Hello everyone, just writing a note from the Honolulu airport at 3:30am. The flight to Hawaii from SFO was calm and I read most of the way. My mom, Gabe, and Scott saw me off. The airline alliances are interesting. I bought a ticket from Continental, had to check in at the Northwest counter and the actual plane I was on was a Delta jet. I think my next leg to Majuro is on a Continental plane though. It will be my first crossing of the international date line. Here in Honolulu it has been overcast with brief scattered showers, but it quite warm even at this time in the morning. The terminal is an open air one so the breeze wafts in occasionally. Just before I left the mainland I check the weather in the Marshall Islands and it looks like I have showers forecasted for the first week or so. We will have to see how that affects things.


Right now the terminal is empty, probably for another hour until everything comes to life. The last few days have been rough for me. I feel quite relaxed at the moment, but it was hard to say good bye to friends, my mom, my grandfather, and others. I kept most of the tears private. It is very easy for me to leave things behind. The relationships are a lot harder and I hope there will be enough contact through the miracles of the internet. Two years seems a long time, but I know it will pass quickly. When I get back, as others have said, it will be both surprising to see how much has changed and how much has stayed exactly the same.


April 2: Mostly slept on flight from Honolulu to Majuro. Had to pay $35 for going over the allowed weight limit on my bag. Continental had a great chill music channel and the meal was decent. Plenty of drinks/water offered. Quite different from the Delta flight the previous day. The plane was half full and about a third of us disembarked at Majuro, the remainder having stops on the islands between there and Guam. From the air the little strips of land only support a small road, then at points where it widens, a single row of houses fronting the road or houses on both sides of the road. On the ground from nearly every point you can look left and see open ocean or right and see the inner water of the atoll. My minibus ride to the Backpackers Hostel took us over a bridge, which was the highest point I've seen so far. The dormitory is comfortable, reasonably private and secure enough for me to leave my stuff without worry. Isaac, the proprietor was asleep at the desk when I arrived, but seems to be a very pleasant man and I will talk to him about renting an island at some point. I am going to take a few days to adjust my sleep cycle and acclimate to the heat/humidity. That was more than I expected, but I should have known better. After settling into my room, I walked further away from the airport for about a mile, just seeing what was around. There are plenty of little shops, a few large supermarkets (quite expensive everything as much as at home plus markup to cover the cost of getting it out to the islands), and many little houses. There is an awful lot of trash along the sides of the road and at one point when I went down to the beach I was amazed at the trashed piled up there. There were many crabs and quite a few unremarkably colored fish. Three little girls pointed out what appeared to be a date palm and asked many questions, which I couldn't understand at all. They were busy throwing rocks on the beach when I moved on. I found an “internet cafe” at the National Telecommunications Department for 8 cents a minute and used three dollars to check on email. I will need to find out about cooking fuel tomorrow and look at my food options. After walking around for a while I returned to my room and slept for a couple hours. Now I plan on finishing reading the first book of the trip and writing this.


I mentioned in a previous note that the weather forecast was for showers. Well that appears to mean five to ten minutes of very light rain with the sun shining. On my minibus ride a co-passenger who has been here a couple days was saying that they really needed the rain because nearly all their drinking water is rain catch and there has not been much in the past couple weeks, so maybe some harder rain will be coming.

$5 (minibus) + $20 (hostel) + $3 (internet cafe) = $28


April 3: Jet lag set in today, and I spent most of it sleeping or reading. I did make it to one of the larger markets I found yesterday and bought some food for the next few days. The hostel has a refrigerator in the dorm and as I am the only one here at the moment I have free reign. Again, like yesterday, just about sundown the rain came, only for about 15 minutes and then just the breeze continues. I studied my lesson for the week and will attempt to find the SDA church in the morning – services are at 11 so I should have plenty of time. The temp got up to 92 degrees, which is not bad, but I am just not acclimated to the humidity. I have been conditioned to think of CA as a moisture rich state, what with our wet snow, etc compared to say Utah, but this is taking it to a whole new level. As I said I stayed close to the hostel today sleeping and listening to the sounds of life around me – chickens, dogs, the occasional siren, and the many voices of children shouting, laughing, crying.


Hostel $20 + groceries $15.01 = $35.01


April 4 First Sabbath. This was a good day all around. Thomas, one of the hotel staff was just getting off his shift, when I came by the office and asked Isaac about how to get to the SDA church. Thomas said he lived right by there, so we caught a taxi together. It was actually very close and the driver did not even want the $1 fare when we arrived. I had found a Majuro yellow pages that said services began at 11, but I assumed that was just church and that ss would be before that. So I got to the school early: 8:45 and everything was closed up, so I meandered through the campus and took a few pictures. Soon a few people began appearing and I confirmed that ss would start at 9:30. Only a handful of people were there when it started but by the time we divided into classes there were at least 30 people, and twice that for church. There was one other visitor – the dad of one of the student missionary teachers at the school. The congregation is a mix of natives and other islanders, Ethiopians, Filipinos, Americans, several Brits, a couple Scandinavians and an Austrian. I met Cameron, who is the vice principal for the school. He is incredibly helpful. After church most people disbursed quickly and I talked with a couple that had lived in Woodland, CA recently (she is from Kiribati, an Island about 500 miles south of the Marshalls). They were looking at a number of islands to move to as they are expecting the collapse of the US. As I was leaving to go eat lunch the school's maintenance man Ramon, told me to come back at 6:30 for an evening program.


