik had a movie theatre, then I would honestly have gone like every weekend, even if they were playing the same movie (and if that were the case, then I would have memorized it and performed the best one woman show around and it would have been Oscar worthy, just saying).  But alas, Utrik did not have a movie theatre (Majuro did, but it was closed/shut down the whole time, so I don't know if that counts or not...)  But I did get to watch movies, and there was a huge variety to choose from - horror (some medicine gets out and turns people into semi zombies, and they are used as military weapons until gone wrong), comedy... (continued below the picture.)

And that is how we do it!!  (Side -note, they are watching Barbie and the Mermaid, and ALL of them are drawn into the movie's well written plot line, amazing special effects, and that super catchy surfing song...)  What a great quality movie.  I didn't waste my time at all.  Its not like I'm wishing for that 1 hour back...

children's (in which, I would highly recommend Hotel for Dogs - super cute and all my little brothers and sisters loved it, and they loved Max Keeble's Big Move and the evil ice cream man), military (Jessica Simpson's horrible military movie and actually played a huge part in making me consider the National Guard, Inglorious Bastards (okay, I confess, I brought this one!!) and some Matt Damon one) and my personal favorite - FILIPPINO SOAP OPERAS!!!!

Holy cow, those movies (and when I mean movie, I mean like 20 dvds consists of 1 movie - so it was more like a television series) had some great plot lines, great acting, great special effects (holy cow, that house on fire looked absolutely real!  Did you see that?  That looks like real, legit fire!)...

And they were freaking awesome!!!  There were whole days where I would just sit there and stare at the tiny 6 inch screen and watch disk after disk after disk of soap opera.  And for some odd reason, I would always feel like I accomplished something that day.  My favorite was Luisa and Carding (okay the real title was Gulong ng Palad) and after I watched this one, all of the characters in my classroom (for example if I was teaching body parts or acting out a concept), their names would become Luisa and Carding.

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This show was simply amazing!!  Okay, so Luisa comes from a dirty poor family, and Carding is super rich.  Well, Carding and Luisa are friends when they are little (Luisa's mom is a maid and works for Carding's family), but then Carding's family moves to America because his father suddenly dies from a heart attack.  Well several years pass and now both are teenagers.  And guess who comes back into town... CARDING!  Well, he falls in love with Luisa and same with her.  Haha, well both families don't like this... and lets just say that many many many people try to tear them apart.  And include babies, illegal kidney donations, and very gorgeous people - bad things will happen.  It was great for me to watch!!  And now I am officially addicted to Filippino soap operas, and it is a good addiction.  I hope it never stops...  No 12 step program needed.

Hockey withdrawal - it was H-E-double hockey sticks

Now I know that I'm not Canadian (although people from Pittsburgh swear that I sound Canadian), but I love ice hockey.  It developed on later in life.  Okay, I should rephrase.  I'm not that old.  Why, I'm only 24.  So I should say it developed later in my young adult/teenager life.  Now some background, I'm from Erie, Pennsylvania.  Erie happens to have their own hockey team - The Erie Otters (you otter be there).  The Erie Otters are a part of the OHL (or the Ontario Hockey League - basically high schoolers play each other in a professional league.  (other fun random side note, when I was growing up, I had NO idea that the league was Canadian.  I knew the other teams were from Canada and I always thought that it was very nice of the Otters to play the Canadian national anthem.  And then in college I realized that they would always play the Canadian national anthem because it was the ONTARIO Hockey League.  Mind blown!  And discovering that when the London Knights would play the Erie Otters, they were not actually from England.  MIND BLOWN AGAIN!!))

So this one time in college, my friends and I (all back from our universities for the holiday/semester break) decide to attend one of Erie's attractions - An Otter game.  And this was the first game many of us had attended since elementary school when they would have game nights.  You could buy discount tickets and sit with your school.  While Grandview Elementary School never did manage to get a yellow and green out, it was still fun to sit and watch the hockey game, and more importantly to see what your other 2nd grade classmates' families looked like.  So anyway, my friends went to a game and  MIND BLOWN THRICE!!!

I knew what I was missing in my life.  It was like a missing piece just fell into place.  How could I have not noticed this beautiful sport before?!  IT WAS AMAZING!!  The action, the pace, the way the game was played, the amount of physical endurance needed, the skill - it was all there and it was incredible.  And at that point, I became slightly obsessed.  And then I went back to college, with a new love for ice hockey and a new love for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Okay, so fast forward to Utrik and island life.  There was no ice hockey on Utrik.  Geez, there was no ice.  (Okay, some houses had ice boxes where you could fish, coconuts, chicken, beef/steak, and ice cream!)  And it was hard to explain what ice hockey was because both ice and hockey didn't really exist on island.  So I asked my parents to send me any information in any media form that had to deal with hockey and the Pittsburgh Penguins.

And they did.... sort of.  I guess I should have been more specific.  I should have said to send recordings of games (any teams would have been fine at that point) and information about the Pittsburgh Penguins as a whole team.  The things I got in the boxes where articles about Sidney Crosby's brain (he just had a concussion the year before and his brain rattle incident was still top news) and how he was adjusting or not adjusting to stuff, Slap Shot 3, and the Pittsburgh Penguins Stanley Cup 2009 DVD movie thing.

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What a great ZEN movie!!!

So I guess you could say that my hockey withdrawal process was getting better.  I had some hockey exposure to get over the fact that before, I had nothing.  The one thing that I absolutely hated was the Stanley Cup DVD of the Penguins winning.  THERE WERE NO GAMES ON IT!!  It was just a bunch of interviews about their season and how the playoffs were - "Game 5 was the game that like never happened.  No one was feeling jittery and there was a feeling of calmness.  And then we hit the ice and I don't know what happened.  It was like the game that never happened.  And afterwards, Mario came to our locker room and said just told us to shake it off."  (Now, I have to admit, its pretty sad when I can almost quote this.  It just shows how much I liked yet hated it).  Now I hasn't a fan of the interviews, and to be honest, Sidney's voice slightly gets on my nerves - eh.  But it was something that dealt with the Pittsburgh Penguins, so I was okay with it.  I did however love the microphone set up with Billy Guerin.  That was cool.

And the articles my parents sent me, they always dealt with Sidney Crosby's brain and how it rattled.  Okay, I know that a concussion is a very serious injury and not taking the correct steps in healing and recovery can result in some very serious problems.  I get that, and I award him for waiting for his comeback and waiting for his brain to get better.  But my issue was about the team.  The team still played, even if Sid did not.  The team was winning or losing game, but I never heard any of it.  Thats because I kept getting articles about the concussed captain.  I'm sorry, but there are many other extremely talented and athletic players on that team, so why is the focus just on one guy?  If I was on that team, that was get under my skin so much.  And that is what irks me as a fan.  

But at the same time, I was reading about hockey.  So it was all good.  I feel that I went through a 12 step recovery program to get over my addiction and came out a stronger, interested but not super crazy fan of hockey and the Pittsburgh Penguins.  And I guess it was a good thing that this happened because now the players and owners where at a stand off, so there was no hockey.  I guess the world (okay, probably just Canada) had the wonderful opportunity to experience what I experienced - hockey withdrawal.  And just to let you know, there is no pill to fix it.