Long time no post….

Christmas came and left, New Years came and left and now January is almost over. This week marks the end of the first semester at NVTI. After six months in the Marshall Islands and about 5 months of teaching I am starting to feel at home here. Well as at home as one can feel living in a country where one does not know the language.

Teaching has been a challenge and it is difficult to determine if you are doing a good or bad job. I know I have had an impact on my students but I don’t know in what direction. Over the last couple of months I have felt that I will probably never teach again, but right now I am starting to become more comfortable with my position and may consider teaching again….but then again who knows my mind changes every couple of days/hours/minutes……

The past couple of weekends have been quite relaxing. I spent one day on Eneko, an evening on the Indies Trader IV, a day on Enamanit, one day fishing in a Billfish Tournament, and another day on Enamanit. Being able to get off of the main island in the Majuro Atoll is key to keeping ones sanity and allows one to escape from the rigors of living in the RMI.

The Billfish Tournament on January 19 was a Catch 5 tournament where the goal is to catch all five of the main “big game” fish in the Marshall Islands: Marlin, Tuna, Wahoo, Barracuda, and Mahi Mahi. The fishing started at 6AM and by 6:45 we had our first fish, a 16 lbs Barracuda. Two hours later we landed our first of our 8 Mahi Mahi. The largest Mahi Mahi was 20 lbs. Around 11 or 11:30 we caught a 13 lbs. Wahoo. That left us with over 5 hrs to catch one Tuna (yellowfin, skipjack, or dogtooth) and one Marlin. Unfortunately, around 2 or 2:30 one of our two engines died. We were about 5 or 6 miles offshore and had to slowly drag ourselves back to land……it was a good day….