From tava to guava, to cyclones oh my!

January and February are almost through and they've been two months full of the good, the bad, and the ugly!

 After my holiday, school started creeping towards its start for the 2016 school year.

It started with student Sunday, where all students present and past are recognized for their achievements in school. It's also a time where people have accomplished higher education talk about the importance of education and inspire the youth to follow in those footsteps of continuing their education.

Then we had training week for the teachers, which consisted of sermons and prayers, and teacher meetings (luckily I was able to help out at some professional development workshops at one of the local high schools).

That took us to the first week of school on February 1st! Unfortunately that whole week was only half days due too the outbreak of the Zika virus (apparently the mosquitos that carry the virus are most active in the afternoons, so the Ministry of Educations solution was to send students home after lunch). Luckily all the schools were sprayed by the end of the second week of February!

Week 3 all the schools were ready to go, classes started Monday and it seemed like we were going to finally start the school year with full day classes.... then cyclone Winston decided to pay Tonga a visit.

Good old Winston ripped through with some gale force winds and lots of rain (which was great for our Sima vai's), however, a 5.7 earthquake decided to shake things up a bit along with Winston.  As one would expect, school was cancelled or put on half days this past week, and we as volunteers were on constant alert. Thankfully no severe damage occurred in Tongatapu, however the cyclone did move up and gain strength (like this sucker went up to a category 4 and at points a 5) to hit Vava'u and eventually Fiji. Thoughts and prayers are with all the volunteers and people on those islands! To my knowledge we don't know yet the exact impact and damage caused by the storm, but all our volunteers are safe at this moment!

A crack in my sima vai (water tank) from the earthquake.

 Gale force winds making some waves in the trees behind my house!

Hoping that this next and last week of February is full of school (all day) as we move into week 4 of our school year, getting ready to start taking common tests in the coming week 5.

Here's some highlights from the past 2 months:

Escaped a molokau (centipede) bite just in the knick of time (yes this is taken by me standing on a chair...)

Picking tava (a fruit very similar to lychee but much bigger) with my teachers during our first week of school. It's the tradition every year to start the school year by shaking the tava tree and eating it's yummy fruit!

It's also guava season! YUM!

My new library in the secondary school that is finally organized and labeled!

The other half of the library where I will be teaching Form 1 & Form 2 (equivalent to 6th and 7th grade U.S.) english of the rest of the year.

Straight lounging... my cat pinati (peanut) living the dream!

 A beautiful Tongan sunrise on a morning run!

Have a great rest of your February!!!