Where Do I Live? - Pohnpei

Today marks the 1/4 milestone of my Peace Corps service, and I think I'll do this post a little differently.  I'm not going to bore you with new events of making a bamboo raft or of how our last Peace Corps training went; rather, I'm going to try to list all of my best and worst experiences of the past 6 months. 

Here we go.

- Becoming a Peace Corps Volunteer, good
- Receiving a title (Lepen Madoan Nan Lihn), good
- Getting sick multiple times, bad
- Becoming immune to many illnesses, good
- Climbing up apple trees and eating apples, good
- Losing plenty of apples in the process, bad
- Becoming fluent in cussing in Pohnpeian, good
- Achieving a dirty mouth in Pohnpeian, bad
- Being part of my Micronesian family, good
- Being isolated, bad
- Learning to live on the bare minimum, good
- Eating corned beef every week, bad
- Learning how to make local food, good
- Drinking fresh coconut milk right out of the coconut, sweet
- Night fishing, Awesome
- Day fishing, good
- Having good conversations with taxi drivers, good
- Taxi rides from hell, bad
- Teaching my 3 year-old 'nephew' how to speak English, good
- Teaching music, good
- Teaching, good
- Taking care of my Micronesian dog Boulder, good
- Taking cold showers in the heat, good
- Taking cold showers in 60 degree weather, bad
- Learning how to husk a coconut, good
- Learning how to use a machete for multiple purposes, good
- Getting numerous blisters all the time, bad
- Introducing Dunkin Donuts Coffee, Sour Patch Kids, and buffalo jerky to Micronesians, good
- Starting a running club for my students, good
- Starting the school library back up, good
- Clothes becoming different colors, bad
- Getting extremely confused in this culture, bad
- Getting extremely confused in this culture, good
- Losing connections with friends and family back home, bad
- Making Pohnpeian friends, good
- Being bored, bad
- Being bored with plenty of time to think, good
- Playing with numerous smiling children, good
- Dealing with children, bad
- Riding in the back of flat bed trucks, good
- Almost falling out of flat bed trucks, bad
- Learning how to speak slowly with my students, good
- Speaking slowly, bad
- Getting Pohnpeian and Spanish mixed up, bad
- Being a cultural bridge between two extremely different cultures, good and bad
- Volunteering for 6 months, good

Come back next blog post.  Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel.