13-mile Walk

So, this past weekend was pretty awesome. On Friday, a couple of us hiked about 4 miles to the top of the Japanese lighthouse. It was incredible! Check out the pictures! Breath taking for sure. Well, we attract attention wherever we go because we are not Chuukese. So while climbing the lighthouse, we gained a following of about 12 Chuukese kids. These kids are fearless. Now, I'm slightly scared of heights so as I climbed up the shaky ladder that led to the top I was a little nervous. Chuukese kids- they hang off the sides of the lighthouse- dropping about 10 feet to the lower levels. They also would jump into the center area without any qualms. I guess these kids do climb coconut trees on the daily, but the whole time I just kept thinking how bad it would be if one of them fell. It was fun to play around with them. Learning our names is the most exciting activity for them, which means when they see us on the road next, they can scream it out as if they really know us.

Then, on Saturday we decided to walk around the whole island for entertainment. Its about 13 miles. We had great intentions and woke up at 6am but didn't really head out until about 7:15. Katie really wanted to be able to make it to Blue Lagoon- the nicest resort on the island mostly reserved for foreign divers- for banana pancakes before they stopped serving them at 11am. Blue Lagoon was at about the 9 mile mark. Pretty much the whole island was up and cheering at 7:30. The 1-mile marathon relays were going on- actually they had just finished. By 7am here, it is hot! So we walked along the streets saying "Nosoor annim" (Good Morning) to just about everyone we passed. It's customary here. So is asking people "Where are you going?" Traveling is such a strange concept here because people mostly stay in their village unless they need something from the "downtown." And our response being we are walking around the whole island left people even more puzzled, but that's okay. That would never happen in the crowded streets of the US, but it send a cheerful vibe so I don't mind it.

It was a good opportunity for me to take pictures outside of a bumping moving vehicle. I saw several cool things along the walk- Chuukese apples (see picture), a kid about 35 feet high climbing a coconut tree, a swing set up on the side of a mountain, a coconut tree growing out of a coconut, and a shark! Yup, we saw a shark. It was small and only about 10-15 feet off the shoreline. A little frightening, but still really cool. I found a couple of sand dollars and met these 3 kids that helped guide us through the backside of the island- which is considered the "jungle" area of Weno. Since communication is pretty hard still, we drew in the sand and taught each other our names. You could tell that the kids really enjoyed hanging out with us even though we barely spoke. The sad part of the day was we didn't make it to Blue Lagoon for the banana pancakes so Katie was upset for a couple of minutes. But lunch was still delicious. We actually made it there by 10:45am but they had started lunch early that day.

By the 13th mile we were all pretty exhausted. We pretty much came back and collapsed. But it was well worth the walk. Now, I mentioned pictures several times. I finally uploaded about 80 photos- however, I couldn't figure out how to think them to my blog through snapfish yet. So I sent out an email to most of the addresses I had (I have more to add, I know since my journal with the rest of them was back at my room). If you would like to be added to the list, just shoot me a comment that you are interested with your email address.

Hope all is going well with everyone. Today we started meetings for school and are continuing to clean out the classrooms. Good luck to everyone starting school in the next week or so. Talk soon.
-Steph