I like watching MASH. I liked watching MASH before I left the states, it's not something that has come just because I’ve been overseas. I like the characters, I like the interaction of the characters, and I like the story line. I think that everyone that has ever watched it has been able to relate with all the different characters at different times. Something that I recently realized is I like it now for a different reason. I can relate on a whole new level. This cast of characters portrays people that are 10,000 miles away from home. They are taken out of their homes, not by choice like me, but because they were drafted to do so. Even though they are over in Korea for a different reason than I’m in the Marshall Islands, I find myself relating with them a lot. All of us as SM’s came to the Marshall Islands to do a job, mine was to teach Science, but when I got here I got “schooled” in the art of adaptation. I wasn’t only asked to teach science, I was asked to teach Calculus as well. It wasn’t something I was intending on doing, but I did because I was required to do so. All of us have ended up doing things that we didn’t intend on doing when we left the states, it's not just me. One of the teachers went from teaching English to music to art and back to English. I thankfully haven’t been switched around that much, but we all have had our times. There are then the teachers that have gotten to go home early for whatever reasons. I was watching a particular MASH episode and Honeycutt made an interesting observation, he said he “hated” the ones that got to go home early, because he was still there. I know for sure I don’t hate the ones that have gotten to go home early, but at the same time I can totally understand what he meant. The men and women of MASH 4077 were taken from their homes and were banded together to make a fully functional hospital, were put in the “worst” of circumstances and then were told that they had to perform sergery. My friends and I here chose to leave our homes for 10 months, landed on a small speck in the middle of the pacific, were given jobs that most had never done, and were expected to teach students and hopefully show that God is real and working in us. There is a lot that I don’t agree with that happens in MASH, but I keep coming back to it, not because of the bad things, but sometimes for commiseration, sometimes it feels like the characters there are the ones that understand.
Now on a totally different subject, with my time coming very close to me coming home I’ve been very busy. My students have been very “diligently” studying for their tests in an effort to get a good grade. Tonight we say goodbye to another one of our teachers. She is going home for work I think, but she is one of the ones that has been my friend all year so far. It will be sad to see her leave, but at the same time, I’m excited that she gets to leave; it means that my time to leave is coming. By the time that this gets posted and most of you read it, I’ll be under 10 days until I leave. As the day comes closer and closer I realize that I have a lot to get done before I leave. I also realize that I have to make a very fast transition to my summer, I don’t get a break, I just have to be there and start.
I’m very excited that I’ll be getting to see my cousin’s graduation. I was not going to get to go, but then when I changed my ticket I found out that I get to be there. It will be a wonderful weekend, after not seeing any family in 10 months; I’ll get to see nearly all of my mom’s side of the family. It will be a wonderful weekend, a very high weekend.
This will be my 2nd to last blog while I’m overseas. The ones following the next one will be while I’m SMing again or when I’m back in school. I’m going to keep it going since I will be gone second semester of this next school year.
This week ended out with a bang so to speak. Friday was our SA picnic. We went out an island that is further out on the atoll, one that you can only get to by boat. It seemed like it was going to be a frustrating day, the boat was late and things just started slow, but soon they got going good. We got out there and had lunch then the students (25 of them) challenged the teachers (5 of us) to king of the dock. That game went on for nearly two hours until all of us had been thrown into the water countless hundreds of times. Near the end of the fun one of my fellow teachers went off and it looked like she had landed on a nail sticking out of the dock, but she came up without any blood to speak of so we kept on going. About 20 minutes later one of the students came to me and said that that teacher needed my help, I thought it was a ploy to get me off the dock and so I was like “yeah right”. They replied, no she cut her arm open. My heart sank. I swam the 30-40m back into the shore in record time. When I got there I was surprised. Expecting a little cut I didn’t expect the cut I saw. It was nearly perfect, and went straight down to the muscle. It was really clean, but you could see the skin layers, the sub-cutanious fat, and then the muscle under it. I hadn’t taken any first aid stuff with me, neither had anyone else, so I patched it up as good as I could and told her that she would need stitches. We got back to the “mainland” and went to the hospital and sure enough, 3 stitches later her arm looked “good as new” I guess not really, but kind of. As for me in the whole thing, the worst that happened to me was a bad case of sunburn that still kind of hurts today, but I’m sure by tomorrow it will be feeling better
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