Weather Wonders

   So we have had an interesting few days. Yesterday, (Sunday for us)  we were under a tsunami warning because of the earthquake off of Chile.  This is the first time staff seemed to think that we should take action.  (Ponhpei isn't usually hit by anything severe like that because of its barrier reef).  We had another volunteer at our house with us at the time.  We informed our host families so that they could take precautions, but all opted not to.  We put on sunblock and hats and took water and binoculars and climbed all the steps to the top of the hill near our house.  Absolutely nothing happened.  We watched people going about their daily business, some of it in boats on the water.  Finally we called to check in and the warning was off.  It was really funny to people around here that we were even taking precautions.  Oh well, it provided a new twist to our same old, same old routine.

  As I think we mentioned in another post, Pohnpei is experiencing a drought.  We have been lucky and have had water even though the water pressure has dropped sometimes.  Our luck has run out, or should I say evaporated. (ha, ha bad joke, I know.)  I forgot my keys and was sitting outside waiting for Nate.  He missed a ride today and had to make the hour walk.  He got home and was drenched.  I walked to the sink, soaped up my hands and no water.  We had a trickle in the bathroom that we used to wash some dishes and collect more drinking water with and then that too stopped.  All over it is "sohte pil" (no water.)  There is confusion over whether or not the well has been shut off.  We have our doubts about that, I mean why wouldn't they have been rationing for the past month.  There isn't a whole lot of knowledge about water conservation here, but surely someone would have considered that if it was possible.  Our doubts our increasing because it is nearly time for people to start dinner and as rice and soup are popular dinner dishes it is going to be challenging to cook them without any pil. 

  We have informed our PC staff of our water issues.  I imagine something will be done and we may have interesting things to report.  (It will probably be interesting to us because it will change the routine, but may not in fact be that interesting to you.)

  So the next time you go for a glass of water, to flush the toilet, wash your hands, etc. think of us.  It's amazing how many times you reach for the tap even when you know it doesn't work. (It's kind of like how we always try to turn on the lights during our power outages.)  I really wish I could wash the road off my feet today.  Wish us luck!

Leaping Lizards and Bulging Eyeballs!

I decided since we have been here for six months or so that it is time for my first post.  I guess I need to start pulling my weight.  I just don’t like having to censor my thoughts.

Last week my fifth graders helped clean out the ‘library.’  The room also serves as the storage shed for lawn care equipment and other odds and ends.  A previous volunteer got a shipment of books for the school and all of them were still in boxes or piles on the floor.  I was excited it was a group project so that I could use my status as teacher to observe and direct once we started uncovering the giant spiders – I knew there would be some in there.  I still have not overcome my fear.  Fortunately, some of the students were afraid of them too and so some of the boys decided that the best thing to do was to kill them with a rolled up poster.  I also managed to not get jumped on by a lizard.  Unfortunately, that has happened to me at school before when I was looking in a box.  It’s hard to appear like you are in charge when you are trying not to yell and to slingshot a big lizard (not the standard yellow gecko) off of your skirt.

I added to my duties this semester.  I am teaching a legal research and writing class at the College of Micronesia.  It has been a lot of work, but has been really interesting*.  It’s a nice change to spend some time working with adults and talking about something other than grammar.  Nate and I hope to get some more secondary projects started soon.

Ironically, Ponhpei is experiencing a drought right now.  Who would have guessed it was possible since people claim this is the second wettest place on earth.  Some of the other volunteers have run out of water at their sites already. We are on a well that people in the area normally come to for fresh water.  Our water pressure has dropped, but so far we are doing good.  If we would run out, there would be options for drinking water, but sadly showering would become an issue. 

In other local news: the tourist site near us, Nan Madol, is going through some changes.  You now have to go to the king’s house and get permission (and pay) before you go to the site.  He is apparently still granting access as we saw 3 school bus loads of Asian tourists as well as several cabs full of people leaving the site today. (This is not at all a regular occurrence. We’ve maybe seen two cars full of people the entire time we’ve been here.)  My school is near it and the only road out there passes by our house.

Nate and I have become pros at cooking on a hot plate.  No more fancy meals for us. (Also, no drinks as we are in a dry municipality.) Our new specialty is taco rice, and we have mastered cooking pumpkin.  Oatmeal is getting old as a staple breakfast item, but it beats Black Label (look it up) and rice or ramen. Sometimes we feel like we are in a nursing home since our favorite treat is jello with fruit cocktail or pudding.  We also eat a disgusting amount of hot dogs (about our only source of meat) and have been sad that the local stores have been out of them for two weeks.  We haven’t made it into to town like we usually do since my COM class was on holiday.  We even have a can of chili on reserve that we are saving for a special romantic evening; we just need the hot dogs.  Chili really is a splurge here.    

