Hmm....

I will soon be a teacher…

Showering under a million stars…

They call me demon…

Hitching to Laura…

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Those are three blog article titles that I have been meaning to write, but I have been lazy and I did not write them.
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So life here is great. I have met some awesome people and am making great friends. Soon it will be time to move into the teacher dormitory and begin teaching. This past week we have had our teaching practicum to prepare for the school year. While my group was supposed to teach 8th graders, we ended up with two of the smartest 12 graders in the country. This ended up working out well since I was able to move at a much faster pace and introduce more complex topics. While I have been mainly working with just two students I have enjoyed my first experience teaching. School is supposed to start in just over a week. We will see if school starts on time, it rarely does in the public school system here. I haven’t even met my principal yet, so I have no clue what my schedule is going to be like. I hope I find out soon.
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So we take bucket showers since there is not enough running water. As you may have seen in my pictures, our showers are just a couple of tarps put up around a wood frame. The coolest part of the bucket shower is taking them at night under all of the stars. If it is late enough, all the lights in the neighborhood will be off and there is no light pollution. I have never seen so many stars in my life, not even the night I spent on the ferry in Alaska. Anyway showering under the stars is pretty awesome…. J
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Outside of teaching we have kept ourselves occupied by playing with the neighborhood kids. There are always 3-5 kids playing with us whenever we have free time. They are great kids and they enjoy having fun. We are able to teach them English and they are able to help us with our Marshallese, which is pretty cool. As you may have seen in my pictures, some of the little girls have named me ‘Timon’ which translates to ‘Demon’. We spend our time growling and snarling at each other. It is a fun time. I will miss hanging out with the kids when I move to the other side of the island.
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Last Sunday was the first day we had to ourselves, we had no lessons, no instructions, and no real plans. We had heard about a part of Majuro called Laura. It is located at the far western part of the island and pretty much the only place that has sandy beaches. Unfortunately Laura is about 17 miles from Rairok (where we are currently staying) and we only had our feet for transportation. So we started walking in flip-flops and sandals. After about a couple miles we decided to make a sign because we knew there was no way to walk to the end of the island. After another half mile of walking, a nice Mitsubishi sedan stopped and told us to get in—there were 6 of us so it was quite the squeeze. (Hitchhiking is accepted here and is one of the main forms of transportation for people.) The man in the in the car ended up being a Senator from Majuro and was more than happy to take us out there and he became our personal tour guide. Laura (and the drive out there) was much different than downtown. There are more trees, almost a jungle, and lots fewer people. We got to the beach and the weather was awesome…it looked like I had just entered a postcard. We snorkeled and sat in our hammocks.
The only problem with hitching out to Laura is that we did not have transportation back towards town. And with such a large group it is hard to get picked up. We walked for a few miles before a truck came to pick us up. The truck made it a few more miles before it broke down and we were without transportation again, and we started to walk. While it was getting dark, we were lucky enough to have someone pick us up and we made it back to the compound safely…..
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That is all I have for now. I hope everyone is well at home and enjoying seeing and reading my experiences. I am currently working on sending out postcards to everyone who sent me their address. If anyone else would like one, please send me your address at dtnakata@gmail.com

:)