In My Mind I'm Gone to Southeast Asia (Sorry James Taylor for ripping your song)

I'm applying for jobs; not just any old jobs.  Jobs that are filled with noodles, nice people, and beautiful women.  Yep.  I'm going to Southeast Asia.  When?  Hopefully sometime in September.  I want to have a little bit of relaxing/cool down from a two year stint here, but after about a month I'm going to get wanderlust again.  I believe working in Asia will cool down the lust, for a while... 

Schoolwise it's like I've been a hotel.  I've checked out.  I still care about the kids, but I've definitely noticed that the amount of effort I'm willing to put into the school has decreased.  Maybe I'm just lazy.  Maybe I'm full of teaching kids again and again the difference between P and B.  Who knows...  

COS (Close of Service) conference is coming in one month.  It'll be good to see all the volunteers from all across Micronesia before we all go our separate ways.  

I recently (just today actually) started taking Chinese lessons from a friend I met on the island.  She's from the northern part of China, and she's willing to exchange Chinese lessons for English lessons.  So today I got schooled in the 4 tones of Chinese, and holy crap it's tough.  She wants her son to learn better English, so his lessons will be playing sessions with me and the two American kids from down the street.  Pretty sweet deal, right?

This post is pretty boring.  Shit.  How do I make it better?  

Photo bomb.

This is our new ping pong table.  It's pretty tight.

Dunkin Donuts coffee, donuts, and cake.  Healthy dohlul!

Teacher Joe working.

The horrible bluegrass vocalist Christian DVD that I've seen thousands of times here.

Kill me now...

Sweat. A Sting Ray. The Final Stretch.

Holy (insert your religious person's name here)!  It's hot.  I've come up with a new measuring system for hot it is.  I measure by the ounces of sweat I produce in a given time.  It's called the Nickiometer.  Let's say I sweat 2 ounces in 30 minutes.  2/30 = .067ounces/minute, or for the international people out there 1.98mL/minute.  The more sweat/minute, the hotter it is.  I've created this scale to emphasize how damn hot it is.  95 degrees Fahrenheit doesn't do it justice.  Sweat/minute does.

The latest news has been my changing host families in the past two weeks.  I changed host families due to some recent incidents at my house and because I believed it would be the best for me, and my old host family, to go our separate ways.  I love them, but the situation is better now that we've gone apart.  My new host family is amazing.  There's five of us (plus the extras who pop in all the time :)  ).  I play ping pong with my new thirteen year old host brother, and we're also planning to do a lot more fishing in the months to come; 5 months to be exact.  Last time we went on Sunday, a sting ray, yes, like the one that killed Steve Irwin, went right under our bamboo raft; mind you, we're directly in the water as in our raft barely separates our butts from the water.  Soo cool though to see a deadly animal just gracefully fly under your unprotected feet.  Subject change.  There's also two adorable half Pohnpeian half American kids who live next door who frequent our house.  At first they were very shy, but now they're asking me soooo many questions and wanting to play ping pong.  It's really cool how they're both fluent in English and Pohnpeian, so it's cool to be able to use both with them interchangeably and them not miss a beat.  My Nohno and Pahpa are really good people.  They love their movies, and we chit chat all the time.  Pahpa was a carpenter before he had a stroke, and Nohno has been the upkeeper of the apartment that they rent out, which by the way is my new home.

My new place is so cool.  It's out of this world.  I have an entire building to myself.  TO.  MY.  SELF.  Pants are entirely optional.  Singing embarrasing songs is required.  It's kind of amazing to have my own place but at the same time be right next door to my family.  It couldn't be a better set up.  BathroomS (yes, capital S for multiple bathrooms).  Kitchen.  Dining room.  Living room.  Balcony.  It's real life, and it's amazing.

This is the part where the song quiets down a bit after that pretty upbeat chorus right there.  We'll call this part the bridge of my blog post.  5 months.  I have 5 months until I leave Pohnpei.  August 19th is the day I hop on the plane.  I can't believe I've been here for only a year and seven months.  It sometimes feels like it's been longer, and very few times it feels too short.  I'm starting to look for jobs/experiences to do after Peace Corps, and my eyes are glued to Asian (mostly Thailand/China/Phillipines.  You know... Jobs.  Food.  Women.  They've got all my favorite types of each. (oh, long parenthesis exert you say?  How about I blow your mind (By really blowing your mind!) ) )  <-- I bet you've never been triple parenthesisied before, have you?

You're welcome.

In all, the next 5 months I hope will be nothing but amazing.  School is going great.  Secondary projects like coaching are hopping.  Job hunting is just about to commence.  Sweat to be sweated.

It's the Final Stretch.  Cue the Final Countdown Song.

Wo hai ni men.

- Nick

My private bathroom.

Living room.

Working those triceps.

Marbles has taken Pohnpei by storm.  Every boy plays it now.

My morning view does not suck.

Molly and the story she made for me personally.

Apparently I can't be Nick AND and an English teacher.  I don't mind.  I'll take either one.

She caught the men wai!  My host sister.

Apparently she doesn't like my bait.

Yes, I watched the Letter Factory video.  We made some pretty good "S"s.

Adorable.

Watch out!

Imagine a deadly sting ray flying underneath this.  Would you pee your pants?  Would you be greatful that your pants were already in the water so that you could pee in them?