And Now For Something Simple and Endearing...

Here are three of my favorite pieces of art from my students that I have accrued over my time teaching here in the RMI. For some reason, these are all from my 104 class, which is NOT my homeroom. Go figure. The picture of me was just for fun from one of my girls (pre-hair change, as you can see). The other two comic strips were for when we were learning about main ideas and supporting details and I asked the students two write stories using comics. As you can see in the strips, my boys are heavily concerned with me finding a girlfriend/wife. They have offered to "give" me to their sisters. I graciously declined.






Things have been pretty intense around here this past week. Keeping up with class, learning lines, trying to stay on my workout schedule, cooking, reading for pleasure, becoming newly obsessed with the show "Breaking Bad" (which is so good; Mandy and I literally sat down and watched the whole first season this past Saturday without meaning to do so), and trying to find a job (if you know anyone hiring in marketing, advertising, or law, let me know!) are not a good balance. Something has to give, but its the leisure stuff that is keeping me sane. I guess this is the balance that life requires that I was always told about. Oh well.

This past weekend I took the undergrads to Enemanit. I had not been since my birthday! It was an incredibly enjoyable experience, as always. There were also two new helicopters that had been sunk by the island that Dan Moore and I were able to check out.

See you next week!

Bar lo kom,

Andrew

The Best of Majuro

Dear blog readers,

In an attempt to upgrade the "blogginess" of my blog, I decided to keep up with this theme of lists (because, really, who doesn't enjoy a good list) for this week. Earlier in the week, I came to the terrifying conclusion that I had spent all of my stipend for the month and that I was in desperate need of next month's stipend. In thinking that, I realized that the month of January was almost over, that it had flown by, and that I only had four months left of my RMI/DVTP experience. The realization was exciting, depressing, and shocking. I do not know where the time has gone. In light of this, I figured that I should take some time out to give a more accurate picture of the place I have been living and give some credit to the people, places, and things that have made this experience so wonderful to me thus far. Conclusively, here we arrive at the best of Majuro list. Now, I know that many of these lists focus on a particular area--food, hotels, shops, performances, etc.--but since there is such a variety of somethings and a dearth of others, I figured that I would keep the list general. So, for those of you who are daring and are interested in coming out to Majuro for some Pacific Ocean fun, these are the people, places, and things that you will want to meet, go to, and eat/buy.

Best Handicraft (Animono) Store

There are a plethora of handicraft stores in Majuro. When I was doing my Christmas shopping, I went to every single store to find the best deals. Many people will tell you that the airport has the best handicraft store, and, in earnest, they do have the best deals. However, as far as the quality of the physical plant of the store, variety of animono, and service, Elefa is the best handicraft store in Majuro. The store itself is beautiful. Most all patrons take off their shoes before they come into the store in respect to the homeliness of the place and the wood floors. When you come in, the smell of the manipulated coconut fawns is the first thing you notice along with the numerous number of baskets covering the right wall. To the left, there is a depressed portion of the store that has a number of woven purses and hats (I have never seen woven hats at another store). In the far left corner of the store is an enclosed room where patrons can peek in and see a number of women working on the actual handicrafts. This is my favorite feature of the store. I love knowing that the profits are going to the women making the products. The store also offers classes. I have not taken any of them, but I hope to take a class or two before I go.

Best Pizza

There are a number of places that sell pizza in Majuro, but my favorite has to be The Marshall Islands Club. While the Marshall Islands Resort boasts a delicious array of toppings and a double sized garlic crust, for price and quantity, MIC takes the pie. There speciality pizza, which ports most vegetables you can think of, pineapple, and ham, and it runs around 18 dollars. The crust is delicious and the timing, from order to in your stomach, is extremely quick.

