Our first week of the four weeks is done. We have 24 students, all teachers from special education (serving children from birth to 21) or the early childhood education program (ECE-serving children from 4-5 years of age). These programs seem to overlap completely, and have been merged into the Department of Education (ECE used to be Head Start and a separate agency), yet, they both seem to be providing services to the same children. ECE provides services to all children, not just those with disabilities, but they are supposed to have a certain percent of their students with documented disabilities. I need to clarify with the Special Education Coordinator how they differentiate their populations.
I am tired this weekend. Meghan and I both got some sort of stomach bug that started with diarrhea and includes stomach cramps and fatigue, and in my case, fevers. It’s been 4 days now and we’re able to get up and around, but feel not so good. It’s hard to eat. I was able to teach last week, but had to cancel the afternoon on Thursday when the fever got too high and I ran out of steam. I took a Tylenol on Thursday morning after a rough night, and didn’t realize that it was a Tylenol PM until Meghan pointed it out to me. So I had to teach sleepy too! I hope I made some sense. Meghan seems to have the bug more mildly, though she doesn’t feel well either. She stayed in the hotel on Friday rather than come to class.
We’ve identified 7 children on this island (Weno) with significant disabilities to follow and have done two afternoons of home visits. I’ve divided the students into 5 teams, each led by me or a certified RSA (and in one case an experienced teacher). The RSAs here have been helpful in setting up the home visits and getting the families to sign the consent forms. Both families I’ve visited have been related to one or more of the students in my group. All of the children have cerebral palsy. I’d like at least 10 families altogether so that each team can visit two children- I’m sure there are more children who can be served on this island. Neither of the families I’ve visited have been served by special education over the past year. I don’t know why.
It’s been great to have Meghan with me. She is in charge of photographing and videoing our activities this month. She has also been very helpful with organization, getting copying done, and making sure all of the students hand in the paperwork we need. She’s been cheerful (even when sick!), and positive. What a joy for me! She was sad to miss the second home visit last week, but she didn’t want to expose the children if it was catchable. I think it was from something we ate, and it’s not catchable, at least I hope so.
Yesterday we were able to drive around a bit. First we did our laundry. The hotel (we’re staying at the Truk Stop) staff directed us to a “Laundry Mats” across the street. There were a lot of young girls, all doing huge loads for their whole families, and three washers and three dryers. Luckily for us one washer became available shortly after we arrived. It took us awhile to figure out that we had to put the water in the washer using an external hose- both for the wash and the rinse cycles. Once the clothes were washed it seemed that there would be a very long wait for a dryer. The family before us had several baskets full of wet laundry waiting for a dryer. So we packed our wet clothes back into our plastic shopping bags and put them in the car. We decided to drive around for awhile and check back later.
First we looked for a local skirt or two to supplement the 7 skirts that we are sharing this month. It seemed that no stores on the main street by the ocean had any skirts in the windows, so I decided to drive up the mountain toward the hospital to look at a store I remembered up there. Our car is a green sedan with no shocks left. It is filthy outside and inside. The ladies at the hotel were a bit embarrassed to give it to us, but there were no other cars. We set off up the road, and immediately realized that we were in trouble. The potholes were so deep and filled with water that we couldn’t tell how to navigate them. We bravely went forward at 5 miles per hour and fell into potholes so deep that we both screamed as the undercarriage of the car caught on the edge of the hole with a horrible grinding sound. Eventually we were successful at navigating that deadly ¼ mile road, and were able to make it the rest of the way with just normal potholes. The store did have some skirts and we chose a gray one with brightly colored flower appliqués. We found an alternative road toward the ocean that had fewer potholes and led us back to the main road again.
Then we set off for the Blue Lagoon Hotel. It is located out on a beautiful point a few miles outside of the town, and has a pretty good gift shop. The road was treacherous, but navigable and we made it safely. We saw a few priceless sights on the way including two naked boys in a tree, older boys playing volleyball across the street had to stop their game and lift their net to let us go under it, and lots of cute children. Once we got there Meghan found a few gifts in the shop and we walked out to the grassy point, admiring the views of Donoas, Uman, and Fefen, three of the lagoon islands on that side. Although it was not yet 5:00, the sky was beginning to hold the gold colors of sunset and we got some nice photos.
We checked back at the Laundry Mats, but the same families were there and all of the dryers were in use. We figured out how to spread everything out in our room- it’s really impolite to hang underwear outdoors- and settled down to rest. Because our stomachs were still off, we split the last vegetarian Ramen we brought. Earlier we found some Blu-Ray DVDs at a store with some movies and bought one to watch. It had 26 movies on it from light comedy to raunchy humor. It was obviously pirated, but for $3.80, we couldn’t resist. We chose a romance and enjoyed it. Twenty-three more to go!
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