A Toast to Teachers

          Coming to Yap has forced me to face many realities of life that we work so hard to cover up so we never have to see them until we are confronted with some major catastrophe in life, most often the death of a loved one.  Most of these lead to the great unanswerable questions that have been asked since the beginning of mankind:  Where do we come from?  Where are we going?  What happens when we die?  However, while contemplating these can lead to all sorts of wonderful, life-altering epiphanies laced with layer upon layer of confusion – the realities that I find the most invigorating to explore are the ones that I can directly relate to – the ones that I can change – the ones that I can experience right here, right now, and I can use them to make this world a happier place (don’t even get me started on the great question of what is happiness… but, it is probably the most important question that all of us can ever ask ourselves in this life.)

            The past few weeks, I have noticed how often we as human beings take some of the most important people in our lives for granted.  The people who sacrifice so much for us – who dedicate their time, energy, talents, and support – who help us grow – who encourage us to struggle through challenges – who instill in us the drive to never accept anything but our own personal best from ourselves.  These people are our teachers.  I have now officially been a teacher for 18 months, and the amount of respect and gratitude that I have for all of the teachers who have believed in me – who have had the patience to deal with me – who have shown me how to be a man – has multiplied infinitely.  I have experienced wanting nothing more than for a struggling student to reach their full potential – even if that full potential may be a 75% on a test.  I have experienced the heart break of when that same student seems to be trying their best to reach that goal, comes so close, and then slips right back into their old habits.  I have experienced the unbelievable frustration of explaining a concept in about 74 different ways to try to make something click in a student’s mind, and then out of nowhere, the student comes up with a response that shows the most complete understanding of something that moments before they could barely pronounce.  I have experienced the loving bond of trust that forms between a teacher and a student, and I am slowly learning that the greatest part of that love is the ability to let it go when the year is done so that the student and the teacher can go on to share that love with others.

            Teachers never seem to get the respect, recognition, or gratitude that they truly deserve.  Want to argue with me?  Let’s just take a look at a teacher’s salary compared to.. well… to anyone else’s salary.  Think teachers have it easy having a work day that ends at 2:30, and all of those glorious school vacations?  Well, yes – it would be nice to officially get out of school at 2:30 – but since you are pretty much teaching all day, that means that you still have all of the grading and prepping to do for classes.  I am not writing this to gripe about things that I am personally experiencing – I am writing this because I now recognize just how underappreciated these incredible human beings we call teachers are.  They change lives.  They work selflessly day in and day out – never giving up. 

            So – for all of those teachers who I have had the blessed opportunity to be guided by, to be molded by, to be challenged by – I would like to say from the bottom of my heart – “Thank-you.”  You have all had an immense impact on me.  You cared enough about me to show up every day and try your best to make me into a better person.  I would just like you to know, that even though I may not have shown it at the time, or never said it out loud, that I care deeply about you, too.

            

“What the teacher is, is more important than what he teaches.” 

                                                                                                                      - Karl A. Menninger

Living Yap

     Sirow, sirow – I know that this whole blog thing has fallen into the taro patch (that is not a real expression here – but I think I could get it started… kinda like “fetch” from Mean Girls.) I was trying to come up with some fantastic excuse about why I have not been updating the “world” with tales of chivalry, tree-climbing, spear fishing, barefootedness and adventure – but I realized that while I have been stretched a little thin the past few months, the true reason for my lack of communication is much more exciting – at least for me.

     Now – I have been quite busy, so here is a quick little update on what I have been up to. For school, the eternal volleyball season ran from August to December and YCHS came in third in the Varsity games against COM, Yap High School, and SDA. Our team has certainly come a long way from last year. On top of that volleyball league, I played for Maap in the island-wide men’s league as well as reffing. To top off all of the volleyball fun – I have been training with the Yap State team for the 2014 Micro Games, which are essentially the Olympics of the Pacific.

     I also have been teaching an extra class, which has made my days at school incredibly packed, but they fly by. Picking up the Senior Trigonometry class proved to be quite the challenge, but I will thankfully be returning back to a more normal schedule in the 3^rd quarter as we welcome a new teacher to our staff.