Best Restaurant (Ambiance)

This is an extremely difficult category. The most beautiful restaurant is definitely the Marshall Islands Club which is located right on the oceanside of the island with a beautiful outdoor view. But, as far as a winner in this category, I am going to have to concede this to the Tide Table. TT is an extremely popular spot for ribelles and visiting fishermen and sailors since it is right next to the Shoreline dock. Though small, the far wall that runs the length of the restaurant is all glass, giving a nice view of "downtown" Majuro and the lagoon. The walls are covered with animono and the restaurant has a nice bar with a large television that is almost always playing sports. The best part of the restaurant is the wait staff. All of the ladies that work at the restaurant are extremely nice and will cater to any dining experience need that you may have. It just so happens that I teach the children/siblings of almost the entire evening wait staff, so whenever I go there I get extra special treatment!

Best Restaurant (Food)

Majuro is full of excellent Chinese food. I assume this is because of the large number of Chinese residents in town. Ask any one and they will give you a different answer for which is the best Chinese food restaurant, but despite all other claims, I must side with Won Hai Shen. The prices are great, the variety of food is amazing, and the portions are hefty. If you do get a chance to go there, try any dish with eggplant (if it is on island), the sizzling beef (otherwise known on the menu as "hot beef on an iron board"), and the sweet and sour soup. You will be pining for another meal there soon after.

Best Bang For You Buck (Food)

There are two close contenders in this category. The second place winner is DAR (and, unfortunately, I have no idea what that stands for). DAR specializes in Marshallese and Pacific Islander cuisine (which includes curries, I was surprised to find out), however you can get your standard breakfast foods and lunch plates also. The portions there are large and the food is delicious and cheap. However, the real winner is one of the newest restaurants in Majuro. It is an unnamed sandwich shop in the Good Foods Market. The atmosphere of the place is like that of a Boarders Cafe and the sandwiches, made on homemade bread, are huge. You have have chicken, tuna, beef, hot dog, bacon, lettuce, tomato, cabbage, onions, pickles, hot peppers, sweet peppers, and cheese in any combination for the small price of $3.50. And you won't be hungry for a while.

Best Bar (Drinks and Bar Tender)

I must admit that have have frequented the few bar scenes that exist in Majuro and you cannot beat the guys at the Marshall Islands Resort bar. Many of the patrons are ribelles or Marshallese officials, so the service is top notch. Once the guys know you, they make your drinks strong and cut a lot of deals for your continued patronage. Gary, John, and Sunny are all great guys and my experience here would not have been as fun without them. Unfortunately, MIR has recently raised the price of their drinks, so I do not know if MIR will hold this title for the remainder of the year, but the bartenders still remain unbeatable. If you go there, make sure you ask for an "Aqua Shocka." It is an invention from some of the permabelles on island. It is the color of the ocean and will knock you off of your feet.

Best Bar (Ambiance)

The award for this category has to go to the Marshall Islands Club. Not only is the bar huge but it has a hand shuffle board, two bars (one indoors and one outside), live music, three different outdoor seating areas, three different indoor seating areas, pool tables, and karaoke. I mean, c'mon! It's also right on the water making it a beautiful spot. Unfortunately, enough people do not frequent there so it is never a "hopping" scene, but the lack of huge crowds in the big space is sometimes refreshing.

Best Karaoke

Many different spots offer karaoke in Majuro but the most entertaining place to test your vocal chords is at The Flame Tree Lounge. FTL, an infamous bar in its own right, has a small television in the corner of one of their bars and two microphones that patrons fight for vehemently. While the music selection is not full of popular hits, the regulars at FTL seem to know all the words to the most obscure songs. You get everyone, from people who can really wail to people who are actually wailing. The song I have heard performed the most?: "We Are The World."

Best Dance Spot

Rounding out this section on nightlife and entertainment is a Majuro favorite--The Pub. Now, it is a commonly known fact that you cannot go to The Pub before 1:00 AM, or else literally no one will be there. Most other bars close around this time so this is when The Pub comes to life. Best of all, they pretend to close down around 3:00 AM when the cops arrive, but stay open even longer afterwards. The bar itself only has two rooms, one for playing pool and another, large room with a second bar and a dance floor, complete with black lights and lasers. The music varies between Marshallese music (which can be difficult to dance to at times) and American music. If you want to get down, The Pub is definitely the best option.

