8/23/07
Here’s my address:
Kwajalein Atoll High School
PO Box 5129
Ebeye, MH 96970
I know it’s expensive, but anything you want to send would be great. Some suggestions for care packages:
- letters! Emails are great too though
- powdered drinks (like tang, but there’s better stuff too) because all we have is water really
- tea - this sounds strange, but we boil all of our water, so it’s really easy to just make tea whenever (I like just about anything that isn’t caffeinated, herbal or otherwise)
- dried fruit - (apples are $3 a pound, and they are rotten and gross)
- anything!!!! Keep in mind it takes about 2-4 weeks to get here though. Don’t send basic school supplies, it is usually obtainable here, but if you have cool resources for middle school science that would be awesome! We have a dvd and vhs projector! Also, any cool arts and crafts stuff would be great too… that is really limited.
- do not mail anything valuable
Yesterday was the first day of actual classes. We didn’t start until 1030 because the schedule wasn’t done until 830. One person, Laura, my boss, does the entire schedule, and apparently almost everything else around here. She was up until 5am the night before trying to make it work. When the students got here, they did nothing for an hour, then some of them got to pick an elective when Laura went around to each individual kid and asked them what they wanted to take. The bell is an old rusted oxygen tank that Laura hits with a hammer.
When she hit it at 1030, the chaos began. No one knew what room to go to, there were only about 3 copies of the just finished master schedule with students’ names listed, so they just wandered around the campus. Some of them came to my class that were supposed to be there, some that weren’t, some that were confused, and some that knew they were cutting another teacher’s class (“…but it’s the first day!”). Maybe 1/3 of my students made it into my class. I have 3 tracked 10th grade biology classes, and 2 tracked 11th grade chemistry/physics classes. The highest students are at maybe, MAYBE a 5th or 6th grade reading level. In my 10th grade “extra help” biology class, no one spoke (or wrote) English. I’m not really sure yet how I’m going to teach them about golgi bodies and the krebs cycle…
So, I didn’t end up doing much, just making nametags for their desks and then filling out a getting to know you questionnaire (what’s your favorite sport?, and so on). Then at the end of the day, their bus didn’t come, and the outside of my apartment became a playground. On Wednesday, during the placement testing, my $45 board shorts disappeared off the clothes line. All my stuff is now inside, since all of the kids hang out at my front door (under the awning), at my back door (to smoke in privacy), and everywhere else. They will even knock on my door and ask for water since there is no place on campus for them to get it. This is a problem that I will be bringing to the principal when he gets here – how can the only source of water for 300 students be the faculty’s private catchments (which become very very important in the dry season)? Alex and Connor don’t bring their nalgene bottles to Ebeye when they teach because everyone they see asks them for some, and it’s easier to just go thirsty than tell everyone no, because you definitely don’t want to be drinking after anyone here. Leprosy, tuberculosis, the flu, and many other ailments are all huge problems in the second most densely populated city in the world. Speaking of which, my finger is infected and I’m going to try to lance it myself and put alcohol and Neosporin on it rather than go to the hospital in Ebeye… I’m not going there unless I’m dying.
So, the scheduling was a disaster. And it ended up not working the way Laura wanted to, so Laura canceled school today (also because our vice principal, who is really a teacher – he teaches 3 periods of Micronesian History, wasn’t planning on showing up today anyway because his son was going on a trip or something). I have to admit I was relieved when she knocked on the door at 8am (she lives next door) to tell me this. Boomer, Ashley, and I spent the day at our secret spot on the island. You would think that a coral atoll in the middle of the pacific would have all kinds of sandy beaches everywhere, but it turns out that this is not the case. All of the ocean side is always lava rock and most of the lagoon side is as well. We did, however, find maybe the most beautiful beach on earth about a 10 minute walk away from campus and civilization. The beach is incredible, but the problem is that it actually belongs to the King of Ebeye, who has a house about 50 yards away. Thankfully, there is dense jungle separating our secluded beach from his house, so we haven’t been caught yet. I’m not sure what happens if we are. Hopefully he likes Americans.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
FINALLY!
Guys, I finally managed to get something posted on this thing - I had to divide it into really small chunks for the internet connection to be able to handle. USE THE LINKS ON THE RIGHT TO START WITH THE FIRST POST!... only the "most recent" ones are posted on this page, even though they were all posted today. They should all have specific dates on the right. ENJOY THE NOVEL.
Thanks,
Matt
Thanks,
Matt
8/21/07 Part 3
The high school is only 4 years old, but it’s already pretty decrepit. I spent all day yesterday cleaning the layers of salt off my desks and chairs and text books in my classroom. Today I opened up a box full of physics books to find a nest of 23 cockroaches – I know there were 23 because I went back to my house (which is literally a 20 second walk from my classroom – I live on campus), got a bottle of Raid, and then ran around the classroom spraying them until each one was dead. Arg. I’m teaching 10th grade biology and 11th grade integrated physics and chemistry. Good thing I’m an economics major.
Today we had our first day of school, but all that happened was an assembly and then placement testing for new students. At the assembly, all of the teachers (about 12) sat on the stage while 300 students sat facing us. We each had to introduce ourselves. It was very strange not to be a student for the first time in my life. The principal is in Majuro on “personal business” (he’s much more into local politics than actually running the school) and won’t be back for at least 2 weeks, so the vice principal, who sometimes struggles with English, did the introductions. After each of the new American teachers had received thunderous applauses, they sang their school anthem very enthusiastically, and then the placement testing began. I was a proctor, and I can already tell that classroom management is going to be an issue for me. I think the biggest problem, however, is that the students (in particular the 9th graders) really don’t understand English. I graded about 40 English placement tests this afternoon and the most advanced student was comparable to an average American 2nd or 3rd grader, while most students had no idea what was going on. So while I will be teaching high school, it’s more like I’m teaching really mature elementary and middle schoolers.
We have already made some friends on the island. On the first night, we were invited to a farewell party for a family moving from Gugeegue to Dayton, Ohio. Why? We don’t know. It was, however, quite the feast. Today at lunch we were invited to the American couple’s house who live next store to boomer and Ashley, and across the lawn from me. The wife teaches and the husband is retired but helps fix things around the school. They have family on the base and like the weather here. They’re great. Then we got invited for desert by a family also involved with education here. The wife, who was a Jesuit volunteer several years ago and is American, is now involved in teacher training, and the husband, who is Marshallese, is the principal of the smaller Catholic private high school on the island. They fed us brownies and ice cream while their baby slept. I made Terry, the husband, promise he would take me and Connor out spear fishing sometime soon after our relatively unsuccessful efforts (although I did catch an edible fish) earlier today. He seemed willing to help. They’re great too. I hope I like the students as much as everyone else here.
