Harry Potter

My new reading material.
I’ve never read a single Harry Potter book or seen a single one of the movies! It has left me out of the loop on several conversations over the years, since it has become such frenzy among readers young and old. It’s never bothered me; I just came to accept the fact that I’m not a big reader of fiction.

As volunteers we have access to shelves of books in the Peace Corps office. The very top shelf is reserved for the oversized Harry Potter books that have made their way to this tropical island. There are several volunteers here who have wanted to read the series over again from the beginning, but could never track down a copy of the first book, “The Philosopher’s Stone.” But low and behold, this morning I was sitting in the office when Chelsea from Group 83 asked if I wanted a copy of the first book. Without too much hesitation I told her I would take it.

I’ve heard from several people that I’ll never have as much time to read in the future, as I do now as a Peace Corps Volunteer, so I figured it’s not too late to get with program. People in the office really were excited for me, knowing that I had this one copy of the book and that I had never read any of them or seen the movies! So over the next few months I’ll be taking on this challenge which I hear is a 7 book feat!

In other news:

• It was a fantastic weather week! Very low humidity by Samoan standards with pleasant nights in the 70’s (that’s as cool as it gets here)! This morning on the open Samoan bus, the breeze with the overcast windows was quite chilly! I checked the temperature when I got to town and it was 75 degrees.

• Five cows came stampeding down the hill next to the school on Thursday, causing my 23 students to go dashing to the windows. Then the cows ran back up the hill as fast as they came down. It’s still not confirmed what they were running from, although I suspect it was a dog.

• In other cow news, there was a sick one this past week that ended up dying and so the meet was taken to town and sold for a hefty profit I hear. I found the hunk of meat out by the road one afternoon before the truck came to pick it up (see picture below).

• When trying to have a serious conversation with a student about their behavior in my class this week, the partition wall they were leaning against went falling into the opposite room because the latch had come loose. Luckily no one was on the other side when it went down with a boom, although it killed the atmosphere for my conversation.

• There were many long hours at school for me this week. Most days I skip lunch because I’m busy working with students in my room on different assignments or reading groups. On Thursday I was especially busy as I worked with students after school and then kids from the high school came by after that. At 4:30p.m. I realized I hadn’t eaten anything since that morning before school, so I took a 20 minute break before going back to work on lesson plans until 6:30. I think it ended up being an 11 hour day, but I felt good about it when it was all over.





A friend from the village with the dead cow.







I took this one after my 11 hour work day on Thursday.







Grading papers this week at home.