9-30-08 Last day of September!! It is almost officially my two-month mark here on Ebeye. Whoa.
Well, we had a short week of school last week--three days of class, one very long day of a holiday program, and then no school because of the holiday. This particular holiday was Manit Day, the day when the students celebrate Marshallese culture. Each class, from PreK to twelfth, sang a song or had a small skit--or both--all conducted in Marshallese, and thus, mostly incomprehensible by the teachers who are making everything run smoothly. After the program, the parents of each class provided huge potluck feasts for each class--and although only one of my sophomores' parents showed up, they all brought what they had planned. The whole day ran rather smoothly, considering we had a late start because we had to wait for the prince to show up. Yes, you read that correctly, the prince. He's the only royalty on island right now, but he still had to come and kick off our program. We started approximately forty-five minutes late because the prince had to go to each of the schools on the island and be honored at each one. Hm. Talk about a different culture!
Then, on Friday, we teachers and staff headed off to Carlos Island for a short camping trip. We left at about ten in the morning and got to the campsite across the lagoon and were set up by noon. A group of us took a quick dip off the lagoonside beach, and then, after lunch, when Ryan saw that it was high tide, we trekked back to the harbor and swam out to the huge cement ship that is used as a breakwater. It's a leftover from World War II, an experimental ship that is mostly made out of cement. Weird, right? Well, the tide is super-high on this island (hopefully I can get some pictures to load and then you can see for yourselves). There is part of a scaffold tied to the lowest end of the ship, and at high tide, you can climb up the scaffold by clinging to the rope that tied down the middle, make one's way through the upper decking, and then launch off and jump into the ocean below. Well, I'm still not the strongest swimmer in the world, and the waves in the harbor were large, on account of the fact that there is no natural reef on that part of the island, and it's near the open channel, where there's no island breaking up the ocean at all in the atoll, so I was the last out to the ship. Then, because my upper body strength isn't all that I wish it was, I had difficulties getting up the scaffolding. Everybody else had already gotten to the top, and Ryan had waited for me by the ladder. He tried to help me, but I couldn't even get onto the bottom rung. I let Ryan climb up, because I wasn't about to spoil his fun just because I couldn't climb up the stupid scaffold-ladder-thing. Well, everyone who had swum out there (Megan, Landen, Ryan, Alan, Melvin, and Jordan) jumped off and then swam over to climb up again. And thus everyone helped me get up the ladder, which I had spent their first jump trying to get up by myself and failing spectacularly. I had succeeded in getting on the bottom rung, but I couldn't get enough leverage to go any higher. So, this is how I got up the ladder (which I discovered was part of a scaffold because the second rung has instructions on it, and I read it when sitting on the bottom rung, being unable to go higher). First, Jordan and Melvin climbed up and steadied the thing; then, Ryan (who had his snorkel) had me step on his shoulders and we got myself up onto the second rung. Then, Jordan and Melvin climbed up onto the top and then helped me up the rest of the way, while the rest shouted encouragement (especially Alan). Once up there, it was pretty cool. We made our way through what was the upper deck--Ryan made sure to remind us that we had to watch our step, because it was all rusting. I mean, it is over sixty years old. Then we walked out onto the higher part of the ship. Now, the jump everyone else made first was lower than where they wanted to jump the second time--but I didn't do that first leap. And I would not say that I'm particularly fond of heights--and yet I leaped. Of course, I had to will myself to do it (I mean, how else does a sane person hurl themselves off of a height of about twenty-five, thirty feet, and into salt water?), but it was one of the coolest things I have ever done. First, there was that initial thought of "Oh, why did I do this?" because it's not like the cartoons, you can't go running back to the safe place, and then came the thought of "Oh, this is fun." However, it was the highest that I have ever jumped from, and I wasn't expecting it to be so long between jump and splash, if you know what I mean. So then the thought of "When am I going to hit the water? Am I ever going to hit the water? Oh, this is scary!" hit, and then I hit the water. Which was fun, by the way. I sputtered once I popped through the surface, but it was still totally awesome.
We went back to our campsite and just looked around, drying off as we went (since it was rather hot, sunny, and windy). There are a lot of little hermit crabs on Carlos, and they are all so totally cute! The trick to getting them out of their shells is to breath on them like you're de-fogging eyeglasses from the cold. It makes it look as if you were kissing the crab, though. Also, there are a lot of flies on Carlos, who like to land on people and generally be annoying. Anyway, we wandered around taking pictures and looking for shells and cool-looking smoothed off, washed-up coral rocks, and then had supper. After supper, we swam a bit more, then dried off, took bucket showers in our bathing suits, and then had sundown worship. It was pretty awesome--the stars had come out as we had gotten ready for the night, and it was so clear on that island that there seemed to be millions of stars. The clearest constellation that I recognized was Scorpio (and the only time I can see very familiar constellations is very early in the morning, like at four or five), which at home is only a few bumps above the trees at camp. Also, we could see the dusky trail left by the Milky Way, which was just awesome. Seeing all those stars made me feel small and made me want to go Home (you know, as in Heaven). Ryan talked about the fact that Jesus would pull His disciples apart for a time for them to rest, and that that was what we were doing, and after prayer, we all just sat or laid back on the mats and talked. At least, that's what Jordan, Alan and I did. Fun. Then we decided to go off to bed, and so we all bedded down.
