A few weeks ago, I was video chatting with my friend Megan
who is a teacher in the U.S. We were chatting before I had to go work and she
asked me when I had to be at work. My response was, "Oh I usually leave around
8:00." Of course this caused her to ask if I had to be there at a certain time.
The truth is that here in Samoa, there is a time that schools "start" and then
there is a different time each day that they actually start. According to my
school’s schedule, we are supposed to have our assembly at 7:30 each morning.
Any given day, however, the bell might ring at 8:15 am, 8:30 am, or maybe even
9:00 am. There is no guarantee as to when the day will start.
Even with that, the schedule for each day is very different.
I have my own schedule, which I do my best to keep every day. I teach two
groups before lunch, then one group after lunch. After that, I try to co-teach
with 1-2 teachers depending on the day. Some days, lunch goes late and I cannot
co-teach with 2 teachers. Other days, we end early and I am unable to do
everything I want in the afternoon. Just this past Thursday, I was in a
teacher’s room co-teaching when the bell rang. At first we both thought it was
for years 1-3 (they get out earlier than the rest of the school), but then my
teacher pointed out to me that everyone was leaving. Not even my teacher knew
that we were ending early that day.
Even outside of school, there is not a lot of
consistency. I live with a host
family in their house. In my family, in particular, there has been a lot of
change in the last year and a half that I have lived with them. When I first
moved in, it was my host brother, my host mom, and my host dad. Since then,
there have been brothers, sisters, aunts, and cousins who have moved in and out
along with my host mom leaving for New Zealand twice and my host dad getting
sick and passing away. There has not been one single person who has lived in my
house for the full year and a half that I have lived here. At one point, I
didn’t know who would be in my house when I came home from school.
The constant changes I have experienced have probably been
one of the most challenging aspects of my service. I have always been a major
type A, schedule keeping person. I like to know what to expect and how to plan
my life out. When I was 10 I knew I wanted to be a teacher and figured out how
to do it. I got my master’s right after undergraduate school because I knew I
would need it eventually anyway and wanted to get it then. I have always
planned out my life and known ‘first this, then this, then this…’, but Peace
Corps has shown me to go with the flow. This does not mean that I have totally
lost my type A personality. I have simply mellowed out and learned that not
everything can be run on a schedule. It is with the change that I find some
interesting times.
This change has also come at a time in my life that I am not
100% sure what will come next. I guess we shall see!
