Hats off to the great teachers of the world!

So I am working with a school for the next two years as my Peace Corps service.I knew I had a tremendous amount of respect for teachers and the hassle they went through and how much patience and love a person must ahve to dedicate their lives to teaching. However, after only being at the school for two weeks and attending their staff meetings, doing home visits and observing classes that teachers are the most hard working gropu of people-HANDS DOWN.Man kids are wonderful joys to have a round but sometimes you just want to ing their neck, lol.To have the patience to teach children topics for weeks, trying to impart knowledge and seeing at times major absorption of the work or slow pick up of the topic but being faithful to their job and to the students no matter what is continually astounding.the other day I was sitting with a student asking her to read me the story book she had.Most of the words she hadn't mastered so I tried to assist her in learning the words.MAN it took all of me to be patient and work at their pace to learn the words and not get frustrated when a word we went over a page ago looked like she had never seen it before and I had to go over the word again.Another time I was with a studet doing a small addition problem which took us about what felt like an hour to do and still we weren't able to get thoguh it to put the answer on the page.
Also, being on the other side of the desk and observing staff meetings shows how much paperwork a teacher has to do. So many forms to fill out,activity lessons to plan and books to check on a daily basis.It can make even the best of us go crazy.
In summation I wish all the wonderful teachers out there from my schools and any teacher out there who is working so hard to make sure their kids reacht their potential the most deepest gratitude and I want you to know that I apprecite what you are doing and to know that you are doing the most noble profession out there-HANDS DOWN.

Just So you Know

Hey all! IT's been a little while but I am back to give you another update of my time.I made the Fiji National News! Pretty cool, it was taken during the Peace Corps Swearing In Ceremony where I become an official Volunteer instead of just a trainee.The link is posted on my facebook page or it is on youtube so if you type in something like Fiji 1 news Peace Corps you should get the link.So now i'm world famous! YAY!
In other news I am settling in fine to my new home for the next two years and have been enjoying my site so far.The school that I am at has only a roster of about 100 kids. They are all very wonderful and rambunxious.I can see I will have my hands full with them when I start different programs. The teachers are wonderful, they have a heart of gold to have the patience to work with kids.That is why I will NEVER be a teacher because kids can be way too much.I watch the kids though and I wonder to myself was I like that as a kid? Was I that hyped up ALL the time or always telling on my classmates to the teacher when they did something to me or thinking that water and soap were optional things?Mommy and Daddy can you reply to these inquiries?
My house is wonderful, lots of space, a sitting area and dining area and best of all a wrap around balcony so I can see out into the valley and mountains.So since I'm not in a village living in a little hut with no electricity then I'm sure many more of you are obliged to come visit me.(If that was the only things stopping you)
The town is just a 1/2 hour walk from my house and it is really nice, a huge market , lots of shops to indulge my need to shop and instead of a Mcdonalds on every corner there's a supermarket on every corner-no joke.

Fiji Language 101

So I thought I'd give a short lesson in Fijian so people can understand what I've been going through trying to learn the native language.Fiji's national language is English and all children are taught it in school.However FIji does have it's own native language.Within this native language though there are a multitude of dialects. Apparently dialects can change from one village to another. Some are simple as removing a letter completely from words to as difficult as changing meanings and uses of words.I am learning the Boan dialect which is kind of the universal dialect that any Fijian would understand, but not necessarily speak.In the Fijian alphabet the letters h , z and x are nonexistent.The letter b makes the mb sound,the letter d has the nd sound, the letter j has the ch sound, the letter q has the ng sound as in Inglewood and the letter g makes the ng sound as in sing.In Fijian many of the words are made from pairing a consonant and a vowel and the word usually ends in a vowel making it hard to understand where a word ends and where one starts when hearing it with an untrained ear.For example here is a simple Fijian sentence : Au kakana vinaka bula vinaka vakalevu. You see there are so many vowels, sometimes I feelt here just are too many.Also, a word can talk on different meanings just by how you pronounce it for example the word dredre can take on the meaning of difficult or laughter if you stress the first or last vowel-I forget which one.I also want to point out that to translate something into Fijian from English would be sucha hassle, things that take a few words in English would literally take a paragraph in Fijian.I don't have any examples of that yet since I am not that far along with my Fijian but I will add to this post later to show you how true it is.