Frisbee Golfin' and a Peace Corps Valley

I don't have enough time to give this post what it deserves, but I'll give you a Cliffnotes version of my past 2 weeks.

It's been difficult.  I got an awesome birthday package including a Denver Broncos SIGNED cheerleaders calendar.  I made Salapwuk into Boulder, Colorado by teaching frisbee golf to my kids.  I was reassured that I don't have TB or any other severe medical illness.  I got to see my Kolonia host sister's baby (I'm pushing her to name the boy 'Nick' haha). 

In all, it's been one of those Peace Corps lows and reevaluation points, but at the same time it's been great.

They say pictures say a thousand words, so I'll shut up now.

The frisbee golf hole constructed solely out of hibiscus branches and bark for the nets.

The almost finished frisbee golf hole.

At the dinner table.

He really likes frisbee golf with the finished product.

Volleyball in NanMand.

3 hours of free time translates into a world of possibilities.

How To Post Comments, Part 2

I've had another request of a detailed description on how to post comments.

As Mario would say, here we go!

1. Scroll to the end of any blog post to where it says "No comments" or "(some number) comment/s".
2. Click on the "no comments" or "(some number) comment/s" link
3. It will take you to the individual blog post page.  Then type your comment in the big blank box at the bottom of the page
4. Under the blank box, there is text that says "Comment as" with a selection box to its right.  Click the selection box and choose "Anonymous"
5. Click "publish" below the "comment as" seletion box.
6. It will take you to a new page where it will ask you to "Please prove you're not a robot".  Type in the jumbled picture's text into the "Type the two words" box below the picture.  If you mess up, it will give you another chance.
7. Click "publish" below.
8. Boom, you have posted on my blog.

Any questions?  Just comment below... haha

Easter Break: The Week of Plenty... Plenty of Free Time.

The Easter Bunny must have been drunk on sakau last week because I never saw him.  Anyway, he was probably doing what I was doing, which was absolutely nothing.  Since there was no school last week, my schedule was as clear as the opposite of George Bush's conscience.  This being so, I decided to do some things but not much.

I'm not a very religious man, but I actually went to church most, if not every, day last week to get to know the Pohnpeian custom of every day church during Easter.  11pm dinners, church songs, and stray dogs were ever present, and it was an experience that I won't forget.

Next... I decided to make a video of my daily life here in Pohnpei, and the video is posted below.  It was really good to make the video because it made me self-reflect on my life and purpose here in Pohnpei.  T'was fun.

I finally convinced one of the other Peace Corps to come visit my site, and my good friend came up for a couple of days to see the simple life.  Since he lives in Kolonia, he thought my digs/(insert cool name for 'home' here) was really awesome and relaxing compared to city life.  We hung out at the river, went shrimping, drank sakau, and had a relaxing time. 

Then the week was over, well..., almost.  Apparently Monday was some sort of local holiday called Micronesian Culture and Tradition Day.  For Salapwuk, we called it Monday.  In my opinion, for Kolonia, this meant a day to practice how the people of the past used to live and to celebrate Micronesian culture.  I personally used this day to start a garden.  Yes, a garden.  What?  You didn't think Nick could grow a garden?  Nonetheless, it's a pineapple garden.  Ya, a pineapple garden.  Are you tired of my short sentences asking questions?  You shouldn't be.

Here's some pictures:

The Start of it.

The Battle Wound.

The Weeding.

Down Goes the Pineapple.

The Finished Product.



Anybody want a pineapple?  Just wait about a year, and it's all yours.

So ends the post of Easter Break.

A Day in the Life

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

As promised, Salapwuk Elementary School's 5th and 6th graders performing the play last Friday.  Enjoy!

The Wolf Didn't Do It

The days are going by faster, and the weeks are kind of blurring together now.  It's been 9 months and 10 days since arriving here on Pohnpei.  At times it's felt like an eternity, and at other times it's felt like nothing.  I've become accustomed to the slow pace of life here.  For example with text messaging.  In the States you usually receive a text back in less than 2 minutes.  I found myself getting anxious about a text today because that hadn't come in 2 hours.  I then said to myself, "What are you Nick?  An American?"  Island time at its best. 

School-wise it's about the same ol' same here.  For the start of the 4th quarter here, my co-teacher and I decided to have our 5th and 6th graders perform a play for their parents.  Set construction, costume designing, and the whole 2 meters (9 yards for you diehard metric haters) are going to be my next week of life.  My original idea was to have them perform a simpler version of Romeo and Juliet, but I couldn't find a 5th grade English play that didn't cost money online.  I did however find an awesome version of the 3 Little Pigs in which the wolf (he's not the Big Bad Wolf) explains that he needed some sugar from his neighbors, had a cold which caused him to sneeze the houses down, and couldn't resist the temptation of 2 dead little pigs just lying on the ground.  I made one of our students the Student Director, and my idea here is to have a play for the students done completely by the students (It hasn't worked out that way all the time).  We've been practicing the play for a week now, and we're going to perform it next Friday at our school naas (outside house).  It's either going to be my crowning moment in Peace Corps or a crash and burn disaster.  Either way, I got some English acting words into the kids brains, right?

I'll try to post a video of the play next time I come into town, and until then I hope you all are well back in the Good ol' U.S.A.

Un Saludo.

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.