The high school is only 4 years old, but it’s already pretty decrepit. I spent all day yesterday cleaning the layers of salt off my desks and chairs and text books in my classroom. Today I opened up a box full of physics books to find a nest of 23 cockroaches – I know there were 23 because I went back to my house (which is literally a 20 second walk from my classroom – I live on campus), got a bottle of Raid, and then ran around the classroom spraying them until each one was dead. Arg. I’m teaching 10th grade biology and 11th grade integrated physics and chemistry. Good thing I’m an economics major.
Today we had our first day of school, but all that happened was an assembly and then placement testing for new students. At the assembly, all of the teachers (about 12) sat on the stage while 300 students sat facing us. We each had to introduce ourselves. It was very strange not to be a student for the first time in my life. The principal is in Majuro on “personal business” (he’s much more into local politics than actually running the school) and won’t be back for at least 2 weeks, so the vice principal, who sometimes struggles with English, did the introductions. After each of the new American teachers had received thunderous applauses, they sang their school anthem very enthusiastically, and then the placement testing began. I was a proctor, and I can already tell that classroom management is going to be an issue for me. I think the biggest problem, however, is that the students (in particular the 9th graders) really don’t understand English. I graded about 40 English placement tests this afternoon and the most advanced student was comparable to an average American 2nd or 3rd grader, while most students had no idea what was going on. So while I will be teaching high school, it’s more like I’m teaching really mature elementary and middle schoolers.
We have already made some friends on the island. On the first night, we were invited to a farewell party for a family moving from Gugeegue to Dayton, Ohio. Why? We don’t know. It was, however, quite the feast. Today at lunch we were invited to the American couple’s house who live next store to boomer and Ashley, and across the lawn from me. The wife teaches and the husband is retired but helps fix things around the school. They have family on the base and like the weather here. They’re great. Then we got invited for desert by a family also involved with education here. The wife, who was a Jesuit volunteer several years ago and is American, is now involved in teacher training, and the husband, who is Marshallese, is the principal of the smaller Catholic private high school on the island. They fed us brownies and ice cream while their baby slept. I made Terry, the husband, promise he would take me and Connor out spear fishing sometime soon after our relatively unsuccessful efforts (although I did catch an edible fish) earlier today. He seemed willing to help. They’re great too. I hope I like the students as much as everyone else here.
8/21/07 Part 2
Anyway, the next day we got up at 7am to go to the airport. We stood in line for about an hour waiting to get our baggage checked because each bag is completely opened and searched because the country cannot afford an x-ray machine (or just chooses not to buy one, spending the money on 100 flag poles outside of the new conference center instead). After the bags were searched, we were told that there was no room on the plane for us. We booked these tickets on Continental months ago. Our field director pulled some WorldTeach strings and we were put at the head of the standby list and were luckily able board the plane, which took off much later than scheduled. When we arrived on the military base at Kwajalein, which is a high security missile testing site, our bags were searched again, this time by two separate dogs, one for drugs and the other for explosives. We were then escorted off the base, not because we were important but because we were a security risk to the US military, and into the ferry waiting area. The ferry is an old world war 2 landing craft (the kind that landed at Normandy) that has been fitted with some benches and transports Marshallese people back and forth from Ebeye, the 2nd most densely populated city in the world, and the home of the majority of the kids I will be teaching. We were met by Laura, the American head teacher at the high school, and my boss, at the ferry waiting area. When the ferry arrived, we started loading our luggage aboard it – we each had 2 checked bags and 2 carry-on bags, so it was a lot of stuff. Then Laura got a phone call indicating a special boat was coming out to pick us up. So, we got off the ferry, and while we were unpacking our luggage from this boat packed shoulder to shoulder with tired Marshallese people coming home from work, they formed a little assembly line to help us get our bags off. We felt like pretty big idiots. But, then when the “special boat” didn’t come after 2 more hours we felt like even bigger idiots. So we got on the next ferry. After a 25 minute ride, we arrived at Ebeye, slum of the Pacific. Imagine a shanty-town where people use metal scraps propped up against one another for shelter, sleep 15 to a room, and the streets are always FILLED with masses and masses of children. 15,000 people in .14 square miles. That is Ebeye. We drove through on the one road, then started the 5 mile (but half hour) trek to Gugeegue. Gugeegue is an island roughly the same size at Kwajalein, but only 300 people live there, and it is home to both my high school and myself. In the late 90s, someone decided to connect Gugeegue and Ebeye with a 5-mile causeway bridge made of garbage. This causeway is possibly the worst “road” I have ever seen, and there are foot-deep potholes every three or four feet.
My apartment/house type place is the nicest building I have been into since arriving in the Marshall Islands outside of the Outrigger. It has two bedrooms, a common with a couch and two chairs, a large kitchen table, a bathroom with a shower, and a full kitchen. Our water comes from the roof, which used to go through a UV filter into the catchment so it didn’t have to be boiled, but since the light broke and there is no Marshallese word for “maintenance,” we have to boil everything we drink, which really isn’t a big deal. What is annoying is that there is no water heater, so showers are always icy. When you look at the back door you can see the lagoon about 100 yards away and when you look out the front door you can almost see the ocean over some bushes about 120 yards away. It’s beautiful.
Unfortunately the housing situation is not so great for the other volunteers. I am sharing my apartment with Staci, a girl who volunteered last year, has a contract this year, but hasn’t come back from the states yet. Connor and Alex, who will teach at the middle school in Ebeye, have no housing at all. They wander back and forth between my apartment and Boomer and Ashley’s place (sleeping on floors and couches), which is pretty defunct – there’s not a working stove, so all of the cooking has been taking place in my apartment. Boomer and Ashley came together and are also teaching at the high school. Some efforts are being made to find Connor and Alex housing, but their principal has a hard time accepting that sometimes it requires action to remedy a situation.
