May 7 Thursday: I felt better in the morning, but the runny nose came back and mid afternoon I had a set of chills even in the high 80's outside temp. But I put on long sleeves, long pants, drank a lot, sweated even more, and I broke the cold. Cameron is feeling almost completely better which is good since today is the first practice for a new gymnastics team he is putting together. There are 25 super excited 4th through 6th graders lined up for it. I went along to shoot some video and photos and just get out of the house. We stopped at Payless on the way home and I got several more apples since today is the last day of the sale. Cherise came for dinner again tonight, and the three of us had a nice evening cooking food and talking.

May 8 Friday: Again, I felt great in the morning, but this time it stuck. I went out to the reef outside the school and played in the tide pools. Did not find much to keep, although the pools themselves are immensely fascinating: the sheer numbers of types of crabs and the array of colors they come in, the vast variety of life from snails, sea cucumbers, eels, worms, fish, shrimp, hermit crabs, anemones, corals, brittle stars, etc etc goes on and on. My major find was a hermit crab occupying a conch shell the size of both of my fists put together. I'll attempt to get him to surrender his home. The irooj has now told us that Sunday is the only day he can show us around, but the new trick will be getting a boat on Sunday. That will most likely be a private charter and cost more than $200. We have a little time to work on it though and we will give it our best shot. I went to observe the second gymnastics practice, stopping and buying oranges for when the kids finished. I am constantly reminded of the difference between American kids (forbidden to go outside, overweight as a indirect result, whiny) and the kids here (outside all the time, way over sugared, but not overweight, very infrequent whining/crying). This is an incomplete thought, but I am not going to finish it here, yet.

May 9 Saturday: Matt arrived late yesterday afternoon, so the three of us had breakfast together and got ready for church. He was the last to get a shower, and just before he got to hop in the water stopped flowing. Since I was in the program I did not wait around, but several times lately the water has gone off for an hour or two. At church, I was talking to Seeyoum Teshome (mom, that is the Ethiopian man's name, you can check with Adu about him, he is really interesting to talk to, is currently in charge of the Computer Science Dept at College of the Marshall Islands, has been very happy to have me around and his two kids are great, the younger son follows his older brother around like a puppy) and getting my role clarified. I gave a summary of the weeks lesson topic from the quarterly. They try and do this because they often run out of time in the actual classes and this way everyone at least hears a brief synopsis of what was covered throughout the week. Then we break up into Marshallese and English speaking groups to go further into detail on the lesson. During church there was a special Mother's day story and music (the words are below, I do not have a translation, but it was a beautiful piece sung by about twenty of the high school age kids)

A Mother's Day Song:

Elon ran im bon
Ilo mour e ao
Ij bukot jakjan, nan ao naj ukot boke eo
Nan yuk jino kin aolep yio ko
Rellon kwar jiban io ie

Ijela kwojella ejjelok men en elaplak
Kin yokwe eo am nan yuk mama
Kwe eo kwoj utiej
Kwaibojoj ibba kin men ko otemjej io lal
Winnin al im ao
Naj kwalok nan mejen lal in bwe
Kwe eo ilon im ion menono e ao mama

Jonan lal in mama
Eddrik nan ao naj
Katolak yuk jen io im eban ukot
Menono e ao ij kamolol Jemed
Ilan kin onak eo, eo an nan kwe im na

They sang it several times as the younger kids were passing out cards to the mothers. A special evening vespers, starting an hour earlier than normal was announced, which turned out to be a church/school wide musical talent show and went on for nearly three hours. Many talented musicians – young and old and from a very international background. I tried to video many of the performances, but I was also trying to protect my camera while keeping five wiggly little kids quiet and reasonably under control. The recordings suffered greatly in this endeavor, but I got good pictures of Dolly, Alibert, and a few of the other unidentified munchkins that seek us out regularly

Happy Mothers Day, MOM!