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DO YOU NEED C re e c h’s C re m ato r i u m Ltd.
Volume XII-Issue 630
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August 15, 2016
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Tropical Island Life Lures Vibe Coach To Return
English Volunteer Teacher Crystal Jackson on the left is pictured with four of her students at their graduation ceremonies on the Pacific Island of Micronesia. Photo submitted
Marie Conboy Reporter
Mannville local, Cr ystal Jackson recently returned from a year of volunteer teaching with World Teach in Pohnpei, Micronesia, a small island in the western Pacific Ocean. The freshly tanned traveler shared her experiences about finding love, exploring tropical island life, learning the unusual names of her 143 students while adapting to a different culture and climate. The 30-year-old gave up her job as a VIBE Coach at St. Jerome’s school after four years to follow her thirst for adventure and travel. Going it alone, as the only Canadian girl, to an isolated island in the middle of Pacific Ocean didn’t scare Jackson; who describes the year as being “an incredible life-changing experience.” “I lived with a local family for three weeks after I arrived; they introduced me to the culture and answered any questions that I had. I had two guardians that were called parents; they were amazing
and became like parents to me, giving me great advice about my new environment.” Jackson says that she has learned a lot more patience as a person from living the laid back island lifestyle. “When people get frustrated here now at silly things, I’m like why are you frustrated? Just relax and take it easy.” Jackson said she discovered that becoming a full time teacher in Canada is not the right career path for her. “I find that teachers here are very bound to a curriculum, unlike Micronesia where I had the freedom to develop different ways of teaching. I still had standards to meet but we used fun ways of teaching like listening to the meaning of songs and afterwards leading a discussion about that. I love working with VIBE and I am really excited to return, but I miss Micronesia a lot. I think there are a lot of people in Canada to do the work I do, but there are not as many people to do the same work in Micronesia. I would like to go back and see if I can do some
good work,” said Jackson. Jackson had a total of 143 students in her oral English classes. “It was difficult to learn all of their unusual names and it took me almost two months to remember them all.” The allure of the tropical island has certainly taken a hold of the young teaching volunteer, so much so that she is already making plans to return next year. “I have to give Facebook a lot of credit for preventing me from getting homesick. It was very easy to keep in touch with everyone. A lot of my friends told me they were happy that I posted so many photographs (over 1000), and that they felt they were there with me. “The heat was crazy. While I was there, I experienced a severe drought. At one point we couldn’t shower for two weeks. I had lived through droughts before in Alberta but we are so lucky here, we never run out of food or water. “I missed little comforts from home, like cheese and vegetables. It cost $20 US for a single block of cheese. You
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would save it like crazy and sprinkle only a little bit at a time. I also missed vegetables. They are not that good with agriculture on the island and we had to wait for the ships to come in to purchase produce and if you didn’t go to the store that day it would be gone. If I go back, I would like to have a garden,” said Jackson. O u t s i d e of teac h in g exc ur s i o n s included hiking on the island or taking a boat ride to a nearby island for a picnic. Jackson advises everyone to find a place they don’t know anything about, travel there and have an adventure. “It’s easy to just go to Mexico or Disneyland every year, but the cultural experience you get from going somewhere you don’t know a lot about changes your world view and opens your eyes to so many things. “I didn’t even know where Micronesia was. I looked it up on the map and I thought to myself I can’t go to the middle of the ocean, I can’t even swim! Then I went to this tropical paradise,” said Jackson.
Eastalta