Bugs

So since, school has
yet to start, I decided I would tell you a little about the magnificent insect
population of the Marshall Islands.

First there are the mosquitoes. They are everywhere and they are the most
determined of all the RMI insects. I have been fortunate enough to be chosen as a delicacy to these winged bloodsuckers. Even my host family has commented on how the "nam" like my ripelle skin. Breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as all the time in between in peppered with my exclamations of "Enana nam!" (bad mosquito!) My host parents tried to
control them using mosquito coils but it was made clear by the swarm at my
ankles that they would not be deterred.
Needless to say that I've become an excellent mosquito hunter (that's
for you Shig). Lightning fast hands and
a big loud clap and the nam are no more.
This is an epic battle that will last about 8 1/2 more months.

Next in the line up we have the
cockroaches. They aren't as big as their
cousins in Thailand, but they are speedier.
My first night in Wotje, I caught two crawling into bed with me and
after a minor scuffle, which included many squeals, a near melt down and arm
flapping, they were nothing but a gooey clump on my floor. I would like to thank Ernest Hemingway for
writing the hefty yet easy to wield Farewell to Arms which was integral in my
cockroach massacre. I haven't seen
another roach dare to enter my bedroom.
I talked to my baba and he said that they tend to stay in the
grass. Smart move cucaracha.

Unfortunately, my island must be the
mating grounds for the "yay" or poisonous centipedes. They are everywhere and they use their
hundreds of legs well because they are really fast. Another volunteer, John, claims that it takes
two machete hacks to kill them. They can
be up to a foot long or as small as an inch.
They've been described by a previous volunteer as having escaped from
hell. There is another theory that they
are the spawn of Satan. I think you get
the idea that they are ugly and creepy and their pincer bites hurt really
really really bad. My baba says that if
one bites you on the foot, you won't be able to walk the next day because of
the pain. I've already been bit by a
baby centipede about an inch long and it hurt like a bee sting so I can't even
fathom the pain of an adult centipede's bite.
Ugh.

The small but mighty ant is next. I have no problem with this little guy, he's
actually amazing and I welcome them.
They clean up all the dead insect bodies littering my floor in about 5
minutes. They start with the scout, then
the trail, and then a huge herd of ants and they carry away the body to their
mysterious and invisible hill somewhere in my wall. Unless they are foolish enough to crawl on me
and bite, I leave them alone. But they
are everywhere and they are ingenious.
They've figured out how to get inside the peanut butter even when the
lid is completely closed. You've got to
hand it to them. Perseverance.

There are lots of other bugs here
including but not limited to: millipedes, flies, grasshoppers, fleas, lice,
little black beetles, big black beetles, and of course spiders. I've not had a significant encounter with
these guys but as long as they can't get past the mosquito net and they don't
bite me, I don't kill TOO many.

Here's my weekly
update:

Life in the islands has been
amazing. I'm getting better on my guitar
although I still can't recognize the song I'm playing. Occasionally there will be a snatch of a
melody and I get so excited but then it's gone, lost in the cacophony that is
my practice sessions. But I'm plugging
away on it with the help of my host mom, who is amazing and will be teaching me
Marshallese songs soon. Other than that,
I've been reading a lot, collecting shells on the beach, swimming, and trying
to plan my lessons for the first week even though I don't quite know what
grades I'm teaching. When I'm not doing
one of things, I'm practicing my Marshallese which is getting better aolep
iien. (always)

One funny thing that happened last night
was my conversation with my host mom about Mark Zuckerberg. By the way, my host mom loves facebook. She goes on to chat with her friends and her
daughter in America and I'm helping her post some pictures this year. She talked about how Mark Z must be a genius
to create facebook and when she asked how old he was, she was shocked. She couldn't believe that someone so young
was a billionaire. Then I told her about
the movie about him, The Social Network, and she got really excited. If someone can copy that movie to a
flashdrive or disc and send it to me, I think that would be a good Christmas
present.

On Friday, I went on
a jambo (walk/trip) to Wodmej, which is another island in my atoll and also
where Kathleen, my fellow volunteer is stationed. Wodmej is beautiful with white sandy beaches,
lots of fish and awesome people. I met
Kathleen's host family and her host mom Tisee taught me how to make birds out
of pandanus leaves. I love them! They are adorable so prepare yourselves for
little bird gifts. I also saw 30 little
baby sea turtles and Kathleen and I started naming them: Ralph, Rolf, Lily,
Marzipan, Pebbles, etc. They were the
cutest things I've ever seen! I'm sorry
I don't have pictures…:( On the way back
to Wotje, we stopped while my host dad, Jibaebe, went fishing and now we have
fresh fish for dinner. The lagoon was
beautiful and clear and the day was sunny, a perfect day. And yes, if World Teach is reading this, I
did wear my life jacket, beacon and whistle included.

All in all, it's
been a great week. I sent out some
letters on Tuesday so several of my friends and family should look for
something in the mail. I'm on a limited
supply of envelopes until my shipment comes in so sorry I couldn't write
everyone something just yet.

Wotje!

So I've finally made it to Wotje!

My host family is amazing. They've really been so generous with everything so this morning I decided to repay them by making Mickey Mouse pancakes. What could say "thank you" better than eating a Disney character?

The family lives right near the airport and they are super westernized. They have a washing machine! I know I'm going to get a lot of hate mail from my fellow volunteers for that one. I brought some DVDs for the family so they've been working their way through my tiny collection and they love the movie Penelope. My host mom keeps asking me if I have Bring it On so my friend Kathleen is going to try to get it from Majuro this week. I love them all, they've been teaching me Marshallese and they say my grammar is really good. I don't know about all that, but I'll take the compliments as I get em.

