Birthday!

Yesterday I turned 22. Well, today, if you are on the wrong side of the international date line....(August 13). Here are the highlights:

My friend Heather not-so-stealthily "surprised" me with a cake for breakfast. It was delicious- rainbow chip frosting!! The candle was a cinnamon-scented votive.

Aside from being my birthday, yesterday was the last day of orientation, so we had a party at lunch with our language teachers, kids from the local high school (where we've been living) who are teaching us Marshallese. It was lots of fun. We had a huge tray of sashimi- just chunks of raw tuna with some sesame oil and onions and soy sauce. Really good once you get used to it. I also love the bananas here- they are really small and flavorful.

Then a local woman who knows handicrafts and owns the bowling alley (among other things; she is a pretty incredible lady) taught us how to make plates out of palm leaves (a useful skill) and the whole group went out for an end-of-orientation dinner at a really good chinese restaurant. The food was incredible and they kept bringing out all these different platters. Dessert was fried bananas with ice cream, with candles in one of the platters for me. Then we sang karaoke. Thank god we were in a back room with our Ribelle ridiculousness (Ribelle means "english-speaker"- American, basically).

Today all the teachers going to outer islands left on planes, which was sad. Heather, Eric, and I are still stuck in limbo- and these dirty little houses on the High School campus- because our housing in Laura still isn't ready. Very frustrating. I was really looking forward to not having to live out of a suitcase anymore! But it sounds like things will work themselves out eventually.

Well I gotta go, once more I'm borrowing someone's computer. But thanks for reading and I would love to hear from all of you!