Home is where you're sent.

We had our site placements yesterday on Friday June 6th, and apparently Peace Corps thought I'd be a kickass 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade teacher here on Pohnpei, Micronesia!  I'll be stationed in a small community with less than 150 people (isolation anyone???) and in an elementary school with 70 or so students.  Here's what I know about my placement as of now:
I'll be living on a compound with 20 or so family members whose names all start with the letter J.
My house dad is the 2nd highest chief on the entire island of Pohnpei (extremely important).
My house brothers are apparently extremely good-looking (The current female volunteers apparently have huge crushes on them).
It's an hour's drive from Kolonia to my site in Kitti (pronounced /key-chee/)

I move to that house and start working at that elementary school on August 15th ish.  I'm really going to miss living with my current host family because we've made a good bond.  I'm excited to continue learning Pohnpeian because I've already learned a fair amount of it.  I'm also excited to start working and stop training.  I'm excited to make really good connections with all of the other Peace Corps Volunteers who are stationed on Pohnpei (I believe there are 6 of us).  In general, I'm excited/anxious to start my service instead of being in tourist/trainee mode.

I haven't been getting too homesick, but there are times when I miss you all from back home.  I've been trying to limit my Facebook/internet time to once per 2 days since I have it at my current house, but it's hard to keep to that.

We've been running a 2 week summer school called Model School for about 200 Pohnpeian elementary students, and we just finished our first week.  I'm working with exactly the age group I'll be working with in the future, and I believe that I can really have a good impact on some students in my future community.  Teaching 11 year old kids isn't that bad, and I actually have kind of enjoyed this week in teaching them.  One part that does suck is planning (Lesson planning would die a slow death in the burning pits of hell if I had a say in it).

In all, my first month of Peace Corps has been exciting.  They call it the 'Honeymoon Phase', and I definitely have been aware of that.  The next phase is supposed to be a little easier in some ways and harder in others, and we'll see how I do in that.

Well, it's Saturday night, and it's time to go party.  Pwon Mwaow (goodnight)!