One word: Coby:(

I have only slept about 8 hours in the last 48 hours. Why? One word: Coby. Friday started out like any

other day. Dragging myself out of bed, dreading yet another cold shower and feeling like someone was kneading my gut with their bare hands to start another day. I finish my shower, get ready for school and pull myself together one more time to walk out the door to staff worship. I didn’t think much of this morning except that the phrase “Thank Goodness It’s Friday” kept running through my head over and over. Seems to be a common occurrence lately. Live for the weekend, yet then the weekend is usually my hardest times. When things slow down from the week, when I have time to stop and think, it all comes flooding back. Silence is pains best friend. Anyways so I begin class like any other morning “goodmorning grade 3.” I try to say in my cheeriest voice. A garbled mess of answers is screamed back at me. Then there’s a knock at the door. Now usually my students just walk right in, announce their arrival, happy that they are late and noisily take their seat. So I was a bit surprised to hear the knock.
When I opened it up what I saw took a few seconds to register. There was Sheldon, one of my third grade sutdents whith andrea (our school registrar) right behind him. In his raised up hand he held a little pathetic, black, flea infested ball of fur……a puppy. I just stood there speechless and at first I thought “Oh he’s just bringing it for show and tell.” But the way he pushed it towards me with the smile of his face let me know this was a gift, not be shown or returned. Well I couldn’t keep it in class so Andrea took it back to her apartment, put it in a Rubbermaid box with a towel and her frog prince charming and a bowl of milk. During recess I walked up to the apartment to go check on him. Having only had him for about 2 hours I had already made up my mind that he was going back with Sheldon at the end of the day. I cannot raise a puppy, which is pretty much like having a baby plus be here as an SM. Too much work and I would have to give up A LOT of what keeps me going here (exercise and run whenever I want, sleep which is essential but hasn’t really been happening since I arrived here in Yap). He was crying at the top of his lungs when I got there into the apartment. I decided to ask the other girls what they thought and of course they all thought he was absolutely adorable. So he didn’t end up going home with Sheldon. I knew if he took him back home that this puppy would be thrown into the jungle to fend for itself and either make it as a street dog (dying early from worms and diseases) or die. Ask me this morning after having spent the last day with him (night and morning) I would have disregarded that and hoped that the rumors weren’t true.

Talking to my parents last night I realized some things. When I plan for something and then plans are

instantly changed I don’t deal very well. I can’t seem to find the patience for anything anymore. Everything seems to tick me off and I hate that. This isn’t me. I wasn’t like this before. I stayed in the apartment with Pamela this morning cause she needed to stay back from church cause she was in so much pain last night having to sit through vespers after surgery. I am ashamed to say I also stayed home from vespers last night cause I was feeling so out of it, stomach cramps, nauseated and a headache. I succumbed to the I had a whole speech prepared for when the other girls got home how it was a mistake to keep this puppy, how I didn’t want to raise it for the next 10 weeks till it would stop crying at night, how its hard enough just to be here let alone have to raise this child basically. I have been taking care of it since its got here Friday morning and I am already exhausted and want to give him back. I can’t seem to imagine another night like last night when I’m already tired from the week and then to be up every hour trying to figure out what this animal wants as he cries and cries and cries. Brittany told me last night when we were talking about how he probably has worms and that if he has crust in his eyes this morning he probably has some kind of infection. Sure enough add to his list of fleas, worms now we can place, infection/disease. I wouldn’t have made it through last night without britt’s suggestion of the warm oven mitt. She even talks me through my problems even when we are miles, worlds, oceans apart. That’s a part of why Pohnpei was so amazing. I had my best friend there RIGHT by myside to talk me through it, to comfort me when I wondered if I was really making a difference there, to hang out with, to always know I had someone who would listen to my stupid, petty problems. Now I have to wait till a set time and hope that internet is good to be able to talk to MY BEST FRIEND! that's not right when it was our RIGHT to have a year as friends to serve. But apparently our rights don't matter. Nothing we say matters. I can face anything in life when I have my best friend beside me and nothing seems impossible. She knows exactly what to say everytime no exceptions. So now I'm left with hearing her advice over a crackly, muffled, only works sometime computer screen. misery. So my only life saver was heating up a oven mitt and putting that beside him. It worked a few times to get him back to sleep but then it would only stay warm for about 1 min and then next time he woke up he would freak out again. Of course when the other girls got back from church, Coby turns into a silence angel and sleeps like a rock. I couldn’t get more than 30min in before he was crying again. They suggested we take shifts but all that keeps running through my head is “Sophie, you need to get a grip on this situation, on yourself. You need sleep.” We all need sleep. School/teaching exhausts us enough and now to think every three nights I become a full‐fledged mother. Is this punishment for waking my mom up every night till I was like 10? (she would probably say it was till I was 14):P Lol In any case this just seems to add to everything else and when normally I would LOVE TO have a puppy and he IS really cute but I can’t say I am ready for this right now.
I am reading a book "Overcoming your emotions" that my aunt sent me in one of her AWESOME packages:) and it was saying how you can begin to shut down in emotional situations or problems. I can see that in BOTH myself and Brittany this year. Just waiting, going through each day to get it over with, not talking with anyone, waiting to be able to say, I hop on a plane and leave tomorrow with a smile on my face. The honeymoon phase of my SM year is definintely over, but not by my choice but by Pohnpei's choice.