Yeah...she's ok...

Malaki is my little 5 year-old buddy who is deaf. I help him and his family 3 days a week with sign language and learning letters and numbers and whatnot. We recently got him a hearing aid from an Australian NGO which has been very exciting. The thing is, in Samoa if you have any sort of disability, you are a misfit. Believe it or not, if you have white skin you are also a bit of a misfit. I recently came to this realization and it dawned on me that this is more or less how my village views Malaki and I, as the misfits. Not that this bothers me, mind you. I feel that both of us play our parts very well. If you already stand out, why not play it up? For instance, Malaki usually gets pretty excited when I show up at his house with my bag of goodies i.e. legos and alphabet flash cards. Often times he jumps up and down and does this spastic dance. How could I not join? His house is right next to the road so we often begin his lessons doing this crazy, spontaneous dancing for each other and half the village that is watching from the road. Oh look at the misfits. Good thing they have each other to be weird with. To be honest, I am glad too.
Things are going very well out here in the middle of the ocean. I have stopped counting the days I have been here and started to relax and enjoy the overall experience of it all, such as lizards falling on my head while I working at my table in my house. So many funny little things happen to me on a day to day basis I sometimes wish I had a tape recorded 24 hours a day.
My family is coming to visit in 3 weeks and I have never been so excited to see all of them! It will have been 10 months since I last saw them. We are organizing a free health clinic for the whole village which should be very fun and equally chaotic. My village is also quite excited and has already started talking about ava ceremonies and dances. I am thrilled that my family will be able to experience Samoa as it really is and not just a tourist attraction, although I am not sure they quite understand what they are in for, but that’s all part of the fun, right?
Term 2 is slowly winding down, which means substantially less teaching. I started my reading program at school, which is going splendidly. I tested all the kids in years 4-8 and put them into groups of 6-8 depending on their reading levels (we are talking English reading levels by the way). There are also 2 boys how have pretty severe ADD, so I have started helping them 1 on 1. I really enjoy this schedule much more than what I was doing because now I can walk into an empty classroom in the morning and I have a few minutes to get things organized and get my brain in the right place, i.e. finish my 2nd or 3rd cup of coffee. Then I go and pull kids out of class for an hour or so to come and work with me and if they are driving me nuts I can just send them back to class. All the kids are also really excited to be pulled out of class because I give them stickers and words of encouragement and I don’t punish them in the typical ways that most Samoan teachers often punish them…I’ll just let you think about what that means…
Now just because things are going well, doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate email and packages any less. It is so wonderful to come home after a rough day and have a little chocolate in my fridge. So thank you all that haven’t forgotten me and keep it coming! Love to you all!