sakau

Sakau is a drink that traditionally was only made for special ceremonies or feasts and drank by men who had high titles. Nowadays, you can find sakau being made all over the island for anyone to drink. I have posted a link to the wikipedia page about how it is prepared but I will also do my best to explain it.


First, men take the roots of the sakau plant and clean the mud off of them. The roots are pounded on a slab with another rock. Next, water is mixed in. The mushy roots are then squeezed through... this part is hard to explain... other roots? You can see in the pictures. The result is a rather thick, muddy drink. Some people add more water and sell 40 oz. bottles for $4 a piece. My host family usually just pounds their own sakau and we drink at home.

After drinking a few coconut shells of sakau you feel very mellow. And if you drink enough without standing up, a little dizzy. I enjoy it a lot. Especially now that it is Christmas time, I will be drinking a lot of sakau. And attending a lot of feasts with interesting food. I will save details about that for another post...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakau

it's december?

I can't believe that I have been gone for 3 months and that it is almost Christmas! My host family put up some Christmas lights yesterday and I was shocked. Partly because I did not know that Christmas lights were used here but also because it does not feel like Christmas season at all! It is weird to hear Christmas music playing--most with an island beat worked in-- while wearing skirts and t-shirts. Hope you are enjoying the beginning of the Christmas season where ever you are!

week one

I have now been living at my permanent site for a little over one week. Just when I thought that I had adjusted to living in Micronesia, I was proven wrong. Not seeing other Americans on a daily basis is a big adjustment. Not having a jam packed schedule from 8AM to 6PM everyday is different. Not having snack time at our training site at 10AM and 3PM everyday is missed. And my status change from PCT (Peace Corps Trainee) to PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) means that people expect a lot more of me, especially when it comes to speaking Pohnpeian. And speaking Pohnpeian in my language class is a lot different than it is out in the real world. My new host family and co-workers realize that I am not fluent, but they sure want me to be. So for every conversation I have, I need to decide if I am just going to nod along and laugh when it seems appropriate or ask for a translation. Translations are always given, but I can tell that people think that I should only need this for a little while. So one day soon, I will hopefully be able to hold my own in Pohnpeian.

Next week I will begin teaching and also celebrate my first Thanksgiving abroad! The Country Director has kindly invited all of the volunteers on Pohnpei to his house for dinner so I will be enjoying at least some American dishes (I think? I hope?).

Happy Thanksgiving! I'll be thinking of all of you!

Swear In

Mollie and Ruthanne

Amber and Kate

Micro 76 Pohnpei being sworn in

Nate, me, our language teacher Anterro and Amanda

I'm a Volunteer!

I am now officially a Peace Corps Volunteer. I was sworn in yesterday with the 9 other volunteers who make up Micro 76 Pohnpei. We are the 76th class of volunteers to serve in Micronesia since the Peace Corps came here in 1966. Our swear-in was held at our training center and our training host families, permanent host families, principals, co-teachers and the current volunteers all attended. Our country director and program assistant made short speeches and the country director gave us the oath of service. At the end we performed a traditional Micronesian stick dance. I have a video of it which I will hopefully be able to post soon.
I am very happy to be done with training and to begin my service. My house in my permanent community is very nice and it is great to be fully unpacked finally. Next week I will go to my school and meet my class! I am nervous but I am not going to begin teaching right away, I will observe for a few weeks to see what the kids know and what they need help with. We also have Monday and Wednesday off next week, so it is good to know I will be eased in to the school week. Pohnpei has a lot of holidays in November. :)
I will write again soon about how my first week at school went. Today I am meeting up with the volunteers who are leaving for outer islands on Monday to say goodbye. We won't see each other for at least 3 months and probably will not be able to talk either.