Anyway, the next day we got up at 7am to go to the airport. We stood in line for about an hour waiting to get our baggage checked because each bag is completely opened and searched because the country cannot afford an x-ray machine (or just chooses not to buy one, spending the money on 100 flag poles outside of the new conference center instead). After the bags were searched, we were told that there was no room on the plane for us. We booked these tickets on Continental months ago. Our field director pulled some WorldTeach strings and we were put at the head of the standby list and were luckily able board the plane, which took off much later than scheduled. When we arrived on the military base at Kwajalein, which is a high security missile testing site, our bags were searched again, this time by two separate dogs, one for drugs and the other for explosives. We were then escorted off the base, not because we were important but because we were a security risk to the US military, and into the ferry waiting area. The ferry is an old world war 2 landing craft (the kind that landed at Normandy) that has been fitted with some benches and transports Marshallese people back and forth from Ebeye, the 2nd most densely populated city in the world, and the home of the majority of the kids I will be teaching. We were met by Laura, the American head teacher at the high school, and my boss, at the ferry waiting area. When the ferry arrived, we started loading our luggage aboard it – we each had 2 checked bags and 2 carry-on bags, so it was a lot of stuff. Then Laura got a phone call indicating a special boat was coming out to pick us up. So, we got off the ferry, and while we were unpacking our luggage from this boat packed shoulder to shoulder with tired Marshallese people coming home from work, they formed a little assembly line to help us get our bags off. We felt like pretty big idiots. But, then when the “special boat” didn’t come after 2 more hours we felt like even bigger idiots. So we got on the next ferry. After a 25 minute ride, we arrived at Ebeye, slum of the Pacific. Imagine a shanty-town where people use metal scraps propped up against one another for shelter, sleep 15 to a room, and the streets are always FILLED with masses and masses of children. 15,000 people in .14 square miles. That is Ebeye. We drove through on the one road, then started the 5 mile (but half hour) trek to Gugeegue. Gugeegue is an island roughly the same size at Kwajalein, but only 300 people live there, and it is home to both my high school and myself. In the late 90s, someone decided to connect Gugeegue and Ebeye with a 5-mile causeway bridge made of garbage. This causeway is possibly the worst “road” I have ever seen, and there are foot-deep potholes every three or four feet.
My apartment/house type place is the nicest building I have been into since arriving in the Marshall Islands outside of the Outrigger. It has two bedrooms, a common with a couch and two chairs, a large kitchen table, a bathroom with a shower, and a full kitchen. Our water comes from the roof, which used to go through a UV filter into the catchment so it didn’t have to be boiled, but since the light broke and there is no Marshallese word for “maintenance,” we have to boil everything we drink, which really isn’t a big deal. What is annoying is that there is no water heater, so showers are always icy. When you look at the back door you can see the lagoon about 100 yards away and when you look out the front door you can almost see the ocean over some bushes about 120 yards away. It’s beautiful.
Unfortunately the housing situation is not so great for the other volunteers. I am sharing my apartment with Staci, a girl who volunteered last year, has a contract this year, but hasn’t come back from the states yet. Connor and Alex, who will teach at the middle school in Ebeye, have no housing at all. They wander back and forth between my apartment and Boomer and Ashley’s place (sleeping on floors and couches), which is pretty defunct – there’s not a working stove, so all of the cooking has been taking place in my apartment. Boomer and Ashley came together and are also teaching at the high school. Some efforts are being made to find Connor and Alex housing, but their principal has a hard time accepting that sometimes it requires action to remedy a situation.
8/21/07 Part 1
So much has happened since my last blog entry. I am now in Gugeegue, but I am going to start back in Majuro.
They took us to an outer island within the Majuro Atoll to get some perspective on what life is like out there. Gugeegue is neither Majuro nor an outer island, but somewhere in between… but I’ll get to that. The name of the island was Jelter, and it was tiny, but amazing. We did cool stuff like husk coconuts and grate the meat, which we then sprinkled on balls of starch and enjoyed immensely. The snorkeling was awesome – Connor and I saw a black tip in about 20 feet of water. What’s interesting is that, even after that happened, I still signed up for the night spear fishing trip. I am absolutely terrified of swimming at night in the ocean – night scubadiving has ever fascinated me at all – but I decided to get over it. So, I got on a tiny little boat with 5 other volunteers and three Marshallese guys at about 9pm, and we went about 3 miles out into the lagoon, and then, armed with a flashlight while my buddy carried the spear (there wasn’t enough for everyone), we jumped overboard into the pitch black water. Honestly, I was terrified the entire time – you can only see what is in your flashlight beam, so I was constantly waving it around trying to see if I was being stalked by a tiger shark (reef sharks don’t even phase me anymore). The hardest part about fishing at night is spotting because the fish are all hiding but if you do find them they are very easy to catch because they are asleep. I was apparently a pretty good spotter though, or just lucky, because my buddy caught the biggest fish (about 10 inches) not caught by a Marshallese guy. I, coincidentally, speared my first fish ever today (it was only about 5 inches long, but that’s definitely worth catching by Marshallese standards), but I digress.
On Saturday, we all said our goodbyes at the orientation farewell dinner and then went to the outrigger hotel for some great karaoke. The outrigger is considered the nicest hotel in the islands, and it’s where all the Pacific Islander officials stay when they come in for conferences. A couple of weeks ago, when we were having dinner with our principals for the first time, we were introduced to the former president of the Marshall Islands, the current president was eating dinner under escort outside, and a few tables down was the former president of Senegal. It’s a high profile place. With that in mind, you can see why I was utterly shocked when, while sitting at the hotel’s bar waiting to sing Elton John’s Circle of Life, a cat-sized RAT climbed up my leg, onto my crotch (at which point I looked down at it’s fat furry face looking up at me), and proceeded to launch off of my chest in a flying leap over the bar as I threw my beer across the room. It was a strange experience, and I didn’t even get a free drink out of it.
So much has happened since my last blog entry. I am now in Gugeegue, but I am going to start back in Majuro.
