Weekend Update

On Friday night we had a Ministry of Education (MoE) welcome dinner. All of the volunteers (WorldTeach and Dartmouth) were there to meet principals and teachers from our schools. No one from my school was actually able to make it, but it was a fun event with a lot of silly speeches and singing. I was also able to duck out in the middle of it to get a beer at a local hotel bar purely to gain access to their complementary buffet. Unfortunately, most of the food wasn’t vegetarian – but I was able to snag 9 or 10 egg rolls before going back to the party.

After the welcome party, a big crew of us went back to the hotel bar to get some drinks. Karaoke is huge here, and for some reason our group really embraced it. I think the staff was really scared of the 20 or so ripelles crammed in a little room singing American songs for 3 hours. After getting ourselves back to the orientation site (the Compound), we ended up piling a bunch of mattresses in the yard and watching Dazed & Confused outside on my computer. We also discovered that five people can indeed fit inside a 5’ by 3’ tent. There are pictures of all of this somewhere, and I am going to put up a few today.

Last night, we had our mid-Orientation dinner. It was an amazing change to sit down around a table and have a real meal. We all once again karaoked after the meal, and eventually a few of us decided to check out The Pub – the only nightclub in the country. The place is incredibly dark and smoky, and was packed full of people. There is a little dance floor with some neon lights – I might go back just to get some photos of it. The actual mechanics of the dance floor are really odd. The music was mostly insane techno with a few pop hits in between, and after the playing of each song there was a 5-minute pause, during which all the Marshallese would leave the dance floor to sit at their tables, and then return to the dance floor a few minutes later for the next song. Definitely an interesting experience.

I’m putting up a few photos of the RMI so far. Hopefully this works.