* If you want to know what I mean by interesting you will have to e-mail me. 

We're still kicking...

Well then….nearly 3 months later, as you can imagine, a lot has happened. It’s hard to describe all the experience that can go into what 3 months can entail. It’s really been a whirlwind in so many ways, emotionally, work stuff, Peace Corps stuff, anything and everything really. I think we can say though, that things are starting to ‘settle down’ a bit and we’re finding our groove a bit more each day. We have our first ‘In-Service Training’ next week. All the new volunteers head into Kolonia on Thursday for 3 days of meetings and such to more-or-less ‘check-in’ on how things are going. We’re looking forward to the chance to just take a step back, take a deep breath and relax for a few days.

Well, the last time we wrote, we were nearly sworn-in. That weekend we moved into our little house next door. We posted some pictures on Flickr for you all to check out (I’m hoping to post more in the next few days as well). It’s been nice. Around late November,, early December, we greeting with great big welcoming arms the arrival of the trade winds. What a difference it has made! We’re extra fortunate, being as how we live on the eastern side of the island, which is the first to really reach out and grab that wind. It’s kept things remarkably more tolerable. Especially in it’s ability to keep things more dried out, clothes, beds, everything. Mold spontaneously appears on our clothes a bit less. There are moments when I actually stop sweating. It’s great. We’re actually getting nervous because sometimes we feel like we’ve dramatically acclimated only to remind ourselves that in a few months, those winds will cease, and we will again be engulfed in a heat sent forth directly from the innermost circle of hell. We’ll let you know how that goes.

Some of our (surprisingly) most favorite things here are as follows:

-Bleach. An absolute necessity in every load of laundry to help rid the moldiness.
-Peanut Butter. Some days I think its flowing through my veins.
-Hotdogs. We consumed an entire package in 1 day. Yep. Lunch and Dinner. By choice.
-Mosquito Coils. I think they secretly grind up sleeping pills in them. Light one and you’re out.
-Baby Powder. Not that surprising really. Needs no further explanation.
-Ketchup. Normally, I hate it. Here it’s like nectar from the gods (May have some connection to the amount of hotdogs we consume).

Local foods we really love (see photos on Flickr):
-Soursap. As juicy as watermelon, tastes like tropical Skittles….don’t laugh. I’m dead serious. Its awesome. Though kind of harder to find. Super amazing if you put it in the freezer, let it get kind of slushy and cold.
-Mangrove Crab. One day a neighbor sold us 3 giant crabs for $6. Yum. Yum. Yum. We just haven’t found a reliable, regular source.
-TUNA! Also harder to get regularly out where we live, but sold super cheap in town at the local market.

Alright, Tuna deserves it’s own sub-section. The photos on Flickr are of a small Skipjack tuna we bought out of the back of a guy’s truck for $3. He was just driving around trying to get rid of them. It weighed at least 3 lbs. We ate it for days. Locals eat a lot of the fish sashimi, raw. It’s really pretty good that way by mixing it in local lime juice and soy sauce. Skipjack is not our favorite for sashimi, has a little bit stronger flavor than Yellowfin, so we tend to cook it, at least partially. The Yellowfin is amazing here. You can get it from pretty much any restaurant for a couple bucks or sometimes you can buy a piece from market. Sashimi is the only way to go with it.

The tuna industry has a huge presence here. Not necessarily on the island itself, but in the region. Apparently, this is one of the last relatively profitable areas for large-scale commercial tuna fishing left in the world. Which isn’t necessarily a good thing for the fish. From what we’ve heard it’s getting fished pretty hard. The global demand for fish consumption has been increasing dramatically, especially high-grade tuna (blue fin and yellowfin) used for really upscale sushi in Japan and the US. Continental is the only airline that regularly flies here, that is, unless there has been an exceptional catch. Then it’s not uncommon for Japanese Airlines to fly a 737 cargo plane down, load it up quick with fresh tuna then turn around and bee-line straight back to Tokyo. Something I witnessed about two weeks ago. I heard the plane take off (which normally happens only 1 time a day) and was surprised to see a green plane with a JAL logo on the side. We also ran into a young helicopter pilot from New Zealand who was on island for a couple days waiting for one of the big tuna boats to come in. His chopper (these are big boats, complete with helipads on board) would be based on that boat for about a month. He was hired by them specifically to fly around with an expert from the boat and scout out the schools from the air so the boat could catch more efficiently. Gives you a little bit of an idea of the scale of the fishing and the value of this resource. Not entirely sure how well its being managed. My hunch is not well, but I don’t really know for sure. It’s an industry I’m hoping to learn more about as we spend more time here.