I have two host brothers and my host sister is Marlynn. They are all amazing and they all play the guitar so they're currently teaching me how to play Happy Birthday. Hopefully I'll progress past that, to some other songs, but if that's all I get, I'll be happy.

School has yet to starts, my principal and the rest of the teachers are still stuck on Majuro. My school is brand new though. They're just finishing construction on it and it looks pretty sweet. Fans and everything.

Hope that updated you all a little bit, trying to save my internet minutes so next time I'll write a little more. Love you all and talk to you soon! (I'll send out emails on Sunday)

PS I got bit by a poisonous centipede. Good thing it was only a baby but it still stung like a *bleep*.

Purgatory

Some of the other volunteers have referred to this in-between time as Purgatory and I think it fits. We're stuck in Majuro with no idea of when we could leave but we have to be packed and ready just in case. Then if we do get told we're leaving, we may get to the airport and be sent back because the flight is cancelled. Our days consist of waiting, drinking iced tea, walking the mean streets of Majuro and playing cards. In the words of my fellow prisoner Stephanie, "We've become professional waiters." Stephanie has it worse than me because she's not even sure of what island she's going to. Her mom sent her an email titled, Patience is a Virtue. Another volunteer Mary Helen informed us that Patience is the most overrated virtue...

These are the types of discussions we're having in Purgatory.

Some pics not mine but better than nothing

sammindes.tumblr.com/gallery

annaslifeplan.blogspot.com

there are some pics of me in there. :)

Leaving Majuro

So if everything goes well, I'll be leaving tomorrow on an AMI flight for Wotje. I've got everything packed and ready to go. I wanted to write one last blog post to let a few people know about the place I'm going to. I wrote this yesterday morning. Enjoy my list.

This will probably be my last blog post from majuro until mid serve in December. I'll try to post occasionally from Wotje, but the internet is unreliable at best. A little background on Wotje: It's about 150 miles north of majuro (see map on first post). it has a lot of WWII relics because it was occupied by the Japanese and then bombed and taken over by the US. There are a bunch of sunken ships in the lagoon and there are still bomb craters and lookout towers all over the island. This is a huge piece of history and testament to the importance of the Marshall Islands in WWII. One downside is that there are still unexploded bomb fragments lying around the jungle, so the people tell me no to go wandering off by myself deep in the jungle. As if I would do that anyways. The other problem is that there is a fish here called the stone fish and it loves the rusty stuff on and around the ships so there are a ton of them there. The stone fish is known for it's sting which hurts like a mother ****er and will hurt to the point of not walkign for several days. So the moral of the story is...don't walk/put my flippers down near rusting ships and don't go walking alone in the jungle. My list of don'ts is growing by the minute but here are a few I've come up with.

Don't show your knees

Don't forget to ALWAYS wear a slip

Don't show your shoulders

Don't go anywhere (far distances) alone

Don't go on a jambo (walk) with a guy

Don't be in a closed room with a guy (this includes the classroom)

Don't step over a lady's feet when she's sitting on the ground

Don't forget to duck your head when walking by the irooj (chief/king)

Don't tell someone you like something because they'll give it to you

DON'T DO ANYTHING ON SUNDAYS

Don't forget to put money in the collection plate at church

Don't wear your hair down at church

Don't talk about relationships in mixed gender settings EVER

Don't refuse to take food

Don't tell them you're hungry (it looks bad on your host family)

Don't drink alcohol (the outer islands are dry and if they catch you drinking, the chain you to a coconut tree as a form of public shaming)

I'm sure I'll have more later. Hope to write soon!

Teaching Practicum

The last few days, me and my teaching group of 5 people have been designing lesson plans and talking through assessments to get reading for the Practicum. This sounds scary but really it's a summer school type thing for 3 hours Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each person has to teach a lesson alone with no help from the other teachers. we had about 17 kids on each day. This would have been fine, except most of the kids were lured there by the promise of candy. This meant that they weren't all that into being taught and sitting in a classroom all day when they could be back on the playground pushing and shoving and generally causing mayhem. The way these kids were recruited goes against everything we were taught in America such as, Stranger Danger, "never take candy from strangers", etc. But nevertheless, there we were a bunch of ripelles, foreigners, on the playground waving suckers and gum at kids trying to lure them into the classroom. In the words of one of our directors, "The Marshall Islands is the only place on earth where this is okay."

Once they were in the classroom, the real challenge began. Most of these kids weren't forced to be there so they made sure we knew that by walking in and out of the classroom, wrestling on the ground, and overall being behavior management nightmares. Finally by the third day we figured out that if we give them a break, have them run around in the hot Equatorial sun and then bring them inside and read a book, then they will be calm and obedient. This worked really well, to the point that these kids were zombies. I learned that there is a fine line between obedient and comatose.

Overall it was a good experience and now I know what to expect on my island. I'll be leaving next Friday for Wotje. This may or may not happen since according to our field directors, the Air Marshall Islands is wishy washy at best. They keep their flight reservations in a composition notebook and the people on that list may or may not have paid, so the number of people on the plane may or may not be accurate. Also, they only fly the plane if there are enough people to make it worthwhile and since the list of reservations isn't accurate, we never know if the plane is going to fly. We could be sitting at the airport waiting to board and it's cancelled. We also could be told it's cancelled and then be woken up at 4 am with our directors honking at us in the truck telling us the plane is leaving. I've summed it up to this: If we're on the list we might go but me might not, if we aren't on the list, we still might go but we might not. You don't know if you're going to your island until your feet are on your island.

Hopefully my feet will be on Wotje by Friday but apparently they are having some weed control problems on the airstrip there soooooo we might take a boat. Oh and the above information goes for the boats too. I'm really learning how to be flexible here.