A day in the life...

6:20 a.m. Wake up. Curse, slam my alarm off. Back to sleep.
6:40 a.m. Wake up for real: go shower and get ready.
7:40 a.m. Freak out as I'm eating breakfast--I'm late for work!!! Gah!

Nina: Shra, it's only 7:40. You're not late.
Me: My clock says it's 8.
Nina: The TV says it's 7:40.
(I proceed to make my host mom call telecomm and verify that yes, in fact, the
time on our TV is correct. I am wrong?!? Horror of horrors! Well, I suppose
this might explain how I've miraculously been on time to work for the last few
weeks. And how I biked in to Tofol in 20 minutes once. Everything is
illuminated!~that's for you, Jang.)

8:15 a.m. Work starts.
8:24 a.m. Suddenly, all of my students' attention is GONE. They're all staring out the
window and pointing excitedly at something, speaking rapidly in Kosraen. I walk
over sternly (in teacher-cop mode) to break it up. I ask, "meac inge?" ["what's
going on here?"] They tell me: "Shra! There's a giant lizard out there!"

Me: Where?
[They point.]
Me: [seeing this crazy giant--we're talking 6-8 foot--lizard on a tree outside my
classroom] Whoa! You're right!

I have seen a big lizard for one minute. I have also lost all of my classroom
management credibility points forever.
9:05 a.m. Our guest environmental speaker wraps up his talk on the native environments of
Kosrae. It is gorgeous outside: all the better for admiring our island environment.
9:10 a.m. We make our way out to the schoolyard to plant trees.
9:13 a.m. It starts POURING.
9:24 a.m. To my pleased surprise, one of my 8th graders makes his way intrepidly out into the
downpour with his seedling and shovel. He starts digging.
9:28 a.m. Hole complete, P puts his seedling in the ground. He carefully places the wet dirt
around the little tree, tamps it down, and then picks up an object--that I can't quite
distinguish--off of the ground. He puts the object on the ground next to the tree and
steps away, admiring his work. I scamper out into the rain to see what he's put on
his tree as a decoration. It's...a dead battery?!? This is why I love teaching.

Me: Is that to give it energy? [I start laughing hysterically]
My Kosraen co-teacher: What are you doing? Take that off of your tree!
That will kill it!*

*This is why I have a co-teacher.
1:30 p.m. School's out for the summer. School's out for-ever! (Well, or maybe just until
tomorrow.)
2:30 p.m. I start my bike ride in to Tofol for yoga that my lovely fellow PCV, M, teaches.
2:42 p.m. As I pass a particularly stately palm, I look up and admire the way the light is falling
on the branches. I should take a picture of this! This could very well be an iconic
image of my life on Kosrae. The harmony of colors, the balance--and then my bike
careens off the side of the road and I eat shit. Way to go, McCrea.
4:07 p.m. Yoga starts.
4:10 p.m. I have sweat out approximately a pint of water. Gotta love the equator!
4:50 p.m. We start relaxation.
4:52 p.m. I have passed out on my mat.
5:05 p.m. I get up to see that everyone else has already put away their mats and left. Sweet.
5:20 p.m. As I'm sitting in the computer room of the office checking my email, I notice some
small winged visitors arrive. No biggie, they're just the subterranean termites that
usually hang out in the office. They're flocking toward the light above my head, and
as the seconds pass, the population is multiply exponentially, like one of those
scientific-y graphs of fruit fly population or something.
Before I know it, they're crawling on the desk, the walls, me.

M: I can't take this! I gotta get the fuck out of here!! [She flails her arms and
shakes her head in a vain attempt to get the disgusting little creatures out
of her hair.]
Me: [Thirty seconds later] Gah! Me too!

We sneak out the back door, but our stuff is still in the main room. As I walk
around to the front of the office, I see M peering cautiously (and somewhat
horrified-ly) into the front window. "Look at them," she says to me in a low
whisper of mingled fear and awe. I look. There is literally a CLOUD of about
2,000 of these mofos hovering right over our couches. (That's where my bag is,
by the way.)
I take a deep breath and steel myself for the adventure to come. "Well," I say
resignedly, "it doesn't look like they're going anywhere." We open the front door
and rush in. I've put my skirt on my head to protect my hair--I looked something
akin to the Great Bungholio, no lie--, and I scamper gingerly over to the couch
where all of my stuff is, squinting my eyes in order to keep the bugs out (even as I
try not to step on any of the ones crawling on the floor on my way over).
Meanwhile I'm yelling, cursing at these ridiculous little bugs: "They're touching my
eyes and my face and I don't like it!!"
And best of all, as I get back to the safety of the door, I see that my
compatriot M has gotten it all on video, laughing hysterically the entire time.
"You f***ing videoed that s**t? You b******d!" We have a good laugh before we
shut the door and walk away, feeling as though we've just survived a very-B
horror movie.
6:20 p.m. On my bike ride home, I drop in to Dollar Up to buy a couple of packs of Ramen. On
the shelf ahead of me, I discover both the Miraculously Happy Dog and Dr. Happy. I
love my life sometimes.
8:00 p.m. Time for my weekly kahs kosrae lesson with Baba Isaac.
9:00 p.m. In the past hour, I learned that:

a) I've been asking my Nina "how was your birthday?" every day for the last
month.
b) The reason that the neighborhood kids have been refusing to race me on my
bicycle for the past--oh--three months isn't because they were scared of
losing, it was because I was asking them to "recognize." ("Ah, so that explains
those looks they gave me!")*

*This is why I still need a tutor.
10:30 p.m. I tuck my mosquito net into bed and drift peacefully off to sleep.

And such is my life...