The Last Few Weeks

A lot has happened since Practicum. During the last week of orientation, we had an overnight outing to Jelter, one of the outer-island like islands in the Majuro atoll. The island is beautiful and pristine. It was an amazing two days. We spent a lot of time kayaking, snorkeling and just chilling out on the island. I finally learned how to properly husk a coconut, which is a ton of work with the big, fleshy coconuts that have good coconut water. We took a boat out to some coral where there is a crashed bomber in the water from WWII. It was really cool to see, and the coral around there had more fish than I have seen since coming here. It was kind of daunting to get to the fish, since you have to basically float over coral in really shallow water, occasionally grazing against the anemones and pushing off on them with your hands. I saw several schools of really large fish and some small schools of really colorful fish, including some clown fish. On Jelter, we slept in little canopies set up on the ground after laying down some big leaves and putting some sleeping bags over them. The bugs still got to all of us and there was a bunch of rain from showers during the night and in the morning. For some reason, I still ended up sleeping really well. Overall, the overnight trip was one of the best times I’ve had here.

There were a few times during the trip where I definitely felt a little scared in the water. I am apparently not a very strong swimmer anymore, which is kind of ridiculous for living on an island. It’s a little sad that I’m so bad in the water now given that I was a (uncertified) lifeguard at a summer camp. We had little races between all the weak swimmers as a joke, it was pretty fun stuff except for the times I ran out of air and sank like a log. A few times on the trip, I have found myself fairly far out in the ocean with a malfunctioning snorkel and kind of freak out. It’s really kind of eerie snorkeling out in the deep water, it’s just a whole sea of clear blue in front of you with visibility limited to a few feet. Apparently there are also a few sharks around and a couple of guys in the group have run into them; they weren’t fazed, but it would probably give me a panic attack.

After Jelter, we spent a few days more in orientation sessions, and finished with orientation on Friday exactly a week ago. We ended with very end-of-camp style festivities. We had a closing dinner at one of the hotels, and a talent show and dance after dinner. The talent show was great – I was amazed how talented and funny everyone in the group is. I did a little rendition of Abbot & Costello’s “Who’s on First” with Rachel as a homage to summer camps gone by. We slacked off on preparing for the act, and ended up memorizing nearly the whole script the day of the show. Rachel has some experience acting and is part of an improv comedy group back home, which was definitely useful. At seven pages, the script was surprisingly long and actually a really hard act to memorize because of the all short lines and cues. We even tried to add a few improv sections of our own and included a Marshall Islands spin to the act by pretending it was a phone conversation with me calling her on an outer island. The act went well enough, and I am still impressed that we memorized it all in so short of a time. We all went out drinking after the end-of-orientation dinner and had a blast. We hung out by the water, sang a bunch of karaoke and all ended up at The Pub dancing till early in the morning. It was a great way to send everybody off.

The next day, 10 of us moved into faculty housing ("the dorm") on the school campus that includes two high schools and a middle school that most of my roommates are teaching at. It was really weird taking my first real shower in a month (though still with cold water) and sleeping on a real bed instead of a mat. Some of my roommates have already started school and everyone else is trying to find something else to do. Unfortunately, my school doesn’t start until September 3rd at the earliest. I have dropped by the building a few times to help set up the school, but there isn’t too much to do. Apparently, some of the teachers who were supposed to come to the school are at other schools, so right now we only have 3 out of 8 teachers (two of whom are WorldTeach). I’ve been keeping myself busy by fixing up the dorm and wandering around town. I am supposed to volunteer with a vet clinic next week, which I am really looking forward to. We are basically going to go around and capture a bunch of dogs. The dogs here are absolutely insane and I have already been chased several times - I'll provide some more detail in another post.

All of the volunteers on the outer islands were supposed to ship off this week. Some of them have left, but most are still here (a bunch are crashing in the dorm with us). There are two planes in the Marshall Islands used for inter-island transport, and as of now both of them are down. It’s pretty much a national crisis at this point since the only other way to move people or supplies are on a few ships that take a really long time. Apparently a bunch of wealthy tourists are stuck on Bikini atoll up north after one of the chartered scuba trips and a bunch more are stuck here in Majuro waiting to go to Bikini. It's a pretty bad situation given the economic hope that the Marshall Islands might at least emerge as a niche scuba adventure tourist spot. The government is looking into chartering a plane from Fiji to get back the tourists and help out with emergency situations. Some of the volunteers might take ships out to their islands, but a lot of the trips would take 4 days or more, which is a really tough thing on tiny cargo ships. It looks like it might be a while before all of our volunteers actually ship out to the outer islands. If anyone has a spare airplane engine, definitely send it over. Over and out.