     Now for the fantastic, true reason that I have seemed to literally have fallen off the face of the earth. See – I know the real fun of reading this blog is to hear stories that seem wild, crazy, ridiculous – but I have hit the point that the things that used to seem so absurd and strange have just become part of my everyday life. The simplicity, the local food, the betelnut, the tree climbing, the dirt, the smell of cooking fires, the stone path jungle hikes to the store, the roosters, the heat, the language, the Yapese, the love – it is all part of my life now – it is all part of my heart.

I am no longer simply living on Yap – I am living Yap.

Gu ba’adagem, Nina

              Sirow for the long delay in between posts.  Things have been quite busy on the island.  A super quick update on things:  I spent my 3 ½ weeks between summer session and the regular school year coaching some volleyball clinics at the Yap Community Center 4 times a week.  The YCHS Boys and Girls teams both went on to take home the Championship Title in the end of the summer Junior League tournament.  It was a hectic weekend of coaching, driving a pick-up truck without mirrors, and reffing – but it was an unforgettable experience with my kids.

            School has been phenomenal this year.  I adore my classes.  I can’t believe how much love and laughter my students bring into my life.  I could not be in a better place right now.  I am even beginning to feel like a real math teacher and actually feel like I know what I am talking about.  Oddly – I also am getting way too comfortable teaching chemistry and surprise myself with the random tidbits of knowledge that have stuck with me over the years.

            And finally- for the blog-inducing event of my adventures – the birthday of my indescribably perfect Yapese mother.  Mary Guchol has been my rock since I have come to Yap. Honestly, I do not think I could have survived without her and all of the love and support she has given me.  She welcomed me without hesitation into her Yap family, and I could not be more proud to call her my “Nina.”  Tonight, we celebrated her 67^th birthday over at Stan and Sheryl’s place (the amazing Australian couple who lives right across from us) in typical island fashion with heaps of delicious food.  I meant to make the famous Mrs. Behe’s BBQ, but due to a ground beef shortage on island, I settled with making my mother’s even more famous chocolate chip cookies (they weren’t quite as good as hers – but they still made the impression they needed to.)  Mary’s one daughter traveled all the way from Guam to surprise her for the week, and it was a fantastic dinner party with close friends from the village.

            This blog post is dedicated to you, Nina.  Gu ba’adagem – I love you.  Thank-you for being my mother on Yap so that my mother back in Pennsylvania knows I am in good hands.  You are an angel.

Martin modeling some zucchini bread all the way from the states

Nina birthday celebrations!

Nina cutting her birthday cake

Summer passing out after all of the festivities

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”                                                                            -Lau Tzu

Camp Yap

          When I returned to Yap, I knew that our summer session would be starting approximately 30 hours after I stepped off of the plane.  What I did not know was that our staff for summer session consisted of Fr. Corcoran, Fr. Mulreany, myself and… oh wait – it was just the three of us.

            Now – my year of experience as a math teacher helped me to quickly figure out that with only three teachers, and four classes of students (first year with Freshmen through Seniors!) – we could not logistically cover all of the necessary classes.  So we did what we do best here on Yap – we improvised.  We combined the Junior and Senior class in to the Super Sunior class which would focus primarily on SAT prep.  Mickey then adjusted the schedule so that each of us had a homeroom and would teach two classes as well as proctor a silent reading period – all of which would be 55 minutes (that’s a LONG time in a teacher’s world.)  We adapted quickly to our morning schedule of teaching/ working non-stop from 7:45 AM – 11:40 AM (with a quick bathroom break in the middle) – and it actually ended up being a great experience.

            The real fun began after classes… Mickey basically gave me free reign of what to do with the students from noon til the end of the day at 4:00 PM.  That is how Camp Yap was born.  Now – the term “Camp Yap” was never used in an official sense, but it is certainly what I called it in my head and sometimes accidentally out loud – but the term pretty much summarizes our afternoon activities and shenanigans.  I went into Program Director/ Community Outreach/ Scranton mode and began making calls, e-mails, lunch dates, walks around the lagoon, and random chitchats after masses as I recruited a great variety of incredible presenters who would come in and direct different activities and sessions with the students.  We had Americans, Italians, Australians, Yapese, Outer Islanders.  We had sign language, nature hikes, lawyers, martial arts, local cooking, basket weaving, dancing, singing, canoe demos, lei making.  We played every camp game/ ice breaker that I had in my repertoire.  And the entire time – we had a blast.

            It was so inspiring and rewarding to work with such a diverse and amazing group of people who gave so self-lessly of their time and talents.  Camp Yap was exhausting… but at the end of the day – we were excited to come back and see what adventures were waiting for us tomorrow – just the way any good camp should be.