They took us to an outer island within the Majuro Atoll to get some perspective on what life is like out there. Gugeegue is neither Majuro nor an outer island, but somewhere in between… but I’ll get to that. The name of the island was Jelter, and it was tiny, but amazing. We did cool stuff like husk coconuts and grate the meat, which we then sprinkled on balls of starch and enjoyed immensely. The snorkeling was awesome – Connor and I saw a black tip in about 20 feet of water. What’s interesting is that, even after that happened, I still signed up for the night spear fishing trip. I am absolutely terrified of swimming at night in the ocean – night scubadiving has ever fascinated me at all – but I decided to get over it. So, I got on a tiny little boat with 5 other volunteers and three Marshallese guys at about 9pm, and we went about 3 miles out into the lagoon, and then, armed with a flashlight while my buddy carried the spear (there wasn’t enough for everyone), we jumped overboard into the pitch black water. Honestly, I was terrified the entire time – you can only see what is in your flashlight beam, so I was constantly waving it around trying to see if I was being stalked by a tiger shark (reef sharks don’t even phase me anymore). The hardest part about fishing at night is spotting because the fish are all hiding but if you do find them they are very easy to catch because they are asleep. I was apparently a pretty good spotter though, or just lucky, because my buddy caught the biggest fish (about 10 inches) not caught by a Marshallese guy. I, coincidentally, speared my first fish ever today (it was only about 5 inches long, but that’s definitely worth catching by Marshallese standards), but I digress.
On Saturday, we all said our goodbyes at the orientation farewell dinner and then went to the outrigger hotel for some great karaoke. The outrigger is considered the nicest hotel in the islands, and it’s where all the Pacific Islander officials stay when they come in for conferences. A couple of weeks ago, when we were having dinner with our principals for the first time, we were introduced to the former president of the Marshall Islands, the current president was eating dinner under escort outside, and a few tables down was the former president of Senegal. It’s a high profile place. With that in mind, you can see why I was utterly shocked when, while sitting at the hotel’s bar waiting to sing Elton John’s Circle of Life, a cat-sized RAT climbed up my leg, onto my crotch (at which point I looked down at it’s fat furry face looking up at me), and proceeded to launch off of my chest in a flying leap over the bar as I threw my beer across the room. It was a strange experience, and I didn’t even get a free drink out of it.
8/12/07
The practicum is over. It went fine… we started to lose more and more kids each day. I taught an entire unit on coral. What is coral, how an atoll is formed by coral (on top of a sinking volcano), the importance of coral… anyways, I’m coral’ed out for a while.
We are all very ready to leave this living situation. Living out of a suitcase for a month is not fun. Most people only use half of their beds because the other half is covered in stuff, and all of our sheets have sand and dirt on them even though they’ve been washed recently. I promised I wouldn’t talk about roaches anymore, but I have to share this one… I woke up and went digging through my suitcase for some immodium (a very useful drug in this country), but when I grabbed the plastic container it was in a roach crawled around from the other side of the bag and onto my arm. I swatted it down and it fell into the suitcase. I zipped the suitcase shut, had breakfast, took a shower, and then unloaded every item in my suitcase until I found it hiding in the very bottom. I will never “get used to” cockroaches. Never.
We finally met our Ebeye principals! They are really funny. We went out to dinner with them at the same place we were supposed to originally – they claimed they were there the time before, but we all know that’s not true because if they had been they would have known the 5 white people were us. But they were cool. I asked mine how much it would cost to buy a dingy boat and he said, “why don’t we make a canoe?” Sounds good to me. What isn’t so good is that Connor and Alex, the two guys working at the elementary school on Ebeye (the feeder for my high school), have no housing yet. Each of the principals thought it was the others’ responsibility to get it. No volunteers have ever lived on Ebeye, which is a slum, so the elementary principal just assumed they would live on Gugeegue with us. Turns out there is no room for them. Until they find permanent housing they will be living with Boomer and Ashley, who have their own two bedroom house. I’ll be living in a two bedroom house with Staci, a girl who was a volunteer last year but hopefully will sign a contract this year. In reality, we have no idea how this will all work out – but that is the tentative plan.
Today we drove out to Laura, pretty much the most beautiful beach on the Majuro Atoll. It’s way outside of the city, and as far away as you can drive. It took 45 minutes in a HUGE flatbed truck (think a scaled down version of a semi, with 12 wheels) that I drove with 29 people in the back and all of their snorkeling equipment. Somehow, this morning, I was elected to drive the truck by the people organizing the trip (only 5 people can drive stick out of the 45 of us, apparently). It was not an enviable position. When we went to pick the car up, my shirt was literally soaked through with sweat by the time we got from the dealer to the diesel gas station. This was because of several reasons.
1. This was the largest thing I have ever driven – maybe 3 normal cars long, wider than an excursion.
2. I had no idea what to do if anything were to go wrong. I didn’t even have a Marshallese drivers license (which didn’t seem to be a problem for the dealer), let alone insurance.
3. Have you ever driven in a developing country? Holy shit.
So, when we added 29 people to the back it was even more stressful, but once I got comfortable it was fine. Laura was amazing. If I were living on Majuro I would find a way to get out there at least once a month.
The practicum is over. It went fine… we started to lose more and more kids each day. I taught an entire unit on coral. What is coral, how an atoll is formed by coral (on top of a sinking volcano), the importance of coral… anyways, I’m coral’ed out for a while.
We are all very ready to leave this living situation. Living out of a suitcase for a month is not fun. Most people only use half of their beds because the other half is covered in stuff, and all of our sheets have sand and dirt on them even though they’ve been washed recently. I promised I wouldn’t talk about roaches anymore, but I have to share this one… I woke up and went digging through my suitcase for some immodium (a very useful drug in this country), but when I grabbed the plastic container it was in a roach crawled around from the other side of the bag and onto my arm. I swatted it down and it fell into the suitcase. I zipped the suitcase shut, had breakfast, took a shower, and then unloaded every item in my suitcase until I found it hiding in the very bottom. I will never “get used to” cockroaches. Never.
We finally met our Ebeye principals! They are really funny. We went out to dinner with them at the same place we were supposed to originally – they claimed they were there the time before, but we all know that’s not true because if they had been they would have known the 5 white people were us. But they were cool. I asked mine how much it would cost to buy a dingy boat and he said, “why don’t we make a canoe?” Sounds good to me. What isn’t so good is that Connor and Alex, the two guys working at the elementary school on Ebeye (the feeder for my high school), have no housing yet. Each of the principals thought it was the others’ responsibility to get it. No volunteers have ever lived on Ebeye, which is a slum, so the elementary principal just assumed they would live on Gugeegue with us. Turns out there is no room for them. Until they find permanent housing they will be living with Boomer and Ashley, who have their own two bedroom house. I’ll be living in a two bedroom house with Staci, a girl who was a volunteer last year but hopefully will sign a contract this year. In reality, we have no idea how this will all work out – but that is the tentative plan.
