Tomorrow will be a week since we got here!! Things have been going really great so far. I feel like Liz & I have gotten a ton accomplished. Here's my best effort to summarize our time in Gugeegue (pronounced Goo-G-Goo) thus far....
We've spent a couple days in Ebeye so far. I really like Ebeye already. There are tons of homes built right next to one another & loads of children running around everywhere, but it's quaint & beautiful in it's own right. The streets are narrow, but there are only a few that loop around & throughout the island, so it's really hard to get lost-- thank goodness! We had a nice meal at the Ebeye Hotel & today at La Boujie (To all the other WT vols: yes, there IS a La Boujie here...we can't get rid of it! haha. To everyone else, we ate La Boujie very frequently during our orientation; it was good, but when you get to order off of their menu for yourself it is so much better). We tried to go back to the Ebeye Hotel prior to La Boujie, but they were out of bread, bacon & french fries so we had no choice but to look elsewhere. Their breakfast was amazing! I ate a pancake with scrambled eggs & BACON. Really good. I've been skeptical of meat since being here, but because I don't want to get sick, but bacon is a completely different story.
We finally went grocery shopping! I’ve never seen groceries so expensive before; apparently there’s no ‘price control’ here. I mean, obviously there’s no price control—a box of Franzia costs $30!!!! This might be a hard year….just kidding, but I was absolutely bamboozled when I saw this. Luckily, we have found a couple other grocery stores that offer more of a selection of food..and at cheaper prices! Today we found a store that had Organic Soy Milk and is right next door to a pizza place-- these were the highlights of our morning.
Noaki led us to a nice sandy beach on the lagoon-side. We spent the day snorkeling and reading on the beach. It was amazing!! Afterward, we tried to walk to Nge, the next island north of Gugeegue, but the path was blocked. I guess all you have to do is walk on the reef during low tide to get there. Hopefully we'll get to do that soon; apparently the snorkeling there is amazing!
I really have no idea what we would do with our neighbors. We used their laundry machine to do about 8 loads of laundry (majority of the clothes were left behind by the girls from last year…..but were not in any condition to wear without washing/disinfecting). It was an amazingly productive day. And now we have about 4 times the wardrobe we did before. :) Billy put a hose through my window and now we have a huge tub of full of water in our shower that we can use instead of running back & forth between the other WT apartment. He even let us use his clothes line and clothes pins. Good thing we shared some of our beloved cupcakes with them. :)
Anna, for the 3rd time now, is back in Gugeegue staying with us! Apparently her supposed host family didn’t want to host, so she came back to Ebeye yesterday and stayed with us. This morning she left to meet back with her principal’s wife who offered to host her, but by afternoon she was back again. She’s going to try to get back to Santo on Friday; maybe her room will be built by then? We’re not really sure. Anyway…..til then we’re just all being flexible. (It's Friday now that I'm actually in town putting this online--Anna's actually staying until Monday now. Haha)
Sadly, we have no working radio on island, so we couldn’t listen in on the WT check-in, where all the outer island volunteers (majority of the others) get an hour on the radio with the field directors and one another. We’re not included in these check-ins because we are ‘supposed’ to have internet….we don’t, but that hasn’t changed anything yet. Hopefully one of the two radios on island will get fixed soon; it'd be awesome to hear how everyone else is doing!!
Majority of our nights have been spent making dinner then going out to the beach/sunset/or abandoned ship wreck and watching the sunset. The sunsets have been unreal!!! It's been really relaxing to just go sit outside and journal or read and take pictures of the skyline at night. This will definitely keep me sane during my year. I'm truly amazed at how beautiful the scenery is.
School starts Monday (or maybe later...we heard this today, so we're not really sure)!!! Our classrooms were opened yesterday, so we got to check them out and start cleaning/going through everything that was left. Hopefully we will get the keys soon so we can get into them, clean, and decorate more!! One of us will be teaching 9th grade, the other 10th—we haven’t decided which yet. I’m still hoping to teach some math and maybe science, too, but for now I’m definitely teaching English. There are 2 periods for the day based off of the busing schedule from Ebeye-- one period for 9th & 10th grades, the other for 11th & 12th. What I’ve gotten so far is that we’ll start teaching at 8:30, or whenever the early wave of buses get here from Ebeye. I'm looking forward to getting started; and to meeting all of the other teachers at the school! I think if school doesn't start Monday, we will have a little orientation with Laura & get the run-down on how things work here. Lots will be happening in the next few days, so I'll be updating as soon as I can!
I hope everyone is doing well where they are. I miss you all!!
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