So, I had lunch and a nap and then started reading through CS Lewis' Abolition of Man. I had read the first essay once before and got halfway through the book before it was time to head back to the Delap SDA school. The evening program consisted of a song service lead by a couple students and two SM's. Then some students lead out in a bible trivia game. Afterwards, I was talking to Cameron again and Jim, the principal. They are just going into their spring break and the timing is good because they were planning on going over to Arno to check out the site for the new school (which is the site of the old school – long story about an old chief that did not like the SDA school and a new chief that does want the school back). So next week, probably Tuesday or Wednesday the three of us will take a trip over to Arno. Cameron said that once the visiting father of the SM leaves I could stay at the school and he showed me where I can get free wifi (the only place like it on the island and it is just down the street from where I'm staying right now), says he knows a hookup for scuba, invited me to a bbq with some of his friends for tomorrow and back to the school for game night with the students. Two of the biggest sports on Majuro are volleyball and basketball. Well the gym had a volleyball game and two half court basketball games going on at once on what should be a single full court. Rather chaotic, but everyone goes with the flow and it actually works reasonably well. There are a lot of good volleyball players here. I've also seen a lot of street baseball and almost all the kids are using folded pieces of cardboard for mitts. Anyway, Cameron and I played several games of volleyball and got handily beaten each time. Got to meet several of the other teachers from the Delap school and a few from the Laura school on the other end of the island. About 11, I headed home for the night having had a full day.


Hostel $20 + Offering $5 = $25


April 5: Woke at 6:30 to the beginnings of a big storm. Closed my window and fell back to sleep to the pounding of the rain. Got up at 8, had a simple breakfast, got a cold shower and then did some reading/puzzles until it was time to head over to the SDA school to meet Cameron. Played a game of ladder golf and hung out until about 12:30 when we headed over to the Robert Reimers Resort dock to meet up with the Hawaiian contingent (all friends of Cameron's, who grew up in Hawaii). We loaded the boat (including a quad we had to carry over the side) and headed out to one of the private islands on the east side of Majuro.


The owner Jerry, was introduced to me when we first arrived and Cameron recommended I take a walk towards the far end of the island while they were setting up the bbq etc. Jerry has a floating dock, water slide, a number of water craft (canoes, kayaks, longboards, etc) and a bunch of picnic spots and bungalows spread out on the interior side of his island. Additionally, there are about a dozen pigs and piglets and a host of beautifully colored chicken and roosters. The quad got unloaded and immediately put to use by the kids on a track made through a large portion of the island. There were a couple other quads already there and a large group of boys, ages 6-13 taking turns driving. So I headed towards the other end of the island where Cameron said there was a giant tree. I followed a rough jungle path that was heavily littered with coconut husks and thick vegetation. I ran into several of the pigs out here as well. There were an abundance of skinny lizards that were too fast to take a picture of. I found the tree probably a quarter mile down the trail and it was indeed an enormous specimen. A massive trunk and a number of auxiliary appendages make for a substantial tree. There were a number of medium sized crabs crawling over its surface and they quickly retreated to their crevasses as I approached. My return towards the picnic area went through the water along the shore and there I found a large spider and many pretty shells (pictures available). People were already eating when I got back, so I joined in.

There was a great pasta salad, lots of rice, and all manner of Hawaiian bbq's meats. Guava nectar to drink, so that was excellent. After eating plenty, several of us played frisbee on the beach, then threw around a football for a while. I got in the shade to get away from the sun since I am not used to the direct sun yet and do not need to burn at the beginning of this trip. Sitting in the shade I found a couple beautiful shells (occupied by hermit crabs) and watched them interact.


We played a little more frisbee and then started packing up the boats to return to the main island. I was looking forward to a cool shower to clean off the saltwater, but as it turns out we were hit by a driving rain on the way back and were completely soaked in short order. That made a lot of people cold, but that is really really subjective as since I have been here it has not been cooler than 82 degrees (that has been the temp at sunrise the past couple days) and has gotten up to 94. The hard thing has been getting used to the humidity. People were also talking about a water rationing plan that goes into effect tomorrow, because they have had much less rain than normal. They said that today we got almost 5 inches of rain and that helps out a lot, but the rationing will still be activated. Another point of interest is that a baby pilot whale has found its way into the atoll and tradition says that that only happens when an Island leader or important person dies, which has not happened yet in this case anyway.


Hostel $20


April 6: Today I need to get all these notes posted on the intertubes, contact verizon to find out why my phone does not work (the Marshallese Telecommunications Authority may have something to do with it), and buy some more food.