Peace Corps? More Like BEACH Corps

The Pacific Islands Peace Corps program is sometimes dismissed as the “Beach Corps” by other Peace Corps regions. So, despite the contents of this post, I want to assure everyone that I will NOT be living the next two years as a beach bum on the US taxpayer’s dollar. 

Since Pohnpei doesn’t have any beaches (the shoreline is covered with mangrove swamps), people sometimes travel out to the nearby “picnic islands” within the reef. Last weekend my host family went to Nalup for the weekend to celebrate a cousin’s birthday. 

We traveled out on a tiny speedboat loaded with coolers and picnic supplies (I was kind of shocked that the boat didn’t sink under all the weight) to the island “resort.” I use the term resort loosely because this is where we spent the night:

We pretty much spent the entire weekend swimming – it was fantastic! Some photos of the gorgeous island:

The most exciting part of the trip was the discovery of a beached shark. Craziness! After the kids played with the corpse another family apparently took the shark to cook it.

On an unrelated note, there are two songs that I’ve heard nonstop on the radio here. The first is “Payphone,” by Maroon 5. This makes sense, since it’s a new song and is probably topping the charts back in the states too. But the other song has me baffled – it’s “As Long As You Love Me,” by either the Backstreet Boys or N’SYNC (can’t remember for the life of me which group sang which songs). So I get a little 90s flashback daily now!

Ia edemw? Edei Mia!

One week into language training, and I can now properly greet people, talk about my family, talk about food, and count to ten. Well, to be truthful, I can only count to ten using one of the counting systems. There are different numbers that you use for counting round objects, long objects, days of the week, and anything that’s alive. And don’t even get me started on the pronouns! There are three different forms of we, depending on how many people you’re talking about and whether or not you’re including the person you’re talking to as part of the “we.” And possessive pronouns are impossible – there are different categories for clothing, food, drinks, transportation, buildings, and objects. For example, if you want to say “my,” “ahi rausis” means “my pants,” “kenei uht” means “my banana,” “nei pil” means “my water,” “werei pwoht” means “my boat,” etc, etc. We haven’t even begun to understand the pronouns!

It’s really frustrating being at the beginning of learning a language, particularly since I have a hard time just pronouncing some of the sounds that we don’t really use in English. I just want to be able to communicate! It’s hard to be patient and accept that the language will all make since in time.

In case you’re interested in the language, Pohnpeian has about 38,000 native speakers and it is the major language of the Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia. Since Pohnpei has a history of colonization with Spain, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the influences of Spanish, German, Japanese, and English are evident in Pohnpeian. Table is “tehpel,” October is “Ocktohpe,” and lots more. Since Pohnpeian existed only as a spoken language before colonization, the written form was developed by the Spaniards and Germans. So the spellings are representative of the Spanish and German alphabets. Very few people actually write or read in Pohnpeian, however. There’s no “correct” way to spell any given word, so our two manuals have differing spellings for various vocabulary words.

Peace Corps doesn’t care about teaching us the written form, but since all the Pohnpei volunteers are such visual learners, we’ve been begging for anything in writing. I think the most common thing we ask in language class is “how do you spell that?” and poor Truleen (our WONDERFUL language teacher) has to come up with the most logical way to spell the word. But when someone says something in Pohnpeian, I can’t repeat it. I need to see the individual letters written out to make sure I’m hearing all the individual sounds.

It was exciting to see a little progress this weekend. My host grandma speaks very little English, so I was actually able to converse with her a little bit this weekend! I was able to tell her where I’ll be living, that I’ll come back to visit, that I was going swimming that day, that I liked the food, etc. Of course, she then went on to ask me more questions that I didn’t understand (I have a very strict script I can follow and it doesn’t work when people deviate from it, lol!), so then someone needed to translate for me again.

Anyway, here are some pictures from model school and snorkeling :)

An Epic Hike, Model School, and SITE PLACEMENTS!

Last Saturday almost all of the trainees hiked to the top of Sokehs Island, which was absolutely amazing! It was pretty tough hiking with something like 100% humidity. When we were about halfway up it started pouring rain, so we had to trudge through the mud the rest of the way. We were all absolutely DRENCHED by the time we reached the top, but as soon as we got there the rain let up to give us a stunning view of Pohnpei.

Also on Sokehs Islands are some old Japanese guns from WWII.

This week we began “model school,” which is our opportunity to practice teaching English in a Micronesian classroom. It’s a two-week summer school program for 5^th to 8^th graders from Kolonia and the surrounding areas. In theory, each of us was going to be paired with a Pohnpeian co-teacher, but since there weren’t enough that volunteered, a few of us were paired with other volunteers.

The first day of model school couldn’t have been more of a disaster. First of all, my coteacher had decided to leave Peace Corps over the weekend, so 30 minutes before class began Sam and I teamed up. Neither of us have much teaching experience, so we were really nervous. We pretty much had to improvise our three-hour lesson since we hadn’t had any time to prepare ahead of time.  We really struggled with the cultural differences and the shyness of the students here. They’re not used to any sort of interactive or creative assignments, so every activity has to be very guided and structured. But each day we’ve been improving (the last two days have gone REALLY well).

We have 11 girls in our class in 5^th and 6^th grade. They’re all super sweet and quiet, but they really like to laugh. We’re working on writing stories using the past tense (gah, so many irregular verbs in English! So impossible to teach!), reading science texts about the moon, plant life cycles, and dolphins, and solving math word problems. The math section is everybody’s favorite – they all love math!

And now for the big news – site placements! No one has been able to think about anything else all week! Since I knew I was going to be on Pohnpei (for medical reasons), I didn’t have the same level of suspense as everyone else, but the anticipation was still overwhelming. I’ll be in a small village (for safety reasons, I’m not allowed to give my specific location on a blog) and teaching 6^th-8^th grade English at the local elementary school. The classes will most likely be about 40 students each! Since several villages all feed into this school, it’s one of the largest schools on the island. I’m pumped to finally have a concrete idea of where I’m going, but it’s sad to see our group split up. The Chuuk and Palau volunteers leave in two weeks, and we won’t see them again until next May! I wish we could visit each other’s islands, but United has a monopoly and plane tickets are ridiculously expensive.

Team Pohnpei

Team Palau

Team Kosrae

Team Chuuk

Language classes start tomorrow! After a month here, it’s time to actually learn Pohnpeian.