Adventures in the Real World: Tofa Soifua Samoa!

Hello again! As I am writing this new entry, I am sitting at the hotel across from my house and watching the clock tick down my final hours in American Samoa. Tonight at 11:20pm the last of my friends and I will finally depart this island. Right now, my feelings are mostly elation. I have spent the last week saying goodbye to students, teachers, friends and cool island spots and I'm ready to leave. I'm fairly certain that my departure will eventually be bittersweet, but I don't think that will come for another few days.

The last week of school was stress-free and rather uneventful. The students took their finals on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday was an awards ceremony - each teacher gave certificates to the top one or two students in each class. It was a wonderful way to recognize the dutiful students that had worked hard throughout the year. I greatly enjoyed handing my awards over to two students who were shocked and very grateful for the honor. It was one of those awesome teaching moments. Friday was our clean-up day. This meant that I had about 10 students in my classroom from 8am-12pm doing about one hour of cleaning and about three hours of singing and dancing. It was a nice, relaxing way to end the year and say goodbye. I exchanged emails and Facebook accounts with a number of students and we promised to stay in touch. It was very difficult to say goodbye to some of the students. As their teacher, I have pushed them and encouraged them all year, and it is tough for my (I have now realized) over-bearing personality to just let them go and hope they do well in the years to come. It often seems as if this experience was a mini-parenting experience.

The past week since school has been out has involved last trips to fun island locations, school graduation and celebrating/saying goodbye to friends. Leaving tonight makes me just about the last of my friends left. A few friends will be on the flight tonight, and we plan to enjoy our last Pizza Hut dinner together before boarding the plane.

Overall, this year has been a wonderful experience. It is quite easy for me to look at my time here through rose colored glasses right now, but I think it was very worthwhile. I truly loved teaching many of my students and hope to continue encouraging them onto bright futures. My staff at Tafuna High School was amazing, and it was hilarious to talk with them everyday and share stories about misbehaving students. But the thing that I will definitely miss the most about this island was the other volunteers I meet. Without them, I would not still be here. In this year of struggles and triumphs, we truly became a family and helped each other through it all. Luckily, most of them have the good sense to live on the East Coast next year, so staying in touch will be easy. But I believe that I have grown up a lot in the past year, and I do believe that this experience was a necessary stepping stone for me.

All that being said, without further ado, because my camera is broken and I cannot upload any new pictures, I will show you some older pictures of the island. Tofa soifua American Samoa!