Best Place to be Mobbed by Children

In a completely different vain, taking walks, or "jambos," around Majuro is a popular activity. As I have spent more and more time in Majuro, I have gotten to know more and more people. Still, there are a limited number of ribelles and since my students are spread all over the town my name has gotten around to all different groups of children. If you are looking to hang out with the local kids and have a great time, look no further than Demon Town. Demon Town is the name of the oceanside road next to MIHS. There, on the narrow street, seemingly dozens of kids are hanging out at all hours of the day and night. I always feel compelled to stop and play with them when I go on this jambo for the fear that if I don't, the kids will overtake me. Marshallese kids are extremely sweet and friendly and playing with the kids in Demon Town is actually one of my favorite activities in Majuro.

Best Jambo

The Demon Town jambo is an incredibly enjoyable one, but it is one that you have to be ready for. If you want to relax and go on a beautiful walk, you definitely have to walk across the ocean at low tide to Ejit. The home of Justin and Alex, Ejit is an island full of Bikinians who were placed there some time after the atomic bomb testing in the Bikini Atoll. The island itself has many mean dogs, but the walk to the island is a refreshing. It takes about 30 to 40 minutes. Going at low tide is highly encouraged since at high tide the current from the ocean can be strong and the water can be near or above one's head. Between the end of Majuro and Ejit, there are two small islands. The first is called Demon Island, since, supposedly, demons live there. The second is called Electric Island, aptly named because there is an electricity tower placed on the island. The walk itself is gorgeous. The ocean is on one side and the lagoon is on the other, you can see a few fish, and the sound of the waves is incredibly relaxing.

Best Place to Swim

On the other end of Majuro is the town called Laura. An hour ride from Majuro, I refer to Laura as the suburbs of the city. Life is different there and moves at a slower place. At the end of the island in Laura is a beautiful beach. The water is not deep for a long time because of the coral shelf making it the perfect place to lazily swim. You also have the option of going snorkeling in a relaxed setting.

Best Place to Snorkel

Speaking of snorkeling, Laura beach is NOT the best place to go in Majuro. Off in the lagoon side of Ejit is pretty beautiful, but really, the best snorkeling is on Enemanit, the picnic island. The island is a short ride from Shoreline and my host family and a few other people go there every Sunday for a picnic. The snorkeling there is unbelievable. There is a sunken WWII fighter plane and a sunken ship a few hundred yards from the beach. Even more amazing is that you can walk a few feet from the beach, put on goggles and see more fish or coral than you have probably ever seen in your life. It is like being in an aquarium.

Best Place to Relax

Enemanit also tops my list for the best place to relax in Majuro. In addition to great snorkeling, Enemanit has lazy swim spots, bungalows with hammocks, and the regulars usually bring a feast of food. Honestly, it is what I imagined island paradise to look like when I came to the RMI. It is the perfect place to spend a Sunday.


So there you have it. The Best of Majuro! If you have any questions or have some suggestions for categories to add the next time I do this (which will most likely be right before I leave), please don't hesitate to ask. Hopefully this gives you a bit of a better picture of what this place is like.

Bar lo kom,

Andrew

End of the Term and Turning 22 in Paradise

This week was highlighted by the end of the quarter and birthdays. The first quarter came to an end after 9 weeks of teaching (which is so crazy to think that that much time has passed already). MMS had finals on Thursday and Friday. While I think it is strange to have "finals"--literally or conceptually--at the end of the quarter in middle school, I prepared my kids and wrote my tests nonetheless. We spent the first part of the week reviewing everything we had learned over the quarter. For reading, this included literary elements, parts of a story arc, Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (which we have not finished but I thought it was important to review anyway), and the concept of main idea and supporting details. For grammar, we covered a lot of ground this term including identifying nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, subjects, and objects, proper and common nouns, subject, object, and possessive pronouns, making words plural and possessive, and articles and demonstrative pronouns (this, that, these, and those). Phew!

