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.