Anyway. Hope everyone’s doing well. We’re going to try and do better about updating more frequently. Peace out.

All Sworn In!

11-6-09
Swear in day! We’ve made it through training. It’s been a long and busy 9 weeks filled with language training, TESL, and cultural sessions. I think everybody is ready for it to be over with and to get to their permanent sites, settle in and get to work. For us it’s a little bit less of a transition since we are already at our permanent site. We will however be moving to a little house next door to our host family! We’re pretty excited because we’ll have a little more privacy and be able to cook our own meals, giving us a bit more control over our diet. Plus, we love cooking and have missed being able to cook. We’ll post some photos of it soon hopefully.

We’re excited to begin our ‘real’ work. Kerry and I will be working at two different elementary schools in a slightly more remote part of the island. Kerry, especially. We’ll both be teaching 4th or 5th grade English classes and will have pretty good hikes to our schools. Kerry about 45 min walking and mine will be about an hour. We’re hoping that we’ll get to know some people better in the area and can eventually get rides in sometimes, especially in the mornings, so we’re not soaked with sweat by the time we get there.

We are getting used to the weather….finally! Trade wind season has arrived, so there is a breeze at least fairly consistently in some areas. Its been a nice relief.

On a different note….The FSM has a very unique relationship with the US. It had been under Japanese occupation until WWII, at which point the US took control of a huge swath of ocean which also included the Marshall Islands, Guam, Saipan, Rota, Palau, and the FSM. It was under US administrative control until 1986 when FSM became independent. This was the goal since the 60’s, it just took awhile for the FSM states to develop their infrastructure and administration to the point that it was feasible to be independent. Beginning in 1985ish, the FSM signed a Compact of Free Association with the US. This compact gave the FSM a substantial amount of aid money each year, the right to serve in and guaranteed protection by the US military, and the right to move and work freely in the US and US territories, amongst other things. In exchange, the US gained control of their territorial waters and airspace. This original compact was binding until 2003, at which time things would be re-evaluated. In 2003, they signed an amended Compact through 2023 which kept most of the major points the same, but changed the allocation of the aid money slightly. The total amount of money remained similar, but the FSM was required to place a higher percentage of it into a trust fund, which in theory will be large enough by 2023 to allow FSM to be relatively self-sustaining. Also unique, is that this arrangement is managed from the US side by the Department of the Interior in lieu of the State Department. Who knew??

Photos up on flickr

Hey! We've posted some photos up on flickr. The really beautiful ones of the ocean and the dock and such are not where we live unfortunately. Its a small picnic island about 10 min by boat from Pohnpei. We don't have a place we can swim in by us really. Just the waterfall -photos of it too. But its often dangerous because of flash flooding from rain in the hills and because the water can get bad because of pig poo. So we can't swim there too often. Our house is by a little inlet/bay, but no swimming there either because it has lots of nasty corals in it as well as other poisonous bits. Its also not very deep, kind of murky, and gets dangerous currents from the tide coming in and out. Its pretty to look at though. There are also a couple photos from a village feast we went to to celebrate the first harvest.

No worries from the recent quakes, tsunamis, typhoons over this way. Pohnpei is apparently immune from all of that. We have a barrier reef around the whole island as well as mangrove forests that absorb the tidal waves and we're far enough from faults to avoid earthquakes. Typhoons don't hit us either. Just rains for a couple days. Things are going good here. Still sweating!

First 3 Weeks

9/27/2009
Well we made it! We’ve been in Pohnpei for about 3 weeks now. The trip went fine. We had a nice layover in Honolulu. Had a great dinner in Chinatown and then went down to Waikiki beach and watched the sunset. It was really nice. We had to get up at 3:30am to get to the airport to get on our flight to FSM. Plane left at 7am on Friday morning. We were in the air for about 5 hours or so before we made the first stop in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. After about an hour there we continued on to Kwajalien, a US military base also in the Marshall’s. These were pretty crazy stops as you can’t see any land whatsoever until the plane lands. The runways are super short and are built up out of the ocean. Makes for pretty wild take-offs and landings. The next stop along the way was the first state in the FSM(Federated States of Micronesia), Kosrae. It looked really nice, more mountainous than the other stops, which were just tiny atolls. After about an hour on the ground there we reboarded the plane one last time and continued on to our final stop –Pohnpei. We had a great view of the island as the plane came in on approach and the clouds had cleared away. It’s the biggest island in the FSM, with an area of about 150sq miles and is about 15miles across. It’s very mountainous in the center and covered in jungle. At some point along the way we crossed the dateline, so it then became Saturday and we touched down around 2pm Saturday afternoon, about 10 ½ hours after we had left Hawaii.

