Friday, August 24, 2012

PUPPY


How has this become my life? I’m domesticated, completely and wholly, besides the whole living on a remote tropical island part. Tonight I left work around 4pm, putting in a 10 hour day. Not did I just leave work, like I do every other day, but I brought home a stray dog. One thing I swore I would never do here. He was a helpless puppy that was going to die, and who knows he still might, but I figured he should die happy. I brought him home, gave him a bath, and fed and watered him. He won’t be sleeping in the house and he may never actually come back in the house, but he will be outside the house where we left a box and blanket for him to snuggle in at night. Here is a picture of my new puppy, Little Palagi. This is him right after his bath snuggled up in a towel. He’s a keeper. We call him Pal for short.

After dealing with him, I went and played volleyball with my landlord’s family and their friends. My landlord has 3 sons who are 26, 18, and 15, so you can imagine the age range of the people playing. It was actually just me and a bunch of guys because the girls don’t play volleyball that much here. It’s terrifying when the guys actually get into it because they could easily break my nose if I was ever on the wrong side of a spike. One of the 6th graders at my school actually came over and was like “Oh, hi Ms. Baker, I didn’t know you played volleyball.” It was funny because I can just imagine him wanting a night to hang out with the big kids and then he shows up and a teacher is there hahah.

I soon realized that I had some work to do before school, so I came home and started to lesson plan. Now I’m sitting here taking a break from writing my jeopardy questions for review tomorrow, smelling my from-scratch cinnamon (freshly picked!) banana cake bake in the oven, and wondering “How did I get here?” 4 months ago I was on the craziest bar crawl of my life wrapping up senior year, now I’m sitting in my house with baked goods, a steady job, and a dog. I’m not saying it’s a bad change, I’m just saying it’s a change.

Here’s a pic of the chalkboard as I left school a couple days ago.

I know it just looks like a normal school classroom, but it’s my classroom and THAT is the crazy part.

The weekend is coming up and I will spend the bulk of it working on my lessons, especially now that I know my students better, I know how to keep their interest. I’m hoping to explore the national park and work with Mama on making some new mats.

Here’s the finished product of my banana cake! All of my baked goods keep on sinking slightly in the middle when they cool. Does anyone know why that might be happening/ how to prevent it?

I’m going Papaya picking tomorrow night, should be quite fun! Alofa. 

2 comments:

  1. It means they're slightly undercooked in the middle. I sometimes have the same problem, and it seems to be more likely with something really moist like banana cake or pumpkin bread. Just make sure it's really done before you take it out - and sometimes it helps to stop the oven but just crack the door for a while before you take the cake out so it cools more slowly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. SUCH A CUTE PUPPY!!!!

    ReplyDelete