Getting Here/Yokwe!

8-11-08 Yokwe! That's how we on Ebeye say hello. Well, it actually means a lot of things--one of which is hello. The others are "You are a rainbow" and "Love to you". Still, the greeting is something that I so far find characteristic of the Marshallese: it's friendly, and so are they. They are some of the friendliest people I have ever met, and I am falling in love with this island.

Currently, I'm writing this blog in the apartment I share with three other student missionaries--in the dark. Ebeye has some power issues, and we don't ever quite know when we'll have electricity or not. It usually switches between oceanside and lagoonside, but sometimes it will hopscotch between a couple transformers. There's hope for new generators within a few months, and then we'll have power everywhere at all times. We adapt, of course. Flashlights are handy little friends, and we have some candles.

Power (and/or the lack of it) sort of affects how we eat. My flatmates and I have decided to mostly share expenses (because food is super expensive here, along with everything else), but we are trying to avoid buying perishables, because we don't know when our refrigerator will work and when it won't. I don't know how many peanut butter sandwiches I've eaten in the last few days. Actually, Monday night was the first night when we actually got to cook something. You see, we planned to cook spaghetti Sunday night, but right before we could fire up the stove, the power went off. Bad timing on our part!

Well, I flew out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport very early on the third of August, landed in Houston, and then flew to Honolulu. I had never been to Hawaii before, and I hadn't realized just how far away Hawaii is from the rest of the States! The island SMs from Southern met up with all of the other island SMs from various other Adventist colleges and universities and from the NAD. There were even a couple people from Europe and Australia who had come to teach in the islands.

The orientation was tiring--but fun! We had classes on how to teach, great devotional messages from Pastor Jose Rojas and a few other people, good food, and wonderful fellowship. I left Hawaii with a lot of knowledge, a focus on the need for God to make me salty during the upcoming year, and friends that I felt like I'd known for years (even though it had only been two days!). They bunked us on the floors of various classrooms of Hawaiian Mission Academy, and we used the gym bathrooms for showers and such. One morning a group of us got up and walked the twenty minutes down to the ocean, where most of us proceeded to take pictures. On our way down to the beach, we passed a 76 gas station that had listed prices that were--well, high compared to home. It was $4.40 a gallon there--and the whole group took pictures of it, too, because we know people at home who are complaining about the cost of gas at $3.40 a gallon. It could always be worse! :) As a little sendoff, the SM coordinator from SAU took us Southern SMs out to dinner, after having spent the afternoon shuttling us from Wal-Mart to Waikiki Beach, etc., You are awesome, Gayle!!!

We left early Wednesday morning to catch the island hopper flight. The island hopper stops at Majuro, Kwajalein, Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk, and Guam--in that order. Ebeye's near Kwajalein, but it is too small (and too crowded) to have its own flight strip. Plus, Kwajalein's a United States military base (something to do with Reagan's STAR WARS, I think), and thus, we have to process through there to even reach Ebeye. We arrived on Kwajalein on Thursday, after only flying six or so hours from Honolulu, with only a brief stop in Majuro. Yay International Date Line! Believe me, this is confusing to the traveler as much as it is to the reader of this. For example, when it is midnight on Saturday night here, it is 8:00 AM Saturday morning in the US Eastern Time Zone (7:00 AM for those of you in the Central Time Zone). When it is noon on Sunday for me, it is 8:00 PM Saturday for you. The future's a rather nice place--I like it, anyway.

My fellow SMs and I (me, Lorraine, Emily, Megan & Landon) have been settling in, going to the grocery store, helping set up the school, meet people and try to remember names!, and--wonderful thing--got our textbooks today and are supposed to start writing out our lesson plans. Former teachers of mine, I sincerely appreciate you even more than I did when you taught me--and I've only just begun to plan only one of my classes. By the way, I'm teaching seven classes: English 9, English 10, English 11, English 12 Composition, English 12 Literature, Advanced Reading, and World History. I am really excited about this upcoming year, and am already busily planning!

Well, I must be off to bed (seeing as my battery's starting to run low and I'm still adjusting to this time). Night. More later.

~Ashlee