An Orchard

When you imagine sewing a students' lips together and you find yourself smiling at that image, is that bad?
In a nutshell, I was a bit blue yesterday. My class is pretty good, though the learning levels are way way WAY different, but I have a couple of real a-holes who just cannot listen. One HAS to have the last word (I'll say, "Okay, _____. Just listen now" and he says, "YEP!" Ugh.), and the other deliberately does what I tell him NOT to do.
And the language barrier. I can't even talk about it. I use my Tongan-English dictionary to aide in translation, but... it wastes so much class time.
And the hitting. Corporal Punishment is God-Law here, but I refuse. I mean hello, I'm a Peace Corps Volunteer. Wouldn't it be great to put on my resume, "I served PC Tonga for 2 years where I actively participated in the satisfying and disciplinary action of Corporal Punishment." I don't think so.
So I was blue. I kept thinking how I didn't want to wake up every morning dreading ONE class. I still don't have my resources from Peace Corps yet (it's taking a while to get my teaching kit because I switched from Secondary to Primary at the last minute), my principal doesn't quite understand my role, and the students just want to play with me like we do every afternoon.

Luckily, a PC staff (my favorite, actually) flew here yesterday, bringing veggies (praise SISU they're here!) and warm smiles and a few candies. I told her about everything and she was so nice and honest. What a sweetheart. She's like my PC Mom.
I cooked some banana scones for her little visit, which were good except for the ones I forgot about and burned, but all in all, the afternoon started looking up. My laundry was done, my house was clean, and I hadn't seen a cockroach in days. AND I had running water. Things were definitely good.
I read some, tried to nap (which let's face it, never works,) and walked into the village to get in a good walk and make sure the village knew I wasn't a hermit. I met some of my students, who love exercising with me, and we walked down the road having colorful broken conversation.
Then they asked about "kuava", or guava, which I've been eating like a madwoman the last few days. Every morning and afternoon, they come with a shirt-basket full of beautiful green-yellow guava. They are delicious.
So they lead me into a little side road and we walk just a few yards when I realize that I am literally in the midst of a guava orchard! It was beautiful with the beautiful 'Eua hills in the background. The girls kept pointing and running, squatting, tip-toeing to get all this fruit.
In Tonga, when you have good fruit like that, you just eat it.
In America, we buy a bag of apples, we eat maybe one a day, and if we finish the whole bag, it takes 4-5 days.
In Tonga, if someone picks a bag full of guava, you eat them all in about 20 minutes, with the help of some friends.
Tongans don't mess around with food!
Anyway, we 'eva'd back to the village, I watched the kids play some, and as it darkened outside, one of my favorite boys, from New Zealand, came to me saying that he had to go back to New Zealand today due to family medical issues.
He would've stayed the whole school year with his stepmom and grandfather, and he was my biggest supporter of my Creative Writing class. He loved speaking English with me, and he's really a nice but troubled boy.
It really made me a bit sentimental because I felt as though he were my little brother . He always came around to talk, discuss social issues (for a 13 year old, his maturity level is ridiculous), books, music, advice...
Now, both the English-speakers in my village are gone. It can be lonely.
But times change, things happen. And sometimes I don't realize that though I live in a huge empty field, the eyesore of an overgrown fence leads to an orchard.