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.

A real teacher!

Last night I met the two Dartmouth volunteers that will be on my island with me. Their names are John and Gabe and they seem to be really nice guys. Poor Gabe was sitting at my table for trivia and the rest of the WorldTeach volunteers were giving him hell for going to Dartmouth. They were relentless. The guy definitely stuck up for himself but had a sense fo humor about the situaction. How can you not?

Also last night I got licensed as a REAL Marshallese teacher. I got a nice little 7 X 9 card to prove it. I also go the chance to meet my principal who is awesome and very excided to have me at the school. He let me know that my host family is set and I'm stoked because my host dad is a doctor on the island which makes me feel much better about getting injured or watever happens. Yay! i also talked to the volunteer who was with that family last year and she says that they speak English very well and they they are a pretty Westernized family. In a way, this is good beccause they will give me a little more leeway as far as mistakes and misunderstandings. I'm getting really pumped about this and I can't wai tot have my own classroom!

Rain in Ajeltaki

So unfortunately I bought a Wifi card and the log out pop up didn't come up so I can't log out and I have to spend the remaining 50 minutes so I might as well type up my blogs instead of copying and pasting....

News from Ajeltaki! We went into town today to have our language lesson and meet the principal of the Majuro Coop School. Both were awesome, I'm trying really hard to learn Marshallese and I can remember vocabulary but when it comes to sentences, my brain shuts down. I'm sure when I'm on my own little island, it'll stick a lot better.

So as I've tried to show through descriptions, the place I'm stayin is a little run down. This is what happens to the building on the island because the weather and sun is so much harsher and the landlords/government/tenants don't have the money to fix up their buildings. In addition, the way that land works here is that someone will own a huge chunk of land and build some houses on it and lease those buildings to the people of the RMI. There are VERY FEW people who ever own a house. Basically only the landlords of these properties will own their house and the rest of the people rent. Even the government, even the airlines lease the land for the airport. This as I think we all know, doesn't motivate the tenants to do any repairs or renovations on their houses because when their lease is up, they may not even live there anymore.

Okay, so this all ties in to what happpened today. First off, at around 4 am, the entire room was woken up by a huge rainstorm. I'm talking monsoon-style rain. Eventually we got back to sleep only to wake up in the morning to see that our kitchen area had been flooded. Water was leaking through the roof and the wires were sparking. After speaking with our directors, they told us that someone was going out to fix it while we're in town. The problem with this is that Marshallese-time is not the same as American-time. That person, for whatever reason decided not ot show up, so when we returned to the school, we had to hurry and clear out the food and utensils from the kitchen and we're no longer allowed to use that area. Because the man didn't com to fix the problem, the roof was in danger of collapsing. Luckily, the kitchen section is a ways away from the sleeping section. So I'm fine everyone! We just have to eat PB and J's for a night and cross your fingers, someone will be by to hook up the stove in the other area.

Love you all!

Sea Turtles and Muumuus

So unfortunately I wrote out some really witty and funny blogs but I can't find the USB plug in on this computer so I think I'll have to improvise...

I'll figure this whole thing out soon.

Anyway, there is a story I wanted to share with everyone about the first night a group of us decided to go out into Majuro to a couple bars. We currently live in a school in Ajeltaki which is about 40 minutes away. The only way to get into town is to hitchhike but it's common here and not dangerous. So we get all gussied up in out new muumuus which are amazing! Our field director said that "You can never go wrong with a muumuu here." This seems counter-intuitive but we go along. So everyone is dressed up and taking pictures like we're going to a Marshallese prom and it starts to rain. Well, the rain here lasts only about 20 minutes but it's basically monsoon style rain. We wait it out and meanwhile cars keep passing and when it finally stops, so do the cars. We wait on the side of the road for about 30 minutes and then we start walking. Now, in our group of 7, there is only one guy with a flashlight or headlamp. We're all following him and get about 100 yards when a truck pulls over. Riding in the back of a truck is the closest thing to air conditioning in Ajeltaki so we were all stoked. A couple of us hop up into in the bed of the truck and in the darkness we seem a dim outline of something lying in the bed. There is a chorus of "What is that?!" The people about to climb in are one leg out and one leg in, frozen trying to see what's in this truck. Finally, the guy with the flashlight shows up, points it into the bed and we see a HUGE ****ing SEA TURTLE lying on it's back, waving it's flippers. This thing took up half the space of the truck bed and was clearly still alive. We all hopped down and stood gasping/laughing while the driver laughed and sped away. Needless to say, that ended all desire to go out and I spent the rest of the night playing cards.

*Marshallese people eat sea turtles...

I had a couple other stories but I'm going to wait until I can figure out the USB. I also have pictures but those will have to wait til next time as well.

Bar lo eok!