It began to rain soon after--and the tent where the girls were sleeping was discovered to have some slight leaks. However, the wind blew water into the guys' tarp-tent and so they did not sleep much on Friday night. I slept well, however, even with the ground hard and the slight drippage of water. Sabbath dawned early and bright, and so we went about drying the stuff that had gotten wet. People went walking on the beach or just rested in their tents or whatever. As for me, I spent my time napping, reading Patriarchs and Prophets, my Bible, and writing in my journal. It was very nice.
As we finished up eating dinner, it began to rain. Nice, big, heavy drops of rain that came straight down and rammed themselves into the Earth. Mama Rose gave Jordan and I her umbrella to make a dash to where the tents were, because I had my poncho spread out over my stuff in case the roof leaked. Well, we got to the door of my tent and Jordan dashed off into the pitch-black darkness of the rainstorm and night, dropping the umbrella neatly onto the ground. I splashed into my tent--literally. The inside of our tent was like a mini re-enactment of Genesis 7. I grabbed my stuff and slid it to dry ground, and then grabbed everyone else's bag and slid it to dry ground. However, that dry ground wasn't going to last forever, because the rain was pooling on the roof of the tent, making it look like it was about to cave in and drench the stuff that remained dry. I went about, shoving the ceiling up and casting the water off the sides. This was a losing battle because it was still raining, and almost as soon as the water had been pushed out, more came to fill its place. People came and we grabbed everybody's things and got to the guys' tarp-tent, which wasn't getting wet because it wasn't as windy as the night before. I was quite happy to have found out that my backpack was still very much dry--the bottom was a little damp, but it was overall dry, which meant that the two books, two notebooks, my journal, and (most importantly) my Bible were still very much dry, along with my pajamas. So my backpack was on my back and under my poncho (which I had thrown on in the tent).
Our pastor's cousin's family, who had gotten us permission to camp on the island, opened up their house to us, and so when the rain died down a bit, we hiked through the dark palm-tree forest with only a couple of flashlights and to "civilization". There, I gratefully bedded down in an icebox of a room (eventually using my dried-off poncho as a second layer to keep me warmish) and spent the night. It rained all night long. The next morning, we went back to camp to finish packing up. All I had to grab was my swimsuit, shorts, tanktop (my entire swimming outfit) and my swim shoes. I threw these into a plastic bag where I eventually put the things that had gotten wet in the tent: my blanket and my clothes for Sunday, one piece of which was my skirt, which was so wet that I couldn't wear it. I grabbed one of the gallon jugs marked 'GIRLS' and headed back towards the dock when Ryan said we should head out. Jordan was only a little bit in front of me, but he reached the house before the deluge started. I was at the edge of the house and had to practically make a run for it so that I didn't get soaked (happily, my poncho was on). Alan, Jordan and I spent the next two hours or so sitting in the main room of Pastor's cousin's house, reading books and talking a bit. Then Lorraine showed up and said that Ryan had said that it was so windy that it was unsafe to try and cross the lagoon, and that we may have to spend another night. It rained some more after she went swimming, and so I read a book. (Yes, an entire book. It was only ninety-six pages long.) Then Ryan showed up and said that we were going now, so we took our things down to the boat and got in, more or less. We had to split the load because we had only one boat to use. I got to sit in the only passenger's chair, while everyone else (Jhan Dale, John Mark, Emily F., Lorraine, Tirose, Rosa, Alan, Jordan, and Peanut (Mama Rose's dog)) was in the back. I was still wearing my poncho, and had my backpack on my lap under the poncho because I was determined to keep it dry no matter what.
The ride was a thrilling and terrifying roller coaster. We hit hard several times, but managed to bump and bounce our way back to Ebeye--and we were thankful to be back. Very blessedly, the power was on and so we could take showers and (in my case) do laundry (it was our time for it, that's why). We ate food and were entirely dry for what seemed like the first time in a very long time. Also, because all of my shorts were being washed, and due to the fact that I didn't want to wear a skirt on inside, I put on my jeans--and they're starting to not fit! So I went over to Emily F.'s and weighed myself (wrong time of day I know, so this may not be entirely accurate), only to discover that I have supposedly lost 3.5 more pounds. Yay!!!
So, that was my crazy fun weekend. By the way, thanks for the package, Family!!! I much appreciate it.
More later.
Love,
Ashlee
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