Quick Update

It's een a while since my last update so here's a quick shotgun list of highlights.

• The Bikini Mayor passed away. He got into a bad car crash and was paralyzed from the waist down. They medivaced him to the Phillipines and he succumbed to complications. We missed aabout a week of school but I am happy that we were able to involve ourselves in the community.
• Kierten's computer died and it caused a lot of stress (mostly for her). Vista corrupted itself and I packed up all her files onto my hard drive when her family sent a recovery drive. Apparently sending things by priority mail does work here. To packages for Kiersten arrived in 2 and 4 days respectively. She still has some hardware problems. The computer says that she does not have dialup or wireless internet capability. Ethernet however is still good.
• I've been swimming a lot and I played my first basketball game yesterday. It was fun and it's a way to get to know the young men on island.
• Manit (culture) week just passed and there was a Marshallese spelling bee. Our 4th, and 5th Graders won first place out of all the students their grade in Majuro.

That's all for now. I'll try to post again soon.

Photos First

Me on the dock horsing around with the boys, a great picture of some of the small kids on Ejit, and the Honor Guard carrying the Mayor to the Gravesite

Some pictures

Sunset spearfishing shot on our way back to Ejit.
The boys after we went swimming a few weeks ago.

Paradise

I try not to paint too wonderful a picture of my time here, but this time I'm just going to go on about how much I love it here. Kiersten and I have gone out spearfishing out in the lagoon. There is a marker pole about 100 yards from the dock in Ejit where there is a large reef. We swim out there for the exercise and then spearfish there. The coral formations there are as big as houses and the fish are plentiful. The last two times I've gone out I stopped and no joke for the first time stated in my mind "This is paridise". The kids come out to see us on home made rafts (styrofoam blocks and refrigerator doors) when we go. It's endearing, annoying and alarming all at once. They're interested in seeing us, but they scare the fish away. Finally they always ask us "Did you see any sharks?" Kiersten is a bit worried that they know more than we do, but I'm optimistic. We haven't seen any yet.

As far as school is going, I'm doing relatively well the second time around. We're finally settling into routines and although there have been bumps along the way (I need to reinstate progress reports for 7th grade) I'm doing much better than last year. Kiersten is undergoing the craziness everyone goes through during their first year of teaching, but the new policy helps her a lot. Anna forces all of the new volunteers to send in lesson plans a week ahead for her to review. This lets Kiersten focus on grading and prep rather than planning for most of the week.

To close, here are some high and low points since the last update:

1. Seeing a fish about as big as my torso when we went swimming back from the pole yesterday. It was the biggest wild marine animal I have ever seen close up.
2. Half of my classes still don't have air conditioning. We go through at least 2 gallons of boiled water a day to keep hydrated.
3. Cooking. I really like it, and Kiersten does the dishes.
4. We have "high speed" internet installed at the school now (14 kbs). I can now do frivilous things on the internet without wasting anyone's money. The line is leased so the MOE pays the same amount each month no matter how many hours we log on to it.
5. I've gotten so annoyed at losing instruction time after breaks that I've instituted a 30 second rule. Any student 4th grade and higher who takes more than 30 seconds getting in line after recess is over gets detention with me. We practice lining up outside after school rain or shine. My instruction time has since increased by an average of 10 minutes a day.

School Has Started

While the Marshall Islands school year officially began on August 18th, Ejit started on Wednesday. We had a half day, then a full day. Today (It's Friday here) we cancelled school for the PTA meeting. More on that fiasco later.

All outer island volunteers are at their sites right now. Wotje got out without any trouble but Kili needed to try 3 times. The first time there was a bad storm in Kili and the second time they couldn't land because the runway had too much vegetation on it and the landing gear might have broken. The silver lining to this story is that we actually have a working plane. God willing it will stay up.

I've been spending a good amount of time in the MIR trading food purchases for wireless internet. Normally the cost is 10 cents a minute, but you can sit in the restaurant all day and pay nothing. All you have to do is buy something. My current post is from there.

We had our first PTA meeting and it was just as (even more?) painful as last year. There were drawn out speeches, there was drama, and I left in the middle to go to the bathroom and have a snack at my house. I don't really feel like writing everything that happened so if you're interested you can send me an e-mail and I'll answer. Or if you're my mom I'll tell you about it the next time we talk on the phone. (Hi mom)

On a fun note I've gone swimming with the kids a lot lately, and it's been a ton of fun. I feel a little bad for Kiersten because its her first year and she doesn't have the time to swim like I do. I'm helping her out when I can but the first quarter is always a mess.

I'll post again soon. (maybe)

Orientation

I've been helping Anna out a bit with orientation and workshops and after today we'll be all finished. We're having our end of orientation dinner at Monica's again this year, and I got to order all of the food. It should be a good time. The highlight would have to be when I had the volunteers over for dinner on Ejit. They all crossed the reef for the first time, and the dogs left them alone. I shared some culinary tricks with them with vegetable fried rice and yellow fin tuna served three ways- Sashimi, Poke, and Jacob's lemon/coconut milk serviche thing from Tocalou.

Tomorrow, the three Kili volunteers head out and then on Saturday all of the Dartmouth volunteers will be off island. A few World Teach volunteers will be staying in downtown Majuro until they ship out. I'm sure I'll have more to post about that later. It looks like I'll be better at posting this year because the MIR started giving out free wireless internet. All you need to do is buy some food and you make your money back on what you would have spent on internet at NTA or the RRE.

Hawaii and Majuro

I'm safe in Majuro now and I'm currently cleaning our house. It's not as messy as I feared but I still have a lot of work to do. I'm splitting my time between orientation and Ejit, helping Anna out and preparing for school. I'm really excited about the year and hopefully other people will post to the blog soon.

Just an item on people watching while I was in Hawaii. I saw two weird pet experiences while I was there. A woman on vacation had her parrot or parakeet with her, but the bird wasn't in a cage. It was just sitting in her cleavage. The next one isn't as weird but shortly after that I saw a grown man walking his dog around in a baby stroller.

I'll post again soon but I have a lot of work to do.