We got off the plane and immediately started sweating! It is extremely hot and humid here! The Peace Corps staff and some of the current volunteers greeted us at the airport and we loaded up our bags on a couple trucks, boarded an old rickety school bus and headed into Kolonia, the main town on Pohnpei. On the way we experienced our first rain shower. The rain doesn’t mess around here. Supposedly it’s the 2nd rainiest spot in the world and it’s pretty much guaranteed to rain torrentially every day at some point. We arrived at our hotel, unloaded, got our room keys, and then started off right into a couple hours of orientation meetings and introductions with staff.

We stayed the first 2 nights in a hotel. It was quite nice with cable tv and AC!! We were able to get really caught up on sleep and get adjusted to things. Monday afternoon we headed out of Kolonia to head to our host families and begin training on the much more rural, opposite side of the island. It took about an hour to get there, but it was fun to see more of the island. There is basically one big road here that loops around the perimeter of the island. That afternoon we were introduced to our host family and then departed with our things to get settled into our new home.

We’re pretty fortunate I think with our house and family. We have an indoor bathroom, electricity, and a fan! We were pretty excited about that fan because it makes sleeping at night so much better. We have a pretty big family. Most nights there are 9 or 10 people sleeping here including us. We have our own room which is pretty big given we don’t have much stuff. Most of our family members speak English really well which has made the transition easier and also for some good conversation. We’ve eaten a lot of fish. Mostly smaller reef fish, but also a lot of fresh tuna and crab. Big crabs! Like the size of a football and they’re $2.50 each! We also eat a lot of rice, hot dogs, breadfruit, ramen, and pancakes. It’s really an interesting blend of foods here. Definitely missing fresh fruits and vegetables, though. Some things we’re really liking, others, not so much.

We’ve just finished what Peace Corps calls phase 1 training. 3 weeks of basic stuff with everyone here, 30 of us in all. This weekend everybody left to go to the state that they will be assigned to for phase 2 training. Our permanent site is here on Pohnpei, so we’ll be staying here. There are 10 of us staying in Pohnpei state, 3 went to Kosrae, 4 to Chuuk, 6 to Yap, and 7 to Palau. Now we have 6 more weeks of training with about half the time being spent on language training and the rest split up between technical skills (teaching, community development, etc), cultural lessons, and other random stuff.

The main island of Pohnpei doesn’t have any beaches. It’s surrounded by mangrove forests -big trees with huge root structures that creep up out of the water. Basically its like a big swamp all along the coast. It’s no good for swimming, but good for the island because it keeps it from eroding away. Pohnpei also has a huge barrier reef about 2-3 miles off of the coast, which completely surrounds it. You can hear and sometimes see the waves breaking, out along the reef, but inside the lagoon the water is pretty calm. Those of us staying in Pohnpei were given a special treat Friday night to Saturday afternoon. We were taken to Nahlap Island, just off the coast and still inside of the lagoon. It felt like we were finally on an island – there were places to swim and snorkel. There still weren’t any waves since we were inside the lagoon but we could see and hear them. (Where we live is very pretty, but reminds us more of a jungle.) Friday night we got in the water and used the slide, but didn’t get out the snorkel stuff. We did, however, see a huge manta ray that at first we thought were 2 sharks since the tips kept poking above the water a few feet apart. On Saturday we snorkeled and saw tons of cool stuff – fish, sea cucumbers, an octopus and also a stonefish. That was something on our long list of sea creatures to avoid.

All in all, things are going well. We’ll be happy to be done with training as the days are long and things tend to drag on. It’s a very interesting country and we’re excited to learn more about it. Will try and go into more details in upcoming posts as its relationship with the US is also very unique. Hope everyone is doing well. Miss everyone. Kerry and Nate.

FYI: Our mailing address is still the same. It is part of the US Postal system and postage is regular domestic US rates. Email and internet is still really spotty. So probably best to contact us by snail mail for now.

Made it to LA!

Yo! We made it to LA! Nothing too exciting to report. Had dinner at In and Out Burger. LA is pretty smokey. Very noticeable on the flight in. Hit-up Starbucks and Mac's for Breakfast savoring the gluttony that is american cuisine one last time!! Off to Hawaii tomorrow. Then a brutal 3AM Checkout on Friday morning for our super early flight out of Hawaii. 11 short hours on the "Island Hopper Express" before we get to our new home!!