Finally: Laura!

Great news- we moved out to Laura Village, and it's awesome.

The house has AIR CONDITIONING, which is absolutely the best thing ever. It completely changes how we feel and how we function here. Instead of waking up covered in sweat, groggy and headachey, we wake up refreshed and able to face the heat outside as we walk to school.

The place has 3 bedrooms, but only one bed, a double. Heather and I are sharing that, and Eric gets the futon. The kitchen is really simple, just a big fridge and lots of cabinet space and a small countertop stove that plugs in and has two burners. I'm bummed not to have an oven (I was dreaming of making banana bread, beer bread, cookies...), but I'm really enjoying being creative with what we've got- basically canned and packaged food plus a few fresh ingredients. There's a ton of stuff growing here- papayas outside our door, banana trees along the road, and coconuts everywhere. I love it.

The school is right nearby. When we went last week to the orientation day, I got a schedule saying I'd have a classroom in the nice air conditioned building. But the schedule changed, and now I have to move every period from classroom to classroom in the building with no AC. It's really tough, especially because the schedule is set up with no passing periods. I have 150 students, 9th graders and 11th graders, and I'm teaching Reading, but there are no books and not enough textbooks, so every day is a struggle: learning 150 names, trying to maintain some sort of classroom management, and coming up with a curriculum without the basic resources of textbooks or a library.

But it's getting easier every day, and we are absolutely loving the town of Laura. It's not too hard to get back into downtown, either. Yesterday we took the bus in to use internet, buy some things, and see our friends who work at Marshall Islands High School in downtown Majuro. We ended up staying the night and going dancing at The Pub, and then Heather and I stayed with our friend Kiersten who is house-sitting at our field director's house. At 4:30 in the morning we were woken up by high-pitched squeaking- our field director's very pregnant cat was having her kittens! So I didn't get a lot of sleep but it was pretty incredible.

Now we're planning to hitch a ride back to Laura- no bus on Sunday. Wish me luck!