Today we drove out to Laura, pretty much the most beautiful beach on the Majuro Atoll. It’s way outside of the city, and as far away as you can drive. It took 45 minutes in a HUGE flatbed truck (think a scaled down version of a semi, with 12 wheels) that I drove with 29 people in the back and all of their snorkeling equipment. Somehow, this morning, I was elected to drive the truck by the people organizing the trip (only 5 people can drive stick out of the 45 of us, apparently). It was not an enviable position. When we went to pick the car up, my shirt was literally soaked through with sweat by the time we got from the dealer to the diesel gas station. This was because of several reasons.
1. This was the largest thing I have ever driven – maybe 3 normal cars long, wider than an excursion.
2. I had no idea what to do if anything were to go wrong. I didn’t even have a Marshallese drivers license (which didn’t seem to be a problem for the dealer), let alone insurance.
3. Have you ever driven in a developing country? Holy shit.
So, when we added 29 people to the back it was even more stressful, but once I got comfortable it was fine. Laura was amazing. If I were living on Majuro I would find a way to get out there at least once a month.
8/8/07
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAITLIN!!! I didn’t have a chance to go to the NTA (national telecommunications authority) to email you today, but I definitely thought about how awesome it would be to be eating marinated steaks and blueberry’s up at lake george with you guys… the grass may be greener there, but the water is bluer here.
We are two days into our teaching practicum, or “Majuro Summer Camp,” where the principals at some of the schools literally drive up and down the one road and pick up children on the street for the worldteach volunteers to practice teaching on for 4 days. I am teaching a unit on coral to 11th and 12th graders. They are the smartest kids their age in the country, and while they are actually bright, getting them to participate and have confidence in themselves is impossible. We had 5 kids show up the first day, and 3 additional ones showed up today, so I guess we are doing a good job – two other teachers and I are teaching them for 3 hours a day.
This morning I woke up and the power was out and the water wasn’t working. You would think that this would have in some way affected my morning, but it didn’t – I just had cornflakes with slightly warmer soy milk than usual and didn’t toast my bagel. The water is pretty much out every other day, and you really don’t use power for that much except boiling water from the rain catchment. I am a pro at bucket flushing and washing dishes in tubs of rainwater.
I am healthy! There have been some issues with gastroenteritis and upper respiratory infections on the compound, but I have been doing really well so far.
The five of us going out to Kwajalein Atoll (3 on gugeegue at the high school, 2 on ebeye at the middle school) were supposed to have dinner at the Marshall Islands Resort (a mediocre hotel, but one of two on the island) with our principals tonight at 730. We got there at 7, and when they didn’t show up by 9 we had dinner without them. It was ominously foreshadowing of our future relationships. We had a good time though, and it was nice to eat some real food. I’m getting sick of tofu and chicken necks and gizzards and whatever weird body parts that are anything but wings, breasts, and drumsticks. I am going to buy a spear sling before I head to gugeegue so I can get fresh fish while I’m there… hopefully it’s not as hard as I think it will be.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAITLIN!!! I didn’t have a chance to go to the NTA (national telecommunications authority) to email you today, but I definitely thought about how awesome it would be to be eating marinated steaks and blueberry’s up at lake george with you guys… the grass may be greener there, but the water is bluer here.
We are two days into our teaching practicum, or “Majuro Summer Camp,” where the principals at some of the schools literally drive up and down the one road and pick up children on the street for the worldteach volunteers to practice teaching on for 4 days. I am teaching a unit on coral to 11th and 12th graders. They are the smartest kids their age in the country, and while they are actually bright, getting them to participate and have confidence in themselves is impossible. We had 5 kids show up the first day, and 3 additional ones showed up today, so I guess we are doing a good job – two other teachers and I are teaching them for 3 hours a day.
This morning I woke up and the power was out and the water wasn’t working. You would think that this would have in some way affected my morning, but it didn’t – I just had cornflakes with slightly warmer soy milk than usual and didn’t toast my bagel. The water is pretty much out every other day, and you really don’t use power for that much except boiling water from the rain catchment. I am a pro at bucket flushing and washing dishes in tubs of rainwater.
I am healthy! There have been some issues with gastroenteritis and upper respiratory infections on the compound, but I have been doing really well so far.
The five of us going out to Kwajalein Atoll (3 on gugeegue at the high school, 2 on ebeye at the middle school) were supposed to have dinner at the Marshall Islands Resort (a mediocre hotel, but one of two on the island) with our principals tonight at 730. We got there at 7, and when they didn’t show up by 9 we had dinner without them. It was ominously foreshadowing of our future relationships. We had a good time though, and it was nice to eat some real food. I’m getting sick of tofu and chicken necks and gizzards and whatever weird body parts that are anything but wings, breasts, and drumsticks. I am going to buy a spear sling before I head to gugeegue so I can get fresh fish while I’m there… hopefully it’s not as hard as I think it will be.
8/6/07
Orientation is halfway over. That’s exciting, because I’m really anxious to get out to Gugeegue.
The head teacher of Kwajalein Atoll High School flew out to help with orientation this week, so I finally got to meet someone that had actually been to Ebeye and Gugeegue. We were supposed to meet the principals of the schools too, but they never showed up – which isn’t a good sign. According to Laura, the head teacher, I am going to be “Ebeye’s Science Guy.” I will be the only high school level teacher of biology, chemistry, and physics for a population base of 14,000 people. How many people can say that? I’m really excited, but very happy that textbooks are readily available, because science and I have been on a break since I found out I wasn’t pre-med freshman year of college.
A funny story about Saturday night… we had mid-orientation dinner at Monica’s Chinese restaurant, the nicest restaurant on-island, and after some okay food and karaoke, I left by myself because I had to get up early the next morning. The cab I got into pulled over to pick some other couple up (that’s how the cabs work – you share them with whoever else the cabbie finds because you can only go two different directions), and shortly after they stopped at the Outrigger Hotel, got out, did something, and then got back in. Then we drove another mile and stopped at Shooters, the brothel on the island. The guy got out and went inside while the girl waited inside with me and the cabbie. After 10 minutes of waiting, I started to feel uncomfortable with my surroundings and offered the driver the 75 cents to get out. He declined to take my fare, and yelled at the women in Marshallese something I could not understand. She started poking me with her nails and saying “ima go geten ma man den pay” over and over again (neither she nor the man were Marshallese – I have no idea what they were, but they spoke very fast pigeon English) and then she ran out of the cab into the brothel. The cab driver shut her door and said “next time” and we drove away. I gave him 3 dollars instead of 2 when we got all the way back.
