Snorkeling and Car Crashing

So its been a couple of jam-packed days since I last blogged. Haha huge exaggeration actually! It's pretty low-key around here with the most eventful thing of most days being the trip to pick someone up at the airport or to go shopping for dinner. However, I have be able to do some cool things. Last Saturday we walked down to the Japanese dock and went snorkeling. Pretty incredible- certainly much better than the times I went scuba diving/snorkeling in Europe. Better yet, the second-years (volunteers) said that it is not even the best snorkeling on the island. I'm pretty excited to do more. Plus, it's free and only about a 20-25 minute walk from where I live. There is even a spot in the lagoon where you can see wreekage from WW2 so that's the next snorkeling expedition on my list.

Sunday was my first experience of the Chuukese Mass. It was a weird mix of conservative and informal. They still rang the bells during the consecration and the altar boy held the plate to put under everyone's mouths while they received communion, yet everyone sat on the ground and the dress code was pretty diverse. The women all wore Mumu's, myself included. There didn't seem to be much of an expectation for men. That kind of follows the typical attitude towards men here- they pretty much can do whatever they want while the women must follow pretty conservative standards. It made me laugh and I know some people from home will enjoy this- the altar boy wore a Cubs jersey. Otherwise, the Mass was pretty similar. Although I had no idea what was being said, at least the homily was translated.

Monday and Tuesday we spent most of the day cleaning out and reorganizing the library. It was a much bigger job than we expected when we started, but it was good to get the whole fiction section organized. We somewhat slacked and only organized the books by the first letter of the author's last name figuring alphabetizing them fully could always be a punishment for the students during their detention. The great discovery was the preserved frog skeleton that we found behind one of the bookshelves. Since I'm teaching biology everyone thought that I should have the privilege of determining what to do with it. If you know me well, you know I didn't touch it. I did curiously look at it and I have to admit it was pretty cool.

Early Wednesday morning I woke up with my first terrible upset stomachs. Luckily they only lasted all of Wednesday and today I seem pretty cured. We cooked a good meal yesterday- macaroni and cheese and cooked vegetables. Doesn't sound like much, but it was! The cheese sauce was homemade and we had chips ahoy cookies for dessert. Dessert doesn't really exist at Xavier so it was a nice treat and most of the food here is canned/not fresh since it is shipped in. However, of course we couldn't have the nice meal without some obstacles. We learned the hard way that you can't buy pasta from the store TTC because it has bugs! So a good bit of it had to be thrown out, while the bugs were cleaned out from the rest. I'm pretty much becoming immune to them at this point because they are everywhere!

Now for the excitement of today- Well, everyone on Weno (the island) knows the Xavier pick-up truck. We call him Indigo because of his color but he is a trooper. He's been manuvering the potholes of Weno for about 5 years, makes a lot of weird noises, and has a lot of dents. Today, after we had picked up 2 other Aussie volunteers from the airport and were driving back to Xavier with a full-load- 2 people in the front and 6 in the bed- this crazy man decided to hit us practically head on. We think he was going about 40 mph and for a place where everyone drives between 10-20 mph because the roads are so bad, that's fast. He never tried to swerve and our driver tried to avoid him so he ended up hitting the back of our left side pretty badly. Luckily everyone was okay. It drew a pretty good Chuukese crowd pretty quickly- probably for 2 reasons. 1. That doesn't happen often in Chuuk and 2. It was a pick-up truck full of the Xavier volunteers (there aren't many white people on this island you could figure). So once we figured everyone was okay and the Indigo was driveable we decided to keep going wanting to not attract too much attention. We ended up stopping a Chuukese cop later down the drive to explain to him what happened and he said we would have to file a report tomorrow. I just hope the car didn't end up hitting any other people later down the drive. The little white honda never even slowed down after he hit us. Hopefully we will be able to determine later who did it based on the damage to his car, but who knows, the cars down here in Weno aren't kept up too well. All of this happened right after we had changed a flat as well. Drunk driving has been a problem here but usually it is after dark and we don't drive after dark. This was in broad daylight. So either something was wrong or it was intentional, either way, a little unsettling.

A couple of good notes-

I really like Micronesian bananas, which is funny because I used to hate bananas in the States. Bananas grow up here instead of down and apparently taste slightly different. Tonight we had fried banana in this dough that's like egg rolls. It was delicious- my favorite local food thus far.

This morning I played with these 4 local girls. I guess they were all either 5 or 6 based on their teeth- which were mostly rotted out. But we made up handshakes and they just wouldn't stop giggling, looking at me like I was this alien. The kids are adorable here. Although they all seem very happy, they also make me sad because I see what they endure.

On Saturday, we are doing a walk around the whole island- about 13 miles, so I will post a bunch of photos after that.

I saw the most beautiful bird today. I tried to take a picture but it was too fast. It was fire engine red.

And I finished reading 1000 Splendid Suns today. Great book!

Ok, that's all for now. Talk soon.

-Steph