Tada! Photos. I got my computer fixed (viruses, apparently) so now I can upload pictures.


My first view of the Marshall Islands (unfortunately, it was too cloudy on the flight in to take a picture. It IS pretty incredible being really close to landing and seeing only ocean out the windows.). This is looking out from the airport. My first impression: palm trees, rain, and a single, open-air terminal.



Here's a fun sign from the airport. Might be a little too small to read, but basically it's a list of prohibitions, the best being "DO NOT spit betel nut and copenhagen on floors and walls." betel nut is a nut from the pacific islands area with narcotic properties, which guys here chew and then spit out a red splash. The taxi drivers open their doors to spit- faster than manually rolling down the window. Copenhagen is the cheap chewing tobacco they sell here, also common and messy.






This is one of my first views of Majuro, the main city, on our first day. The puddles are from the rain that was coming down when we flew in. This time of year is the rainy season, which is good because our water (for drinking, showering, etc.) comes from catchments. Rain falling on roofs gets funneled into a big holding tank, and then it's pumped into the house's taps.

Sound dirty? yeah. ok for showering, but for drinking you have to boil the water first.







The first Sunday, we took a trip out to Laura Beach. Laura is where I will be living and teaching, if they ever get our house ready (more on that later). It's at the other end of the island. Majuro atoll is a an oval, and the main island is the bottom of that oval, shaped like a smile. At the East end of the smile is Majuro. The airport is somewhere in the middle, closer to the East. At the West end is Laura, the tip of which ends in a beautiful beach. Here we are on the drive. We sat in the back of this big pickup for over an hour, jarring our spines every time we went a speed bump and when the roads got rougher towards Laura.


Here's Eric (also stationed at Laura) walking out to the beach, the best sandy beach in the atoll (maybe the country!).


It's really shallow here, so the water seems to go out forever. This makes the water really warm, so it's a shock when you first step in: it's like a jacuzzi! But if you walk out a ways it gets deeper and cooler. At the tip of the beach, it drops of more sharply, and the snorkeling is incredible. I saw humuhumunukunukuapua'a, the hawaiian state fish (very cool looking and my favorite to say), sea cucumbers, clownfish, and lots of other fish and beautiful coral.


One the way home the sun went down. Sunset is at about 7 pm every day, and it's always beautiful.

I'm here!

So the plan was to write a nice big blog post on my laptop and upload it, along with pictures, onto the internet when i had access. Well, my laptop died yesterday so that's not going to happen....

But here is a super quick update!

Majuro, capitol of the RMI: humid, full of bugs, and rather dirty. But also really interesting- I really want to walk around and explore and take pictures of everything: the dilapidated houses, the palm trees, the mangy cats and dogs and the roosters and children running around, the lagoon, the ocean, the sky.

Orientation: we are learning Marshallese, which is lots of fun. Our teachers are Marshallese kids from the local high school, which we're staying on the grounds of. we're doing practice-teaching too. I've got a class of 4 9th-graders and i'm trying to teach them about similes. Marshallese kids are typically very shy and don't talk in class even when you practically beg them to participate, so I was happy to find that I could get them to talk a little.

Laura Village (apparently named after Lauren Bacall...don't ask me why): this is where i'll be living and teaching after orientation. It's on the same atoll as Majuro, connected by a bridge, so you can drive from one to the other. Which we did, sitting in the back of a big pickup truck for a somewhat bumpy and very beautiful ride. At the end of the village is a gorgeous beach where we swam and ate coconuts and our lunch and went snorkeling. Absolutely incredible. The village is a lot prettier than Majuro: more trees and other vegetation, the smell of breadfruit instead of industry or human waste, houses much farther apart, and just generally gorgeous. Ohhh man I gotta figure out how to put some pictures up. I can't believe I'll be living here.

Our house: ...and we might not actually end up living at Laura. The house we were supposed to be staying in doesn't have plumbing or electricity yet, and we can't exactly move out there with no running water, stove to boil water (which we MUST do for drinking water, tooth-brushing water, and cooking water), or fridge for food. School apparently starts around August 17, and if the house isn't ready by then I don't know WHAT we're going to do. I hope they figure it out because I can't wait to move in. Heather knows how to raise chickens so we're going to having chickens for fresh eggs, and I want to build a barbecue pit and buy or make a hammock. I even have all these great ideas for food to cook with the limited resources (basically, fresh produce and dairy products are either unavailable or VERY expensive, except for the ubiquitous coconuts and breadfruit and possibly also limes and papayas...so it's canned food and pasta and rice).

That's all I have time for now ($5-an-hour internet, ahhhhh!) but I hope you enjoyed reading about my adventures so far, and I'll try my best to keep you posted! Also I bought stamps and I would love to know your addresses.

love,
sarah