April Showers

Life on the island is great. Midterms are over and we're two weeks into the final quarter of the year. I'll be moving on from PICS High School and my students will be graduating in 2 months! There are only 23 days of class left, according to the numbers I penned in my calendar weeks ago. I must have been having a low day when I wrote my last entry (there have been several of those, for a variety of minor reasons) because I said I was running out of things to teach. This is true in the sense that we've worked through most of the textbook, but there are obviously more things I can teach them--things I want to teach them. I want to push them, make them think. Stimulate their malleable brains.

We're studying exponential growth and decay right now. I like this material--we get to do lots of word problems, which I enjoy. I think word problems have a certain logic to them; I appreciate their practicality (some of my students like them, others---not so much). At least they're less abstract than strictly numerical problems with variables and fractional exponents and cubed roots. I managed to squeeze in a mini lecture on invasive species today, when we were modeling the exponential (explosive, really) growth of the rabbit population in Australia. I also managed to incorporate a quick mention of the brown tree snake in Guam and the snakehead fish incident in Maryland too. We talked about the binary fission of bacteria yesterday (which I described as bacteria splitting in half; they responded with "ew"). Maybe I like word problems because they often involve a little science. These things are interesting to me, so I find myself rambling on about them to my students. And they are a captive audience for the most part--although I did have to yell "Butts in chairs!" several times today--thus they have no choice but to listen. Bwahahaha. Anyway, my seniors don't know what a petri dish or a half life is (even though they've all taken biology, chemistry, and physics...mysterious), so they could use a little science.

On Sunday, Allois and I went fishing. I was a little grumpy in the early morning, I'll admit (fishing, sadly, is not my favorite thing in the world), but then we saw pilot whales! There were a bunch of them--at least a dozen. Some of them were no bigger than bottlenose dolphins, but others were at least 5 meters long. They were moving slowly, diving down and coming up in the same place. One of them breached fully into the air. It was beyond glorious. They weren't interested in swimming right up to the boat, like dolphins, but a couple of them came quite close. I wanted to get wet and swim with them, but we had to keep repositioning the boat. This was my first time seeing whales in Pohnpei. The last time I saw whales was in 2008, humpbacks in South Africa (another incredible sighting). What awesome animals. I have a couple of decent photos of the pilots; I need to upload them from Allois' camera. Though the experience doesn't really translate fully through a still image.

We went back to Pohnpei for lunch (free, in exchange for the four skipjack tuna Allois caught--although I did reel one in), then headed out to Palikir in the afternoon with some friends on board. We snorkeled, drank beer, and retrieved three pieces of styrofoam floating through P-Pass--guardians of the planet! Then I had my first surf lesson. It involved me clinging to a very large yellow surfboard while Allois pushed me into each wave, yelling "Paddle, paddle, PADDLE!" I didn't make it into the standing position, but I did have one ride on my knees and it was fun. I felt the whoooosh of the ocean. If I actually manage to stand on a surfboard, I will consider it a major accomplishment. Baby steps. There is a swell right now though, so who knows when my next "lesson" will happen. Baby steps means baby waves.