Scuba and Swimming

Last weekend I went scuba diving for the first time. It was really strange at first to go under water and not hold my breath. But once you get used to it, scuba diving is amazing! We were mostly practicing different skills but at the end of our dive we got to explore a little and saw some coral and fish. We only went down 20 feet though; going down to 60 is going to be a lot different. Amber and Ap are taking the classes with me along with some volunteers that are here through World Teach. I have another dive this weekend, and 2 more next weekend… then I will be certified! This week was the same as most in training. We went to an elementary school and observed an 8th grade English class. Next week I have to teach 2 lessons in the class. I am very nervous. I still don’t know what I am doing a lesson on and the more I look at lesson ideas the more I realize I do not know about English grammar. (As you may have realized from reading my blog) I probably should have brushed up on my own English skills before I came to teach it. Amber will be teaching with me (and she has teaching experience) so that is helping calm my nerves a little bit. I will let you know how it goes! Yesterday we had a nice day off of regular training and went to a nearby island for a picnic. We also learned how to weave baskets and start a fire. The fire starting involved a lighter and a sytrofoam ramen bowl so clearly, western influences have reached the islands. We asked our language teachers to show us how to light a fire with just 2 sticks but their reply was, “When are you ever going to be on an island without a lighter?” Very true, except possibly for those going to the outer islands. We also had a lot of time to swim around the island. There was a sandy beach which was very nice as all of the swimming spots on Pohnpei involve walking on some pretty sharp coral. After all, I joined the Peace Corps for luxury, not scraping my feet up. I have not been very good at taking pictures lately but I am receiving an underwater casing for my camera this week from my sister so I will take more then!

Mouse Update

Earlier I may have stated I did not mind the mice in my room. My feelings have drastically changed. A few nights ago I awoke to a mouse on my leg. In my bed. At 5 in the morning. Aren’t mice supposed to be afraid of people? Shouldn’t they run away from me? What are they doing climbing in my bed? Well, to say the least, I did not appreciate it. Somehow, I did not scream. In fact, all I did was sit up and shake my leg until I heard it scurry off my bed and back into its hole in my wall. Then rolled over and went back to sleep. I would have had a way different reaction a mere 2 months ago. I guess I am getting used to my critter friends in a way. But if one joins me in bed again, I am going to have to buy some traps.

3 weeks left...

3 weeks of training left and then i will be sworn in as a Peace Corps Volunteer! Right now, I am only considered a Trainee. I am excited to get to my site and see what my new host family and school are like. At the same time, the end of training is going to be very sad. I am not going to see the friends i have made here as often. Especially Kate, Heather and Ap who are all going to outer islands of Pohnpei state. That will definitely be a tough adjustment. Not being around Americans daily will force me to integrate into the community more than i have during my first 2 months here though, which is good.
Learning Pohnpeian is going okay. It is a tough language. And living with a host family is definitely helping me practice, but i still usually have no clue what they are saying to me. I hope that I improve during the last 3 weeks. I know that I will continue to learn when I get to my village as well.
Today we had "Cross Cultural Thursday" which was a lesson about how to clean and gut a fish. Ugh. It was disgusting. I was not very good at it. I managed to de-scale the fish... I couldn't bring myself to cut open the belly and pull the guts out. Amber had to step in and help me out. I guess I'm not really surprised, I can't even cut the fat off of a packaged chicken breast without gagging at home. I guess I will be offering to help was the dishes instead of cook dinner most of the time.
Last night I started scuba classes. The next 3 weekends will be filled with training dives. There are a lot of great dive spots around Pohnpei so I am very excited about learning. And once certified, your scuba license never expires so it is worth the small fortune it is costing me (when living on a peace corps salary).