The reason I had to get up early was because of scuba diving the next day. A few of us somehow managed to get a Japanese dive company to take a boat out for us. My friend Matt and I wanted to do something more challenging than a beach dive, so we did a warm-up dive to about 40 feet, and then went to “the aquarium,” the largest channel in the atoll connecting the lagoon to the ocean, and went to 75 feet. They were both AMAZING dives. When I actually end up posting these entries hopefully I will include some pictures and videos (from my awesome digital camera with underwater case), but the highlights include huge schools of brightly colored fish, coral communities with literally thousands of sparkling damsel fish, a swimming octopus, two 3-banded clownfish that are endemic to (only found in) the Marshall Islands and their anemone home (NEMO!), 2 friendly white-tip reef sharks and a black-tip reef shark. Before the second dive, the Marshallese dive instructor said “there will be sharks.” I was a little freaked out by this, so I just asked “Should we be worried about them?” And he said no. So I wasn’t. And then halfway down the descent the two white tips started circling us. That was distressing, but once I had assured myself that we had been unharmed long enough for the sharks to have concluded that we were not food it was fine. It was actually really amazing. And (bonus) I got to practice my Japanese with the Japanese dive instructor.
Orientation is halfway over. That’s exciting, because I’m really anxious to get out to Gugeegue.
The head teacher of Kwajalein Atoll High School flew out to help with orientation this week, so I finally got to meet someone that had actually been to Ebeye and Gugeegue. We were supposed to meet the principals of the schools too, but they never showed up – which isn’t a good sign. According to Laura, the head teacher, I am going to be “Ebeye’s Science Guy.” I will be the only high school level teacher of biology, chemistry, and physics for a population base of 14,000 people. How many people can say that? I’m really excited, but very happy that textbooks are readily available, because science and I have been on a break since I found out I wasn’t pre-med freshman year of college.
A funny story about Saturday night… we had mid-orientation dinner at Monica’s Chinese restaurant, the nicest restaurant on-island, and after some okay food and karaoke, I left by myself because I had to get up early the next morning. The cab I got into pulled over to pick some other couple up (that’s how the cabs work – you share them with whoever else the cabbie finds because you can only go two different directions), and shortly after they stopped at the Outrigger Hotel, got out, did something, and then got back in. Then we drove another mile and stopped at Shooters, the brothel on the island. The guy got out and went inside while the girl waited inside with me and the cabbie. After 10 minutes of waiting, I started to feel uncomfortable with my surroundings and offered the driver the 75 cents to get out. He declined to take my fare, and yelled at the women in Marshallese something I could not understand. She started poking me with her nails and saying “ima go geten ma man den pay” over and over again (neither she nor the man were Marshallese – I have no idea what they were, but they spoke very fast pigeon English) and then she ran out of the cab into the brothel. The cab driver shut her door and said “next time” and we drove away. I gave him 3 dollars instead of 2 when we got all the way back.
The reason I had to get up early was because of scuba diving the next day. A few of us somehow managed to get a Japanese dive company to take a boat out for us. My friend Matt and I wanted to do something more challenging than a beach dive, so we did a warm-up dive to about 40 feet, and then went to “the aquarium,” the largest channel in the atoll connecting the lagoon to the ocean, and went to 75 feet. They were both AMAZING dives. When I actually end up posting these entries hopefully I will include some pictures and videos (from my awesome digital camera with underwater case), but the highlights include huge schools of brightly colored fish, coral communities with literally thousands of sparkling damsel fish, a swimming octopus, two 3-banded clownfish that are endemic to (only found in) the Marshall Islands and their anemone home (NEMO!), 2 friendly white-tip reef sharks and a black-tip reef shark. Before the second dive, the Marshallese dive instructor said “there will be sharks.” I was a little freaked out by this, so I just asked “Should we be worried about them?” And he said no. So I wasn’t. And then halfway down the descent the two white tips started circling us. That was distressing, but once I had assured myself that we had been unharmed long enough for the sharks to have concluded that we were not food it was fine. It was actually really amazing. And (bonus) I got to practice my Japanese with the Japanese dive instructor.
7/31/07
Today we were at the Outrigger hotel again doing teacher workshops and conferences. They taught us how to teach reading and writing in a few hours. Then a doctor came and told us about health risks we might face. He told us that most of us would get amoeba’s or travelers diarrhea while we were here. We would know if it was an amoeba by our bloody stools. Then he talked about scabies and lice, both of which we should also expect to welcome onto our persons. Then we were warned about tuberculosis, but don’t worry, it’s “not the kind that kills people … yet.” Then the prevalence of the common cold, strep throat, bronchitis, the flu, and if you have a rash, go to the hospital because it’s Dengue fever, “but not the really bad kind.” Then some people from the Marshallese Environmental Protection Authority talked to us. The first guy talked to us about the water quality, and told us that all the water we drink needs to be boiled because according to tests, more often then not the water is contaminated by fecal matter. Good.
Then another guy from the EPA came to talk about environmental education and the state of the environment on the RMI. Did you know that most climate change scientists are predicting the Marshall Islands will not even exist in 50-80 years? It would only take a sea level rise of about 4 feet. There are minimal recycling programs for cans and plans for plastic on Majuro, but when I asked about Ebeye (the island all of the kids I will be teaching will commute from), he laughed and said “good luck.” That’s about as frustrated as I have been since I got here (including last night when I threw a roach off my back at 3AM) because it doesn’t make sense that the government has this huge, beautiful, glass capital building, and that Taiwan is donating money for this prestigious Pacific Islands Conference Center, but one of the top five most densely populated cities on earth (it’s something like 14,000 people in .12 square miles) has no recycling program. I was actually really disturbed. Ebeye frequently seems to get passed over when it comes to resources, even though it is the only other urban center outside of Majuro. No one seems to know or care what the situation is there. This is the first year WorldTeach will have more than 3 volunteers on the atoll.
After the conference, we had dinner at a seedy restaurant and then I checked email at the National Telecommunications Authority, and then hitched the 4 or 5 miles back to our compound in the back of two different pick-up trucks (one stopped half way back, so I got off and hopped onto another one).
