Observations

Being a teacher at times can be stressful, traumatic, exhausting, exhilarating, frustrating, and hilarious. In class today, I had a third grade student (Melanie) point to my earrings and say, “Wow Miss Amy, Emman bling bling!” Gotta love the infiltration of U.S .gansta-slang into the language of 8 year olds. The previous week, another third grader (Johnny) politely asked “Miss Amy, Miss Amy! What mean beyotch?” I’m not even sure how to spell that word (or if anybody actually does), but I kindly asked Johnny not to use ‘beyotch’ in my classroom while secretly hoping that all rap CDs in the surrounding area would melt in the Pacific sun.

Throughout the entirety of the year, all of my classes (grades 2 and 3) have been working on phonics. Apparently when we worked on the ‘p’ sound, it didn’t necessarily register with everybody, since a common mistake is to mistake it with the ‘f’ sound. Needless to say, attempting to read a poem with the word “pucker” in it left me hysterically laughing while the rest of my class gave me confused and innocent looks.

I’ve also noticed recently that trends have been shifting since I’ve been here, so I’d like to update the outside world on a few:

-While pogs (yes, remember those?) were absolutely the rage pre-2010 in Majuro, handstands have taken over once the new year hit. It used to take a nasty pog toss to prove your manhood, but now it is fully dependant on how long you can stay upside and how far you can walk. Handstands-HOT, pogs-NOT.

-Hair is a universal human feature, so it makes complete sense that it’s at the center of the trendy-coolness competition that is ever present in society. All of a sudden a few months ago, bleached hair became not just cool, but HOT. EVERYONE who is anybody is doing it. However, picture a society where everybody has beautiful dark hair. Now, picture that beautiful hair bleached by straight-up Clorox. Imagine your 1990’s Sun-In mistakes, and multiply that by 10. Just wait though, it gets much better…

The rattail is also a sweeping trend in the RMI, yet I had no idea how many rattail styles actually existed before I saw the hundreds of variations on the typical braided-at-the-nape-of-the-neck style. High, low, side, front, double, braided, braided/bleached, you name it. While my students seem to struggle with creativity in class, they (as well as the general population) are certainly not lacking creative license in the hair department. I’m debating starting my own rattail newsletter to rival the only other national publication, the Marshall Islands Journal, proudly self-referred to as the “world’s worst newspaper”.