Some pictures:

Snorkeling

Kate and I watching the sunset

birthday

I'm 23!! I realizes that this may have been my first birthday spent outside of New York. At least that I can remember. Nonetheless, I had a great birthday here in Pohnpei. On Friday the trainees in my group had a card and chocolate cake (with icing!) for me. And on Saturday, Kate, Amber, Ruthanne (trainees) and Morgan (Pohnpeian friend) went to Nan Madol for the day. Nan Madol is a site of ancient ruins near our village that also has a great swimming spot. The funniest part of the day was probably the hour walk home (which included an unplanned hike down a mountain). Kate was not expecting this part of the adventure and made it clear the whole way through the jungle/path. I too, was complaining in fear on twisting my ankle on the steep hill. Little did we know that Morgan had actually taken us this way because it was a great shortcut! (**Please see Amber's blog for a much better account of this journey... on the bottom right of my page) My birthday was made complete on Sunday by calls with my mom and sisters.
Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday cards, letters and packages! I am still receiving them. Miss you all!

some photos

Jason, me and Amber on the "men wei" (foreigner) bus

Kate, Amber and I on Nahlap

My training host family and I


Micro 76 group on site placement day

View from our training site

Nan Madol, ancient ruins near my village

Kaselelhlia!

Hello! I started language training a week and a half ago, so I know that kaselelhlia means hello. And I know a few other things. If any of you are itching to learn Pohnpeian, let me know and I’ll send you some of my notes after training. As with most languages, Pohnpeian is complicated and has a ton of exceptions and irregularities. Whenever I get frustrated with these things, I try to remind myself that English is the same way. And then I remember I will have to explain all of our irregularities, etc. to my students soon and get to freak out about something new!
There are 7 of us learning Pohnpeian and 2 instructors so we definitely benefit from the small class size. I am in a class with Nate and Amanda and our instructor, Antero, is teaching us a lot. Once we get to our sites, we will only really be speaking Pohnpeian so it is nice not to have to worry too much about spelling. There is still a lot of grammar though. For example, there are 6 pronouns that mean mine… 2 for general items (with no set rules to know which to use), 1 for food, 1 for drinks, 1 for vehicles, and 1 for a house. And for those 6 ways, there are the related pronouns for yours, theirs, ours. Not fun.
I just hope that Pohnpeian can be my first successful attempt at learning a second language… and think about the benefits for my résumé!

begging

First off, thank you to everyone who has sent me a letter, card or package already. It definitely brightens my day to be reminded of all my loved ones at home. Mail time is usually the most exciting part of our day in training. I hope all the letters I have sent in reply or just have sent in general have reached you all. I just wanted to list a few items that would be useful (or just nice) for me to have if you are sending a package. I don’t need any of these things en masse right now, but I think that these will be things I will constantly want throughout my service:

-- magazines —it is extremely hard to keep up on current events here so even a month old magazine is a treat, real news and celebrity news are both welcome. And since print media is dead, if you are ever reading an interesting article online you could print it out and stick it with a letter.

--ziploc bags (sandwich and gallon)—battling many creatures and a lot of moisture in these parts so much of what I own goes in Ziplocs

--trail mix, raisins, other dried fruits, granola bars, and salsa would all be greatly appreciated food items (and the accompanying tortilla chips if you can figure out a way to keep them from getting too mangled in the mail)

--crystal light drink mixes

Thank you again to everyone who has sent me things already. I have been snacking on my birthday candy treats all week. And I and other trainees have been enjoying all the good books. If you are ever considering sending a book and are unsure if I have already read it, there is an application on my facebook page with everything I’ve read. (before coming here at least)

I was lied to as a child

Written on 10/4/09

Whoever said that roosters crow only in the morning, pigs go oink and mice are quiet was LYING. These animals are loud at all hours. And none of it is pleasant. Roosters, who are everywhere, usually begin crowing a lot around 3am. And it subsides around 8 or 9… but only a little. They crow whenever they feel like it, all day long. I thought that roosters here might help me with my problem of waking up in the morning… but I got more than I bargained for. Now I get to wake up just about every hour.