Today we were at the Outrigger hotel again doing teacher workshops and conferences. They taught us how to teach reading and writing in a few hours. Then a doctor came and told us about health risks we might face. He told us that most of us would get amoeba’s or travelers diarrhea while we were here. We would know if it was an amoeba by our bloody stools. Then he talked about scabies and lice, both of which we should also expect to welcome onto our persons. Then we were warned about tuberculosis, but don’t worry, it’s “not the kind that kills people … yet.” Then the prevalence of the common cold, strep throat, bronchitis, the flu, and if you have a rash, go to the hospital because it’s Dengue fever, “but not the really bad kind.” Then some people from the Marshallese Environmental Protection Authority talked to us. The first guy talked to us about the water quality, and told us that all the water we drink needs to be boiled because according to tests, more often then not the water is contaminated by fecal matter. Good.
Then another guy from the EPA came to talk about environmental education and the state of the environment on the RMI. Did you know that most climate change scientists are predicting the Marshall Islands will not even exist in 50-80 years? It would only take a sea level rise of about 4 feet. There are minimal recycling programs for cans and plans for plastic on Majuro, but when I asked about Ebeye (the island all of the kids I will be teaching will commute from), he laughed and said “good luck.” That’s about as frustrated as I have been since I got here (including last night when I threw a roach off my back at 3AM) because it doesn’t make sense that the government has this huge, beautiful, glass capital building, and that Taiwan is donating money for this prestigious Pacific Islands Conference Center, but one of the top five most densely populated cities on earth (it’s something like 14,000 people in .12 square miles) has no recycling program. I was actually really disturbed. Ebeye frequently seems to get passed over when it comes to resources, even though it is the only other urban center outside of Majuro. No one seems to know or care what the situation is there. This is the first year WorldTeach will have more than 3 volunteers on the atoll.
After the conference, we had dinner at a seedy restaurant and then I checked email at the National Telecommunications Authority, and then hitched the 4 or 5 miles back to our compound in the back of two different pick-up trucks (one stopped half way back, so I got off and hopped onto another one).
7/26/07
Yesterday morning I went to make breakfast, and I cracked three eggs open into a bowl, all of them yellow, and then the fourth turned the bowl a bloody orange with a little embryo. I didn’t end up eating any breakfast. In fact, I almost gave back dinner from the night before. The eggs, oddly enough, were from California.
Less than 24 hours after the water was turned on, it mysteriously went off again, so we’re back to bucket flushing and washing our dishes in giant tubs of rainwater collected from a rusty gutter off the tin roof.
We visited the Ambassador at the American Embassy yesterday. He seemed pretty unimpressed by his own posting. He introduced the staff, then fed us pizza. The security was very intense, although no one was sure why that was the case. The day before I had been walking, and pulled my camera out to take a picture of the Embassy building from the main road. An Australian girl advised me to put my camera away quickly, but it was too late – I was summoned to the guard at the gate, a Marshallese man with little English, and had to explain to him I had not actually taken a picture yet, which apparently is not allowed. I flipped back and forth from pictures of Davidson to pictures from down the street until he was convinced there was no image of Embassy.
They are trying to teach us how to be teachers. I’m not sure it’s working.
I went snorkeling yesterday during a break. Even though we’re on Majuro and the beaches are filthy, there is still some living reef and amazing marine life. You just have to ignore the dirty diapers hanging off the fan coral and the stray desks and tires strewn about.
Tonight I walked the couple miles to the Payless Grocery store with two guys who just graduated from Kenyon and will be working on Ebeye next year, maybe living with me in Gugeegue. We carried rocks with us because you have to throw them at dogs when they come at you. This morning a guy was running and was bit by a dog. Not good. Anyway, we got to the grocery store and I bought a Snapple and some Dreyers’ Expresso Chip ice cream. It’s a pretty well-stocked grocery store. On the way back, we hailed a cab ($.75 per person) and it stopped, but there were two people in it already. The driver told us to come in anyway. So Connor got in the front seat, and Alex (who has a good 25 pounds on me) sat on me in the back. The driver found this hilarious. So we all had a laugh – the three of us, the two rando’s next to me, and the driver. The guy next to me said, “crazy driver, crazy driver.” Then the driver said “make-money driver!” We had been hustled.
There is a fenced off Mormon church down the road that cost $1.2 million to build (I talked with the Kiwi in charge of construction at a restaurant last night) and a fenced off basketball court that no one ever plays on. The other churches, however, which are dilapidated, are always hoppin’ every night of the week. Oddly enough, the Mormon church is by far the nicest building on the island after the American and Japanese Embassies and the government building.
Today while we were doing a workshop outside in the yard of the kindergarten a Marshallese guy came in to talk to us – they are in and out all the time, especially little kids. This guy was different though – it was 4pm and he was wasted. He fell off of his chair, and then started touching a girl inappropriately on the leg (a Marshallese way of asking for sex). She got up to move and then our field director, who didn’t know he was there until I told him, asked him to leave. He yelled things and slowly stumbled out of our barbed-wire entrenched kindergarten, and the door was subsequently chained closed. It was our first experience with the oh-so-fun unemployment-alcoholism-teen pregnancy triad in the RMI.
Yesterday morning I went to make breakfast, and I cracked three eggs open into a bowl, all of them yellow, and then the fourth turned the bowl a bloody orange with a little embryo. I didn’t end up eating any breakfast. In fact, I almost gave back dinner from the night before. The eggs, oddly enough, were from California.
Less than 24 hours after the water was turned on, it mysteriously went off again, so we’re back to bucket flushing and washing our dishes in giant tubs of rainwater collected from a rusty gutter off the tin roof.
We visited the Ambassador at the American Embassy yesterday. He seemed pretty unimpressed by his own posting. He introduced the staff, then fed us pizza. The security was very intense, although no one was sure why that was the case. The day before I had been walking, and pulled my camera out to take a picture of the Embassy building from the main road. An Australian girl advised me to put my camera away quickly, but it was too late – I was summoned to the guard at the gate, a Marshallese man with little English, and had to explain to him I had not actually taken a picture yet, which apparently is not allowed. I flipped back and forth from pictures of Davidson to pictures from down the street until he was convinced there was no image of Embassy.
They are trying to teach us how to be teachers. I’m not sure it’s working.
I went snorkeling yesterday during a break. Even though we’re on Majuro and the beaches are filthy, there is still some living reef and amazing marine life. You just have to ignore the dirty diapers hanging off the fan coral and the stray desks and tires strewn about.
