Snippets of my life here:

[posted by MOM]

= Not always getting what I expect. Case in point: ordering the veggie burger for the first time at Oasis (one of a very few restaurants here). The veggie burger, it turns out, is a pile of suateed veggies on a sweet burger bun. It was good and I enjoyed it, but I also learned that a menu in a foreign country contains all sorts of mysteries!

= Where everybody knows your name. Yap is a small, insular place and a group of seven new Peace Corps are nobody's stranger. Many times walking in town I'll have people say hi to me by name and I've never met them. Case in point: the other day I was eating lunch with Gita and Porter, the other two volunteers going to Woleai, when a young woman approached us. The first thing she said was, "you're going to Woleai" and all we could say is, "yes we are, what's your name?"

= Raw gums. I mentioned before that betel nut chewing is ubiquitous here and constant. Which means people will be speaking to me in another language while chewing betel nut and spitting red in the middle of a sentence, which may be a contibuting factor to why Woleaian is so hard to learn. I've tried it a few times myself and the gums on the left side of my mouth are raw from the lime, which ppl sprinkle in the middle of it to purposefully make their mouths raw. Why? Because it let's the 'buzz' properties of the betel nut get into the body and cause a mini little high.

= Death by volleyball. I have six host brothers and we play volleyball together a lot. Now, you might think that as their host sister they'd give me a break. Or you might be like me and underestimate their abilities. But boy oh boy. When I step onto the court (read: patch a dirt with a clothesline as a net and bounded by rusty metal pipes) they have it out for me and get a huge kick out of spiking the ball in my face, esp. Riley and Rodney, the 16 yr. old identical twins. In the states I can hold my own on the court, but here I cower in fear. Sad, but true.

= Kissing lizards. We have countless house lizards that eat bugs and make kissing noises at you. When we first arrived in Micronesia, we were told about nightcrawling, where young men crawl outside thier sweethearts' rooms at night as a form of dating ritual. We were warned that it might happen to us and several of the girls here mistook the kissing lizards to be nightcrawlers.

= Christmas carols. I've heard several since coming to Yap. What can I say? They're catchy.

= Picture imperrfect moments, like the sun setting after a run and Gita double-fisting a can of spaghetti in one hand a cup of chocolate water in the other.

Here is a run down of what communication is going to look like once I'm on Woleai:

-Mail about once a month

-Phone and email about once every three or four months

Here's a little more detail. There are two ways to get to the atoll - by plane and by ship. The plane goes out very rarely, only when the are enough passengers or when there is an emergency. The ship is supposed to come about once a month. Any time either of these makes a trip to Woleai, any letters/packages for me will be brought out to me and I'll be able to send mail back. Also, I'll have a number of resource trips or training sessions throught the next two years that will bring me back to the main island.

As far as communcation available on Falalus, there is an SSB radio and I'll have a satellite phone for emergency purposes. I'll have weekly checkins with my program assistant on Yap with the sat phone, but all other communication is going to have to be written.

Im going to end this quickly to send off while I'm still connected to wifi. Be well, thanks for following along, and keep in touch!

whee !

emily