Matt


Moving in and more...

Matt and I moved into our house yesterday. The journey so far has been an experience in and of itself and the whole teaching gig has yet to even begin (minus a "potluck" after student registration today and an all high school staff meeting last week). Today was exciting as it was student registration and we were welcomed (yet again) and there was a potluck-feast where tons of food was served. Just a short note on local foods (which most eat in combo with imported food like rice, which there is beginning to be less and less for more and more money). The food here is amazing, I'm sure that not everyone would agree. But I could eat a literal ton of breadfruit cooked in about anyway you can think. I won't even begin to try and describe it (yet) in all it's complex taste and texture. The fruit on the island is spectacular as well, although not as present as one may imagine. Limes abound for sure, and a few others, but it's not really a fruit island particularly. All the land on Pohnpei is owned/occupied by some family or clan so it's a no-no to just pick stuff off a tree (which I think is a standard misconception of the pacific in general, along with all that 'white sandy beach' and sexual freedom galore crap), particularly if you can't climb with super dexterity that many folks here seem to possess (a.k.a. many have a knack for anything kinesthetic).


The house is small but amazing. The couple who lived in it last year were incredibly organized and left us with a plethora of household things which is incredible and is making our lives fairly convenient for now. We are living in the municipality (read 'kingdom' really) of Madoleinihmw (SP?). I'll leave the pronunciation up to you, it took us about a week or two to finally figure out how to shape our mouths around it, not because of any particular difficult in saying it, but maybe our lack of something... The toilet in the house is a bit iffy, but we should have it all sorted soon. The phone went from saying it was a disconnected number (yet another story about the smooth movement of bureaucracy here (and anywhere for that matter)) to a complete dead line, and we had about 22-23 hours of electricity today. I am kicking myself for not gathering more posters and such and bringing them with me, just cause it's nice doesn't mean the wall decorations are cool, plus I want to create habitat for the gecko's to live and stay under during the day. Gecko's rule the walls and ceilings which is probably not that incredible, but I have a strange fascination with lizards and amphibians in general, so I like it.



We have an incredible view from our small covered front porch. The other side of the harbor, or possibly another smaller island inside the lagoon, I have yet to establish that, is right out our front windows and door. The picture doesn't do it justice, which I will blame on a combo of my old digicam and a lack of photographic sense of the world around me. I'll work on getting a better picture up. It hasn't rained since we moved in, but it will, it always does, not really rains but dumps buckets from the sky, thrilling exciting enticing buckets of water. I love it too. We spent some time this morning hacking away with our machetes to keep the view and possibly expand it. The jungle encroaches on everything here, the road, your house, the ruins of Nan Madol (look that one up folks, it's about an hour walk from our house to the main section), and everything else. The combination of being the wettest place in the world and loads of pretty-much equatorial sunlight make for a paradise for many a different fauna which often grows to what I see as prehistoric sizes (maybe i'll take a picture with a quarter in it for scale's purpose)

Matt is off exploring to find a fish pond and swimming spot which is somehow affiliated with the agriculture program at the high school we are working at, hopefully he will return with successful news of spectacular snorkeling and swimming in warm calm ocean waters, I'm sorta counting on it. He's got a towel on his head in the picture below, that's him in a case/nutshell/sentance/picture. My prediction is smooth sailing on the housemate/roomate front considering we are possibly the two most laid back unconcerned folks on the trip (just my opinion though). He will be teaching math and myself teaching english speaking and writing, both of us to Sophomores and Juniors.

Email me with any specifics you wanna hear about. It's always easier to respond to a prompt than to write on a blank screen/paper.