Pigs. I don’t really know how to describe the sound pigs make. The closest thing I can think of would be children screaming, but not like for the ice cream man. Naturally pigs make their worst scream/squeal/yells when they are being hogtied or killed. This I can’t fault them for. But they also scream when they are getting fed. Or are hungry. Or sometimes when they are getting wet. (side note: it rains almost every day here, usually multiple times) My host family has 4 pigs. And feeding time is 5-6am, I think. That is when they are their loudest at least. I’ll let you know if I hear an oink, but none yet, not even from a piglet.

Mice. My roommates. Nice family really. I don’t mind sharing with them. But man, they are loud when they are borrowing my things, not to mention they rarely ask first. When I am in my half-sleep between crows and pig screaming, I am often woken up by the mice in my room. They run around all night. In the walls and my things. I haven’t found anything with bite marks or mice poop yet so I haven’t been driven to buy traps yet… but they need to quiet down! Their squeaking and rumbling is really annoying. I sleep with my head lamp next to my pillow so I can scare them away when they are getting unruly.

Wish I could say that I have found an animal in Micronesia that I like… but that hasn’t happened yet. (if I had to pick… I would go with starfish) I will save the story about dogs for another post.

Ants

Written on 10/01/09

Ants are everywhere. I have already become accustomed to ants being part of my daily wardrobe and meals. One is crawling across my computer screen as I type. Surprisingly, they don’t bother me as much as ants in the US used to. I guess because they are unavoidable here. And they are not as big as the carpenter ants that attack my mom’s house every summer. Micronesian ants are little and brown, usually pretty easy to kill when you feel them crawling on you. There are often trails of ants traveling across the walls in my room. If I leave any food outside of a Ziploc bag, it will be infested within an hour. I thought ants on Pohnpei were bad, until I went to Nahlap this past weekend. Nahlap is a small picnic island about a mile off the shore of Pohnpei. The ants there are also everywhere, but they lack the organization that Pohnpeian ants have. Ants in Nahlap just run around in crazy circles, everywhere. Making them hard to kill when they crawl all over you. I am unsure of whether these ants bite or not, I have a lot of bug bites in general, but with all the other sorts of insects around, so it is hard to pinpoint where a specific bite may have come from.

life here

So far I have been enjoying my time in Micronesia. I am staying with a host family until the end of training in November. They are very kind and have been incredible welcoming to me. I have 2 host sisters and 2 host brothers. Maylany, Madonna, DX and Enson. Maylany’s 3 year-old son, Kyle, also lives with us. And my host parents, Enerihko and Ehlinda. I have a 10 minute walk to our training site everyday. And on the weekends they have brought me to a local site of ancient ruins, Nan Madol and a nearby waterfall. After training I will be moving in with another host family at my permanent site.
My meals here mainly consist of rice and fish. White rice is the main component of every meal. With that I usually get a fried reef fish. Which I can now eat without swallowing too many bones. I have also had pork and chicken quite regularly. The weirdest things I have tried so far have been turkey tail and turtle. Turkey tail is not very good, it is mostly fat but turtle is delicious!
Some nights I go with my family to a local sakau market for community fundraising nights. Sakau is a local drink made from a pepper plant that everyone drinks. You can get drunk off of it, but it mostly mellows you out. I like drinking it but never really feel much different afterwards. At the fundraising events, everyone brings a few crops, skirts, pigs or other miscellaneous goods which are grouped together to make about 5 good prizes. Then everyone buys 25 cent raffle tickets to try to win. I have been 5 times, bought a lot of tickets, and never had any luck. My family won twice the other night though. The money made off the raffle tickets is going towards a community party that will be held on October 3rd. (or so I think… it seems like some nights the family that owns the market just makes money)

placement and mail

I can’t believe I have only been gone for 3 weeks. It feels like a lot longer. Things are going really well here. Training is keeping me very busy, we are in class from 8:30 to 5 every week day. We learn technical skills about teaching ESL and have a lot of sessions about Micronesian culture. This past Wednesday I found out my site placement. I will be staying on the main island of Pohnpei. I will be working at an elementary school that has kindergarten to 8th grade with about 300 students teaching 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts. I will also be helping run a computer lab for all grades. Two of my good friends in training (Kate and Amber) are staying in Pohnpei too!!
The good thing about me being on a main island is that I will have somewhat regular access to the internet! I am only about 20 minutes outside of the capitol town that has an internet café type place. I would still love letters as I will have a lot of time on my hands on weeknights (besides lesson planning) to write back. And I will only check my email about once a month. My address will remain the same:

Erica Dunn, Peace Corps Trainee
P.O. Box 9
Kolonia, Pohnpei, FM 96941

And it only cost 44 cents to send a letter! I have received one from my sister and it only took about 10 days to get here. Also, if you are planning on sending me a package the best way to do it is use Domestic Flat Rate Boxes that cost about 11 or 13 dollars no matter how heavy they are. And just specify that it is Airmail or it could end up on a ship that only comes every few months.

in micronesia

i am in pohnpei! the flight from honolulu was long and tiring. the plane is called an 'island hopper' as it stops on 2 military islands in the Marshall Islands, Kosrae (an FSM state) then Pohnpei. It has 2 more stops after that before the final destination of Guam. Pohnpei is beautiful! And hot. And rainy. I have been here for about 24 hours and there has been 3-4 rainstorms lasting about 20-30 minutes each. So far I have had 2 meals at restaurants, of fried rice for dinner and eggs for breakfast. Once I am with a family I will be eating more traditional meals for sashimi and many varieties of bananas.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I am safe. The PC Staff is very helpful and friendly. Tomorrow (Monday) we move in with our host families in a more remote village on the island of Pohnpei. I will probably not have internet again for a few weeks. The next 3 weeks I will be in technical and cultural training.

jordan (college roommate) and i in honolulu

first view of Micronesia- Island of Kosrae from the plane

"downtown" kolonia (on Pohnpei island)

Bye!

I am currently in the airport in Honolulu waiting to board the long 10 1/2 hour flight to Pohnpei, Micronesia. It is 6am on Friday in Honolulu and we will land at 2pm on Saturday in Pohnpei. So I am about to lose a day of my life because we cross over the International Date & Time Line.

The last 2 days in LA and Honolulu have been tiring but fun. I have been spending time with the 29 other volunteers and got to see my college roommate, Jordan, in Honolulu. Hopefully I will be able to post again soon!

saying goodbye is hard

Goodbyes are never easy, but at least this is only a 'see you later' (in 2012). My family and friends have been absolutely amazing though. I will miss everyone, but you all have made it easier by giving me so many good memories over the past month to think about. I had a fantastic going away party, complete with a performance by one of my favorite bands. And more lunches, dinners and dessert dates than I deserved or needed. I will gain enough weight from eating SPAM over the next 2 years.

Here are pictures of some of the wonderful people that I will be missing:

My family at the going away party.

My party planners and best friends with Micronesia blue drinks


Fordham girls

Long Island Friends

And perhaps most of all, my nieces and nephew... Julianna, Ethan and Leah will be so big when I get back!!

write to me

Internet access will be sparse in my new home so I am going to have to rely on snail mail for communication purposes. Please send me letters over the next 2 years because I will have more than enough downtime in the evening (no tv) to write back to you. Write to me about anything. Little tidbits about important news will be greatly appreciated. (What's Barack doing? Who's winning the late night ratings battle? Did Britney shave her head again?)

My address during training will be:

Erica Dunn, Peace Corps Trainee
Peace Corps/Micronesia
PO Box 9
Kolonia, Pohnpei, FM 96941

I will have a new address beginning in November which I will post then. It will take 2-4 weeks for mail to get to me. If anything arrives at this address after I have moved to my post, it will be forwarded to me. Please feel free to begin sending things now as the first month away from home will surely be tough!

5 more days until departure!!