More Pictures

Here are some more photos. Nothing happened this week so I'll just explain the pictures.

The third one is a picture of me after a bike ride around the island. It took maybe 30 minutes to bike around so you can imagin how small it is. Just a side note, I'm wearing a guam and normally they are supposed to go to your mid calf. I guess they didn't account for tall people when creating them.

The second picture is me riding on a kurkur. It's my baba's and yes, the large life jacket is necessary as dictated by WorldTeach head office. I think that's my host brother taking down the sail.

The first picture is me snorkeling a WWII Japanese plane which was shot down and is now half covered in coral at the bottom of the lagoon. Totally creepy and amazing at the same time. It was huge, with 4 engines. Now you can only see parts of it because the coral is growning around it. If you look closely you can see part of it in the background. It just looks like a dark splotch but it is the plane.

Here are some pictures I've taken recently. The first is my cousin, Clorissa. She likes to throw sand at me but she's awesome. The second is Laura, my field director who is stuck here for 4 weeks because the plane broke. She's having a good time though. The next it Clorissa, her friend and her baby sister Mimi is the background. Mimi is very suspicious of white people and up until a couple weeks ago, she cried everytime she saw one. Mostly Kathleen, but I got a few tears too. Now she smiles and waves but approaches like I'm a wild animal. Progress has been made though, she gave me a cracker AND touched my hand. Then she ran away.

The last picture is my mama helping fish, we got a lot of fish that day.

The Landing of Laura

My field director is here for a visit. She'll be here all week, although she's spending the first half with Kathleen in Wodmej. There is a lot to tell, but it would all be boring without pictures to post with it. I'm going to wait a little bit before telling any of the stories until I get the pictures uploaded. It will be more fun that way.

I'll tell you all aobut the last few weeks, don't you worry. Here's a little snippet: boy carrying dead cat, 1 am corn beefing, True Blood, fishing (sort of), the arrival of the ship, and dengue strikes Ailinglaplap! (not Wotje)

Reef Fishing

Last Friday I got my taste of fishing on an outer island. My 8th grade girls took me out to the reef on oceanside at 11 pm and this is what went down:

We tromp through the jungle, avoiding poisonous centipedes and angry dogs

We sneak past the officials at the high school and down onto the reef

Since it was low tide, we were able to walk really far out on the reef

The process of catching the fish this way is to get two girl together, find a rock on the reef, turn it over, and there should be some fish sleeping underneath

When they see a fish, the machetes start flying and they chop at the little guy until his floating face down in the water

Another girl, carrying an empty rice sack grabs the fish and the group moves on

This is apparently reef fishing. Before you scoff, let me say, the fish are asleep, but if you miss them with that first machete slice, they definitely wake up and speed away. There's not a lot of room for error.

Despite all this, I caught 4 fish!! Small, but we fried them up on Saturday and ate them at our picnic. It was pretty satisfying to be eating my own catch. Didn't quite fill me up, but I was happy.

Unfortunately, no pictures, I didn't want to drop my camera in the water...But here's a good one that made me laugh when I saw it. Enjoy!

A short jambo to the small island

It was my baba's birthday party/picnic on Saturday and we went to a small island with everyone even remotely related to him and had a picnic. It was amazing. Potato salad, quarter legs, breadfruit, some delish chocolate cake I made him...all of it was perfect. We also decided to pick up Kathleen and her and I went snorkeling and saw some beautifully colored coral and the cutest little yellow fish ever. No sharks yet though. I breathe a sigh of relief whereas Kathleen is frustrated.

On the ride home, it was night time and let me get semi-poetic for a minute. Imagine, cruising along in a boat, there are little glowing fish underneath you, all the stars in the sky above you, and skipping along beside the boat, hoards of flying fish. It was probably the most beautiful thing I've seen since I've been here. Wow. I know this place is difficult and like all nations, has it's problems, but the sheer natural beauty of living in a place like this is amazing.

For Kathleen's Mama: She was having a rough time for awhile, she had a sinus infection, but she got her mail and her glasses and I think she'll be feeling better the next time I see her. I think the snorkeling helped too.

PS the baby turtle in the picture got eaten. Sorry :(

This Last Week

School is going alright, I could be doing better in
6th grade, but for some reason, everything I try has no effect. Getting them to do their work or to listen,
or to just stay in their seats is a Herculean effort. All my other classes are much easier, well,
comparatively. For 8th grade, we're
studying poetry and I'm very impressed that they seem to understand stresses,
rhymes and syllables. We've been able to
create some interesting couplets in the last couple weeks. 5th grade is doing a space unit and I'm teaching
them about the moon and also using a partner reading program to try to boost
their reading skills. 3rd grade is in
the middle of studying the animal kingdom, our next animal group are birds. They really love it and I'm excited to teach
them about animals. I've also made them
a small storybook since our textbooks for 3rd grade haven't arrived. We just finished reading the Turtle and the
Rabbit for our Reptile week. That's
what's going on in the classroom.