Initially, I was worried that testing the kids on all of the content we had gone over would be too much for them. My plan was to give them all of the answers for the reading test (since most of it was vocabulary) and re-teach everything from grammar as a means to make the test not only about how much the kids retained but to see if they would actually study or not. Surprisingly, during the review I was shocked by how much the kids had retained. I was especially proud that many of my students who did not speak English well were able to answer many of the questions. I went into the testing days thinking that all of my kids would do better than I expected.

Unfortunately, I was discouraged by the results. In my homeroom (104), only 14 people out of 31 passed the reading final and only 14 passed the grammar final. In my other class (107), 14 people out of 30 passed the reading final and 20 passed the grammar final. I was highly discouraged by these results, especially since the review went so well. It was a clear indication to me that the majority of the kids did not study. It also made me question the final format I created and how I had been teaching and assessing understanding throughout the term. I computed the grades in the hopes of a bit more encouragement towards my efforts as a teacher this first term. After computing the grades, 14 people passed reading and 15 people passed grammar. In 107, 16 people passed reading and 18 passed grammar. I am happy that a bit more than half of the students passed both classes, especially recognizing that I was pushing them harder than they had ever been pushed before. I come from a background of parents and teachers who always expected the best from me, even if I was not able to produce it. It was their hope that if I aimed high, I would still come out well even if I did not reach my goals. This was my mentality going into teaching my students. Still, I think that those methods did not necessarily work well with all of my students. Many of them have not ever been asked to do anything in a classroom besides copy down notes from the board and memorize answers. Thinking skills and study skills are completely foreign ideas as a result and so the kind of results I was hoping for might be too far out of reach if those skills are not put into place. I feel like my next big challenge is to teach my students how to think--not only outside of the box but inside of it as well. My hope this week and this term is to change how I am teaching to make it a bit more holistic so I can reach all of my students at their various levels. I started this week by telling my students that I will not let them fail this term and I hope that is a promise that I can keep. Still I recognize that my students have to want to work if there is going to be any success. Motivation and inspiration and two things I am still struggling to figure out how to teach.

This week, I plan on teaching thinking skills and study skills. I ask you, blog reader, to give me any ideas you may have in regards to these skills and how to teach them. It has been so long since I have had to actually consider either of them that I am at a bit of a loss. The internet has provided some help but I realize that I need to come up with other ways to teach these types of ideas to make them fun and to make them understood by both my best students and my students who understand the least English. What are some of the thinking and studying skills that you think are most important to develop first? Thank you in advance for your help!

On a lighter note, this past week was FULL of ribelle birthdays! It started on Thursday, which was Justin's birthday and the birthday of Jason Temple, a ribelle from England who works at WAM, and Amethyst Magee, who is the child of Yvonne and Craig Magee, two ribelle College of the Marshall Islands teachers who I have grown close with. After giving my first final, I rushed over to MIR to wish Jason a happy birthday. His girlfriend Aylssa Cowell, had planed a boat trip for him but we had to wait for an additional battery to come lest the one battery die and we get stranded in the middle of the lagoon. The second battery was taking a while to be delivered so we decided to get into the boat anyway. Lo and behold, just as we pulled away from the dock, the battery died. We had to walk the boat back across some reef. It was unexpected but fun time. As I have mentioned in previous blog entries, I go to Yvonne's house every Thursday for dinners with her family and a few other CMI teachers. This Thursday was a surprise party for Amethyst. Mandy and I purchased a cake from a bakery in town and Craig made DELICIOUS homemade pizza. A few of Amethyst's friends were invited as well. She was very surprised and enjoyed the party thoroughly. Alex and Justin came from Ejit to join in the festivities as well and that night we went out to celebrate his birth.

