Thursday, May 10, 2012

Fiafia Night: Seniors Shakin' it for Money

I walked into the school library this morning to see the sophomores making the faculty members grilled cheese sandwiches with a waffle maker. For breakfast.

This slight randomness prompted me to write a blog, not really about grilled cheese at all. Lol.

Hard to believe that May is just about half way over. Abby and I counted only 12 school days left. And the seniors only have 7. In fact, this is the last week of actual classes I have with the seniors, as next week they take their finals and the week after that is Senior Week, where they go do fun things like beach BBQs and such. AND, only 28 days until I leave The Rock…and in 30 days I’ll be in Sweet Home Alabama. I simply cannot believe I’ve been here for almost a year.

I am so excited to go home. I miss my family and I miss America. I love Samoa, of course, but I’m excited for driving, and speed limits over 25 and being able to go more than 19 miles without hitting an ocean. I’m excited for 24 hour convenience stores. And real milk, not the long shelf life kind.
I’m excited for a lot of things, but I’ll get to THAT in a later blog.

THIS blog, I want to talk about Fiafia Night. Fiafia Night is a fundraising night put on by the seniors to raise money for Senior Week and Prom, etc. Basically, each village is assigned a “country” (Hawaii and Africa are not countries, but whatevs), and the seniors from that village perform a dance from that country. It was so much fun! I mean, everyone knows I love the seniors anyway, but it was just so cool to see all the different dances. The breakdown of villages and countries was as follows:

Malaeloa: Africa
Poloa, Fagamalo, and the far west villages: India
ATL (Amanave to Leone): New Zealand (Maori)
Mesepa and Faleniu: Fiji
Aoloau (Alaska) and Mapasaga: Hawai’i
Leone: Jamaica
Pava’i’ai: Mexico
Taputimu and Vailoa (holla!): Tahiti

Here are some photos from each village:

The villages from the End of the Road (Poloa, Fagamalo) performing as India,


My Tap Boyz rockin' it Tahitian style!
(That's my field director in the orange shirt. He just went up and threw money at them. That's what they do here in AmSam: throw money at people like they are strippers.)


ATL doing their Maori thing.


Viva Mexico!


Quinn's Snow Boyz and girls from the village of Aoloau. They were the "country" of Hawai'i. Lol


Mesepa and Faleniu as Fiji. They did really well.


Vailoa and Taputimu for the win!


My Tap Girls...shaking it like the Tahitians.


Sili! And House!


Jamaica...this was the point that they were passing around a giant fake joint.
You know, to properly represent Jamaican culture.
Only in Samoa can you get away with that at a school fuction. Lol.


Malaeloa doing their Africa thing.


One more of Tahiti.
Man, I'm going to miss boys wearing flowers in their hair.



I have to say that of course I like Tahiti the best, because Tap is my honorary village, and Vailoa is home to a lot of my favorites. The boys were of course hilarious, but I was actually really impressed with the girls. Tahiti is where that fast hipshaking type of Polynesian dancing comes from, and I was really impressed with the girls ability to shake it. I could tell some of them were a little shy about it, though, since it’s so different from traditional Samoan dancing, which is much more fluid.

Okay, I'm going to try to upload a video of Fiafia Night later. For now, enjoy the pics!