Intense Game of "Ninja"

Team Builders

Rufus and Jonah showing off their lashings by the "crying Buddha"

Eunice and Bradley dominating the 3-legged races

Joslyn sad to be going home on the Apocalypse Bus

Practicing the local dance that Martin Ruwniyol taught us

Lupo and I attempting to teach modern line dances (Cotton Eyed Joe featured here)

Sophomores and Juniors with Dr. Margie

Freshmen working on nunuws/marmars 

Mary Guchol (my Yapese mom!) teaching delicious new local cooking

The Lovely Agnes and her nunuw/marmar class

More Team Builders

Our kids just being kids... the best.

            “Whatever form it takes, camping is earthy, soul enriching and character building, and there can be few such satisfying moments as having your tent pitched and the smoke rising from your campfire as the golden sun sets on the horizon--even if it's just for a fleeting moment before the rain spoils everything.” 

                                                                                -Pippa Middleton

Yappy Birthday

           Within my first couple of weeks back on Yap, the not so momentous occasion of the 23^rd anniversary of my birth happened to pass by.  Now – as much as I adore/crave/am partially addicted to attention of most varieties, there is something about the attention that comes with a birthday that just doesn’t turn me into “Five-year-old, overly enthusiastic about the smallest little thing Michael.”  I have always been this way – I am not sure how I am supposed to accept compliments properly, and I do not know the proper response to seemingly unwarranted birthday attention.  I can most easily compare my uneasiness to that feeling you get when you are suddenly disproportionately aware of what your hands/arms are doing as you are speaking to someone you are interested in (oh shoot – why are they just dangling there… should I move this hand over my entire face and gently stroke my elbow as I do so?  Yeah – yeah – that’ll look cool.)  No worries though, world, this hand/arm anxiety is now being completely overridden by the constant presence of some form of cellular phone (are they even called phones anymore now that they can do like… everything?) in your hand.  As a quick aside – no one truly cares what your arms/hands are doing, as long as you are avoiding touching yourself and/or others in the select “no-no” zones (I don’t want to get into specifics because depending on the culture you are in – these “no-no” zones may differ/ there are plenty of friends of mine where cuddling/spooning/ ear hugging is not only acceptable, but expected.)

            Believe it or not, I am trying incredibly to narrow my off shoots and tangents in these blog posts, but I am clearly failing miserably.  I’ll keep working on it. 

            Anywho – despite my lack of affinity for my own birthday – this birthday goes in the record books (I actually have my own record books… if I am going to reference them, then they better exist) as one of my favorites.  The festivities began a week before my birthday even hit as my Yapese family hosted a July birthday party for Dafrad, Summer, Corinne (our neighbor across the way), and unbeknownst to me, me.  All of our birthdays fall in the first half of July so the extended family got together for ice cream, food, and fun.  Oh – did I mention the cakes? (Yes – plural)  And did I mention that when I went with Tracie to pick them up in the morning, THAT is when I found out my name was on a cake and I was included in the birthday celebrations.  I couldn’t be more thankful to my amazing Yap family.

            As my actual birthday approached, I got numerous letters, cards, and facebook messages – all of which made me feel the love coming from the other side of the Pacific.  At school – the kids had a slew of nunuws/ marmars waiting for me and Austin (one of our seniors who happens to share the best date of birth.)  (Yes – I know proper grammar is Austin and me – but the parentheses in the middle of that would have been confusing… as if this unnecessary aside is not confusing in itself...)  It was just an all-around awesome day.

            That evening, the ex-pats threw a little surprise party for me on the Mnuw – which did actually catch me slightly off guard.  Loren organized the little shindig, and she not only invited our ex-pat group of friends, but also the priests – which made for a wonderful evening.  Loren also informed me that my loving mother was sending her pages upon pages of facebook messages detailing my birth and childhood stories (you think I can talk…. Let me introduce you to Cathie Readdy Wiencek – facebook friend her – she’ll love it.) 

            The true highlight of my Yappy Birthday though was a collection of hand-made cards from the Sophomore class at YCHS (my freshmen homeroom from last year.)  I am not even an ounce ashamed or embarrassed to say that I bawled my eyes out as I read through the heart felt letters from my students.  I could not have felt more loved this birthday on Yap.  Something tells me 23 is going to be a good year.