Saturday, Justin and I texted all of the ribelles we knew and told them to come out to the Marshall Islands Club to formally celebrate both of our birthdays. MIC is right on the water and it is a beautiful bar. Many ribelles showed up and it was very nice to see that though we had only been in the RMI for a few months, we had gained many friends. The night ended late (or early) and a fun time was had by all. On Sunday, I had already decided that I was going to go to Enemanit since I had not been there in a long time. After numerous phone calls I found out that someone was still going (the weather was a bit rough) and Yvonne decided to go with me. I have been to Enemanit four times now, and this time was the least crowded. Usually there are around 30 adults and a billion children, but there were only a handful of people this time, which was very nice and relaxing. We barbecued and I went snorkeling with an 8-year-old ribelle boy named Logan. His parents were new on island and they, strangely enough, used to be Community Directors at a dorm complex at Dartmouth! Small world. Anyway, it was nice to have something that I wanted to do actually come together even though my efforts were last minute.

Monday was my actual birthday. I am really bad with birthdays, since I do not like the idea of getting older, but my dorm mates made sure to make it special. I woke up with a handmade card on my door from Mandy. It had a nice note in it about how we had become such good friends in a short amount of time and a poem called "All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum, which can be found at the end of the blog entry. At school Mandy surprised me by having taught all of her and my students "Happy Birthday" in sign language and by having them all sing and sign it to me at the end of recess. It was overwhelming and highly appreciated. It is Marshallese tradition to sing to the birthday boy or girl and then throw money at them (usually bills). Many students appologized to me for forgetting money, but I was relieved that they did, because I would have felt very uncomfortable taking their money/refusing the gift. Anyway, my students also drew a happy birthday picture on the board in my classroom and sang to me as well. It was nice to feel so loved. When I got back from lunch, Bill, who knew of my love for bacon, had cooked me close to a pound of bacon for a present. It was neatly presented on the kitchen counter. Mandy and I made delicious bacon and tomato sandwiches for lunch (and I ate all of the rest of it...admittedly I felt slightly ill afterwards). I came home after school to find Joanna making 22 homemade dumplings for me that were filled with chicken, spinach, garlic, and tofu. They were also delicious (I am trying to savor them but it is really difficult). Then, for dinner, Justin and Alex came in from Ejit and Mandy, Joanna, Hannah, and I (and Erica, a World Teach volunteer who is on the nearby outer island of Arno but is staying with us because she is sick) all went to Won Hai Shen for dinner. Afterwards, we went to Tide Table for ice cream and so that I could wish happy birthday to another ribelle, named Natalie, with whom I share the October 18th birthday. The day was very nice and relaxed, but I will admit that it made me homesick for my family and friends. Know that you were missed on this day, that you were in my thoughts, and that I love you all very much.

Today, the day after my birthday (though I still count it since it was my birthday in the US), my homeroom students told me that they had something for me after school. I had no idea what it might be, but I waited around for the last period to end to see what the surprise was. My students found me in the office and led me to my classroom where they had used their own money to purchase me snacks and cookies. It was en extremely nice gesture, especially knowing that many of them were using their taxi or lunch money to give me a gift. After school I was able to talk to my parents for a little under 20 mins. My mom, per tradition, told me my birthday story (which involves chili, the film Full Metal Jacket, and a very well dressed doctor) which was the icing on the proverbial cake for my birthday celebration. Thanks to all those who made the day/week/weekend special!

And now, on to a new term!

Bar lo kom,

Andrew

"All I Really Need to Know I learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you are sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life--
Learn some and think some
And draw and paint and sing
And dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon [...]
Be aware of wonder [...]
And it is still true, no matter how old you are--
When you go into the world,
It's best to hold hands and stick together.