Vaccinations

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring my camera
so I don't have any pictures of the island wide vaccination day. It was interesting to see the whole school
get funneled into to small Wotje hospital to receive their flu shots. The kids were cute, coming up to me and
telling me that they were scared and that it would hurt a lot. This was all in Marshallese mind you. I responded that it only hurts a little bit,
like a pinch. And then I demonstrated
this to them. They all thought that was
hilarious and they went around to each other saying, "e jab metak"
and then would pinch each other. 6, 7,
and 8 grade went first and of course, they came out and were telling the
younger kids how it hurt so much and that they wanted to cry. The little kids' eyes got big and they were
moaning and looking around for a way to escape when I told them, "E
riab!" (It's a lie!) and then they
all started
Now after all this time and energy
convincing the kids that they shouldn't be scared and that it's okay, I
couldn't pull it together enough to get my shot. I told them all that I already got my flu
shot in America, which is a lie. I hate
shots and I unless it's required, I don't want them. Hypocrite?
Absolutely.

Going to the Small(er) Island

This weekend, I got to go on a camping trip with my mama, baba, and two other ripelles to what everyone calls the "small island". This term encompasses a whole group of smaller islands that are uninhabited but in the same atoll as Wotje. It took an hour canoe ride but we made it just before it got dark outside. And yes, I rode in a handmade, traditional Marshallese canoe. Pictures to follow, whenever I get a chance to upload.

On the island, we ate freshly caught fish, slept in hammocks under the stars, ate coconut pancakes and made our handicrafts. The guys went out fishing, but my baba says he will teach me to sail the canoe and fish with the long net, so I wasn't too jealous. All in good time. I got to spend some quality time with my mama and practice my Marshallese skills such as starting a fire with a coconut, using a machete to cut me some coconut juice, and eat a ridiculous amount of pandanus.

All in all it was a good trip. Here are some pictures from earlier, sorry about the delay in the blog update.

PS to Kathleen's mama: I heard her on the radio on Wednesday, so maybe someone fixed her radio? She's doing good, although I haven't seen her in a bit. I think there was a party on Wodmej this weekend so she didn't come over. My baba has told me that she will come fishing with us sometime so that's good. Hope everything's good with you guys and thanks for the emails!

Back to my Island

So this morning, I get on a flight back to Wotje. Of course this is conditional on whether the plane actually flies. There is a funeral on another island so the planeis chartered for the morning. There may not even be a flight. But just in case, I wanted to say thank you to everyone for sending me letters or packages. It is extremely appreciated since communication here is so unreliable, the one thing that does show up on a more consistent basis are letters.

My time in majuro has been spent running around trying to find supplies for the next 5 months and also applying for jobs. I was able to piece together several resumes and cover letters but the bulk of mysearch will have to be done when I get back. There is only so much I can accomplish in 2 days with borrowed internet. Nevertheless, I enjoyed my time in Majuro, I got to spend time with the other amazing volunteers, learn some new guitar songs (thank you for putting up with me Matt) and eat a ridiculous amount of cheese. All in all it was an awesome trip but I'm glad to be going back to Wotje.

This may very well be the last blog post for the next 5 months because the internet on Wotje is off again, on again. Most recently, off again. So if you don't see an update for awhile, that's the reason. I hope you all have an amazing New Year and I'll see a lot of you in June!!!

Iokwe!

MIR and the various characters

After spending 3
days and nights at MIR, I can say that it is one of my favorite places in the
RMI. We would do our mid-service modules
and then at night head down to the bar and mingle with who ever was there. The first night, we met the Minister of
Finance who hung out with us and bought the World Teach a round of beers and
then introduced us to the Marshall Islands wrestling Olympian, Waylon?. He told us all about his wrestling history
and where he's going in the next couple of months.

The next night, we
met a guy from the Kwajalein base who actually knew Anna and was dating the
previous WorldTeach on Santo. He was an
interesting character and gave us all sorts of information about Kwajalein and
what it's like to live there.

Finally, the last
night we were there, we met Yvonne, who has an amazing karaoke voice and is
super friendly. We figured out after talking to her that she actually lived
very closet o Liz, another volunteer in Chicago. Small World.
All in all, we met some amazing people in the MIR
lobby/restaurant/bar. Made some awesome
connections and had some interesting convesations. Go MIR!

Shopping Extravaganza

My time in the
Majuro during mid service has been fun and definitely needed. When we first got into Majuro, it was a bit
of a culture shock. Coming from a small
island of 600 people into Majuro with 15,000 people. Crazy.
The cars and the taxis and the CHOICES.
Going into the Payless here to buy groceries took me more than an hour.
I ended up only buying yogurt, milk, cheese and cereal. Oh and pop tarts. Why did it take me so long? Well, I frequently stopped in the middle of
the aisle and just stared at all the different things. I had to peruse EVERY aisle and look at all
the stuff just in case. It was more of
an entertainment outing than an actual errand.
In Payless there are about 20 different types of cereal. That was too much for me, I can't even
remember seeing so much diversity since my time here. Can you imagine how I'll react when I go to
Safeway in the States? I'll need a whole day to pick up a dozen items.

One of my favorite
Majuro pastimes is to go into each and every store and look at all the
stuff. I've been to dozens of stores now
and I've bought hardly anything. I just
like to look at the things. I feel very
much like a country bumpkin. There are
some things in the RMI that cost a ridiculous amount though. For instance, toilet paper is on average
12-15 dollars for a 12 pack. I might be
wrong but I think that's excessive.
Candy here is outrageous. For
those little miniature snickers bags, it's 7-8 dollars. What?
Sorry, about that, it was a bit of a boring rant but I thought you
should know…