          

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”

                                                               -Morrie Schwartz

Returning Tabinow

Whoops – I forgot about that whole “be sure to keep in touch” thing during my first month back in Yap.  In reality, I did not forget – I truly just did not have that much time to be able to sit down and write blog posts, or facebook chat, or Skype, or even my favorite – send out some hand-written letters.  So – now that summer session has ended and I have 3 ½ weeks before school starts up on August 21 – I will attempt to fill in that blank gap of time that I may have seemed to have fallen off of the earth.

            My month home was absolutely exhausting, in the wonderful sort of way.  My only major responsibility was hanging out with people, eating, drinking, and telling Yap tales of adventure and misadventure – yet, I was overwhelmed by the fast pace of life and the unbelievable amount of over stimulation.  Did you know that in the United States there is this thing called Netflix that can just pull up almost ANY movie or television show in the world and you can watch it INSTANTLY?  But seriously – I was only a year removed from the states and my innocent Yapese mind was being shattered.

            I appreciated most just being able to sit and talk with friends and family.  When asked what I missed most about being home, I honestly couldn’t think of anything really other than the people.  Sure – a hot shower every day felt fantastic.  Yes – the unnatural amount of steak I consumed did help me to shoot back up to a semi-normal weight.  Of course – the options of draft beer, and really just any beer in general made my mouth water.  But, the only thing that I realized I could truly not live without was all of the incredible people in my life.

            Even though I unfortunately did not get to see everyone I truly wanted to see, or get to spend nearly as much time with some of the people who matter most to me – I still was able to be inundated with love and friendship and hugs and laughter.  From talks with Mom-mom about the “good old days” before technology (of course, this does not include Wheel of Fortune, which was essentially a nightly ritual for us – we would DOMINATE if we ever get on that show), to my unbelievable visit to Scranton where I got lost for hours catching up with amazing role models, to the shores of Ol’ Stillwater where I got to relive a bit of the glory days at Camp Minsi – it was all a boy living on the other side of the world for two years could ask for. 

            Kammagar gad – I would not be the man I am today without all of the friendship, support, and love.

**Prepare for some rapid fire blog updates to make up for my total lack of story-time this past month due to the awesomely intense amount of work for Summer School**

Disconnected

Last Thursday night, the entire island of Yap lost complete connection to the interwebs.  As would be expected – buildings collapsed, the earth opened up unleashing the titans and all of the demons of hell, and people went absolutely wild and savage without the necessary life force that is the internet.

            But seriously – It. Was. Awesome.  As most of you know, I have some deep, passionate grudges against technology.  I could probably write and defend a dissertation showing that technology that is meant to make us more easily connected to each other is actually causing us to be ripped further and further apart.  I think “smart” phones are Satan's spawn.  In all honesty, I am quite terrified to return back to the United States in one week and be overwhelmed by it all once again.

            Our 3+ day disconnection from the world was phenomenal.  I read 2 books.  I finished all of my remaining work for school.  I studied my Yapese lessons.  I spent a whole day with my local family and friends going to mass, lunch, and then just chilling and chewing with some of the younger men of the village.  While I do appreciate the wonderful convenience of the internet and its ability to keep me connected to people thousands of miles away – I truly appreciated the break from technology for a long weekend.

            As for some other things that have been going on.  I am now officially a 3-time state champion.  I proudly have two gold medals from managing the Central Catholic Girls Volleyball team with John Campbell.   I am now adding to the trophy case a t-shirt from the Yap State Robotics Competition.  After months of building, fixing, re-building, and planning – our boys team took home the State Championship title this past Friday.  I do not really care that there were only 2 high schools out of 3 competing – a state title is a state title.

            I wrapped up my last youth group First Friday with Fr. John.  We are now up to almost 100 youth, and over 200 total people coming to our events and activities.  We hope to run a retreat for the older kids over the summer, as well as host a back to school concert for any youth choirs that are interested.

            I am unbelievably excited to return home in one week, although I can not really comprehend life right now because so much has happened in the past year.  I am eager to catch up with friends and family, and then I am ecstatic to come back rested and rejuvenated for my second year on Yap!

My latest project: TV stand

Youth Group

More Youth Group

State Champions

Randall driving us to victory

Domclancy and Austin being interviewed for OTV

Sponsor Picture: Habele