I'm Alive

I know it’s been a while. Sorry! I’ve had bad luck with internet the past few weeks (months?). It’s hard to condense the past month or so into entries. But here are some highlights:

A couple of my students have started inviting me to events with the Mormon church, which is very strong here. The first thing was a dance party, which was actually a ton of fun. Live band, tons of kids dressed up for the occasion (the boys in typical Mormon attire, ties and all), and hilarious upbeat old tunes that the kids loved dancing too even though it wasn’t their preferred genre (Akon and 50 cent, mostly). I danced with my students and every guy they set me up with, ages 5-50.

I also went with these students to a “beat” dance practice. It’s a type of Marshallese dancing accompanied by poppy keyboard music and loud, insistent whistle-blowing that seems to be some sort of signal but is mostly just annoying. We’ve been hearing music and whistles from our house for weeks now, because preparation for Christmas beat performances starts as early as November or even October. So now my students are trying to teach me to dance beat, as well as trying to teach me volleyball.

A couple weekends ago the whole Laura crew (Heather, Eric, Alison and I) went to the island of Eneko with a big group of ribelles- Dartmouth volunteers, WorldTeach volunteers, teachers from the Co-op private school, and so on. The island is privately-owned, so we can play on the beach away from the eyes of traditional Marshallese culture. Which means: swimsuits! It was so nice to swim without a t-shirt and shorts or a big baggy guam dress. We could also sit in the water drinking beers, something that is probably illegal in the US and is very against custom most of the time here. We had a big potluck dinner and barbecue (Eric, Heather, and I split some cheap steaks and tuna), played volleyball, and got sunburns on parts of our bodies that haven’t seen sun in months. And that was despite the overcast skies and rain!

Every few months there are track meets in Laura at the big field, where there is an overgrown but legit track. We had one on President’s Day a few weeks back and Alison ran the mile(well, the 1500). Lots of our fellow volunteers came from town to compete and hang out. I was just there for moral support, but when we saw that Alison was the only ribelle running the 400, I joined in. I ran that race when I ran track senior year of high school, and it’s brutal. On the last stretch the cheers kept me going, along with the promise of fresh coconut at the end. The coconut came from a family who’d been sitting outside husking coconuts that morning as I walked by on my way to Alison’s house. I said “morning!” (the standard greeting here, no matter the time of day) and this older man offered me a coconut. “For the road,” he said, in impressive English, “so you don’t get dehydrated!”

Getting presented with fresh fruit has actually become a common occurrence. My students bring me limes on a regular basis, and I’ve also gotten bananas, coconuts, and apple-bells, a strange crunchy waxy fruit that’s bright pink and crisp and not very sweet. We also still occasionally get fruit or veggies from the Taiwanese Farm. This Saturday they had Farm Day, complete with tours of the farm, free food, health checkups, and bags of fresh vegetables: eggplant and corn.

We’ve gotten eggplant before and it’s awesome, but the corn was new and exciting. We’ve created a fire pit in our backyard and for a while we’ve been meaning to grill something. The corn provided the perfect opportunity, along with four small reef fish Heather and Eric bought from a small family store later that day. So Eric built up the fire with paper and coconut shells while Heather and I learned by trial and error how to gut a fish. On my first try I punctured the guts and got fish crap all over the plastic cutting board. But on my second fish, easier to cut due to its thinner skin, I did it just right and pulled all the guts out intact. I was very proud. We didn’t try to fillet the little things, that would’ve been a waste of time and fish, so we just stuck them right on the grill the way people usually do it here. That turned out to be the perfect strategy: when the fish were cooked the skin peeled right off, and we were rewarded with tender, delicious fish that we could pick off the bones to our hearts’ content. The corn, cooked in its husks, was a perfect accompaniment, as was the eggplant we grilled in foil. Dessert? Roasted marshmallows. A perfect night.