I am attempting to hide out right now with my door locked – but I still have 6 kids in my window talking amongst themselves and laughing loudly and they won’t go away. I can’t shut the window because I will suffocate of heat and I just want to be somewhere alone right now!!! They won’t go awayyyy. I have gotten over feeling bad about saying no, because I have quickly learned that these kids have no boundaries. Don’t get me wrong, I still absolutely love it here, but I truly do miss having a single ounce of privacy. I go to talk on the phone, and I have 5 kids standing less than 1 foot away from me…the whole time. I go to brush my teeth, and they are all there. They stare in my window 9 out of 10 seconds during the day, and if one kid gets into my room, I have 30 within 10 seconds. I want to play with them, but not every second of every day. You think I would get old to them after a while – just sitting reading and not talking – but no. They will stay there, and ask me to jambo over and over and over again. With the same answer every time – “not now, maybe in a little” After my 3rd jambo of the day, I am not always up for number 4.
Today is the first day that anything has really gotten to me and I have felt completely and utterly annoyed. Everything else I can laugh at, and there are so many things about this place that I am absolutely in love with – but sometimes the kids get to me. The food is also starting to get to me too. I think that is what started my day off a little on the wrong foot. I woke up to ramen noodles for breakfast again – with boiled pancakes and peanut butter. I had fried donuts and peanut butter yesterday, and fried pancakes with peanut butter the day before. Everything here is made out of flower, sugar, salt, water and baking soda – and while there are lots of different kids of fish, which is the only variety I get in my diet, it is tuna one day and some other local huge thing the next. I feel bad not wanting to eat their food, but I don’t even want to think about what this is going to do to my body if I eat like this for an entire year! Ha-ha I am going to have to figure out an alternative pretty soon. I tried asking to just make oatmeal for myself before school – but apparently my whole family loves oatmeal so if I eat it – I have to feed a family of eight in the morning and I only brought the little packets. I did that once and that was certainly the last time.
Well, it’s time to write a week worth of lesson plans and then hopefully get some alone time if I can escape down to a coconut tree. I love being down by the water, but I don’t love it as much when there are 8 kids leaning over you all asking you a thousand times what you’re doing. I am really going to have to go searching for a hide out one of these days!
I really miss everyone at home tons, and I hope everyone is doing well. I talked to Titney the other day on the phone, and that made me miss Chapel Hill a LOT!!! I haven’t been that homesick at all since I’ve been here, but it is definitely starting to set in a bit.
What a nice surprise I got this afternoon…Church AGAIN!! For another 2 and a half hours! Yikes, they are quite intense about their church here. But the funny thing is, no one pays attention! My dad or mom just stands up there – screaming as if they were talking to a crowd of 100 people – while the 5 or 6 people in church sit there and look around, make noises at their kids or just sleep! We had church from 10:00 to 12:20 this morning and we just had it again from 7 to 9:30. I didn’t really understand anything, but from the sounds of it, it was passionate. I don’t remember if I wrote this on my blog or in a letter to someone – but the interesting things about Christianity in the Marshalls is that they like their lives and say their prayers all in fear of God. In America we base our thoughts and actions on a love for god, but here, it is all based on a fear of God. They fear that if they don’t do everything according to the Bible God has the power to take it all away, and he will, and he already has – so they are scared of God – and that is part of the reason so many are such devout Christians. Just an interesting side note! The video below is really dark, I took it with my tiny camera, but it will give you an idea of what it's like.
Well, after a long day of lesson planning and, well, nothing else really, I’m exhausted and ready for bed. Melissa and I are going to the Farm on Friday this week because we don’t have school – so that is what I am going to be looking forward to all week!
Hope you’re all doing well.
Lots of love,
Taylor
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