Tonight I walked the couple miles to the Payless Grocery store with two guys who just graduated from Kenyon and will be working on Ebeye next year, maybe living with me in Gugeegue. We carried rocks with us because you have to throw them at dogs when they come at you. This morning a guy was running and was bit by a dog. Not good. Anyway, we got to the grocery store and I bought a Snapple and some Dreyers’ Expresso Chip ice cream. It’s a pretty well-stocked grocery store. On the way back, we hailed a cab ($.75 per person) and it stopped, but there were two people in it already. The driver told us to come in anyway. So Connor got in the front seat, and Alex (who has a good 25 pounds on me) sat on me in the back. The driver found this hilarious. So we all had a laugh – the three of us, the two rando’s next to me, and the driver. The guy next to me said, “crazy driver, crazy driver.” Then the driver said “make-money driver!” We had been hustled.
There is a fenced off Mormon church down the road that cost $1.2 million to build (I talked with the Kiwi in charge of construction at a restaurant last night) and a fenced off basketball court that no one ever plays on. The other churches, however, which are dilapidated, are always hoppin’ every night of the week. Oddly enough, the Mormon church is by far the nicest building on the island after the American and Japanese Embassies and the government building.
Today while we were doing a workshop outside in the yard of the kindergarten a Marshallese guy came in to talk to us – they are in and out all the time, especially little kids. This guy was different though – it was 4pm and he was wasted. He fell off of his chair, and then started touching a girl inappropriately on the leg (a Marshallese way of asking for sex). She got up to move and then our field director, who didn’t know he was there until I told him, asked him to leave. He yelled things and slowly stumbled out of our barbed-wire entrenched kindergarten, and the door was subsequently chained closed. It was our first experience with the oh-so-fun unemployment-alcoholism-teen pregnancy triad in the RMI.
7/24/07
Hello from the Republic of the Marshall Islands! My year long adventure as a volunteer teacher with WorldTeach has finally begun. Hopefully you guys will be able to keep up with this blog as much as possible, but being able to post it may be problematic.
Right now, I’m sitting in a trailer with 25 2-inch mattresses and 50 suitcases. We are currently in the orientation and training section of our trip, and there are 43 other volunteers, mostly recent college graduates. We’re all staying outside of Majuro, the capital city of RMI, in 3 trailers that are used to teach kindergarten during the school year.
It’s hot, but the ocean is less than 50 yards of us on either side, so it’s easy to cool off, although the beaches are disgustingly trashy. The toilets were not connected to the water supply when we first got here, which made for some fun bucket flushing, but now they work, and if you can make friends with the spiders and roaches, it’s not such a terrible experience. Our shower water comes from the roof. It drains into a gutter which drains into a giant jug. Right now we are drinking bottled water, but as soon as our supply gets tested for amoeba’s and e.coli we’ll be bleaching and drinking it instead.
The food has all been catered from one of three or four restaurants on the island, and so far it has been a lot of carrots and tofu. I have a whey protein shake for breakfast everyday, hoping it will keep me from wasting away.
The people are all really great. We’re being trained by two field directors, former volunteer teachers. The training so far has been cultural sensitivity stuff and some teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) strategies.
On the first day, we were warned that during the adjustment period we might experience flu-like symptoms. That night, I woke up every hour shivering in bed – I had on my jeans, 4 t-shirts, and a jacket, and a sheet. Turns out it wasn’t the flu, the air conditioning was set on 50 degrees in our trailer and everyone was feeling the same. Last night I adjusted the thermostat… we still froze, but it turns out air conditioning provides a little bit of a deterrent (but not a lot) for roaches.
Last night I went into town with two guys that will be teaching at an elementary school near my high school to visit the only non-alcohol related entertainment on the island – a movie theater. The town is about 8 miles away, so for $2 each, we took a cab. We saw Transformers, which was unexpected and odd. The people are friendly, and no one seems to be utterly impoverished. We are the second largest foreign population on the island (second only to 51 Mormon missionaries (?!)) so everyone knows who we are already. Tonight we went a few miles down the road to the Payless Grocery Store to buy ice cream, and the shopkeeper let us in even though the store had closed.
Other than the roaches (one just appeared on a girl’s bed sleeping one person over from me), life is good.
Hello from the Republic of the Marshall Islands! My year long adventure as a volunteer teacher with WorldTeach has finally begun. Hopefully you guys will be able to keep up with this blog as much as possible, but being able to post it may be problematic.
Right now, I’m sitting in a trailer with 25 2-inch mattresses and 50 suitcases. We are currently in the orientation and training section of our trip, and there are 43 other volunteers, mostly recent college graduates. We’re all staying outside of Majuro, the capital city of RMI, in 3 trailers that are used to teach kindergarten during the school year.
It’s hot, but the ocean is less than 50 yards of us on either side, so it’s easy to cool off, although the beaches are disgustingly trashy. The toilets were not connected to the water supply when we first got here, which made for some fun bucket flushing, but now they work, and if you can make friends with the spiders and roaches, it’s not such a terrible experience. Our shower water comes from the roof. It drains into a gutter which drains into a giant jug. Right now we are drinking bottled water, but as soon as our supply gets tested for amoeba’s and e.coli we’ll be bleaching and drinking it instead.
The food has all been catered from one of three or four restaurants on the island, and so far it has been a lot of carrots and tofu. I have a whey protein shake for breakfast everyday, hoping it will keep me from wasting away.
The people are all really great. We’re being trained by two field directors, former volunteer teachers. The training so far has been cultural sensitivity stuff and some teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) strategies.
On the first day, we were warned that during the adjustment period we might experience flu-like symptoms. That night, I woke up every hour shivering in bed – I had on my jeans, 4 t-shirts, and a jacket, and a sheet. Turns out it wasn’t the flu, the air conditioning was set on 50 degrees in our trailer and everyone was feeling the same. Last night I adjusted the thermostat… we still froze, but it turns out air conditioning provides a little bit of a deterrent (but not a lot) for roaches.
Last night I went into town with two guys that will be teaching at an elementary school near my high school to visit the only non-alcohol related entertainment on the island – a movie theater. The town is about 8 miles away, so for $2 each, we took a cab. We saw Transformers, which was unexpected and odd. The people are friendly, and no one seems to be utterly impoverished. We are the second largest foreign population on the island (second only to 51 Mormon missionaries (?!)) so everyone knows who we are already. Tonight we went a few miles down the road to the Payless Grocery Store to buy ice cream, and the shopkeeper let us in even though the store had closed.
Other than the roaches (one just appeared on a girl’s bed sleeping one person over from me), life is good.
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