7-16

Today got off to a slow start. I woke up at the same time as usual (6:30AM), but didn’t rush out the door to go running because I had stayed up until around 1AM helping Britt pack up her stuff to mail home. Instead, I had a leisurely breakfast and went to check my email. It was rather nice.

One of the problems of having only one road in Majuro is that there is a traffic jam if the road is blocked, which is what happened this morning. There was a large forklift that was lifting an old broken down car onto a flat bed truck, and they blocked the road for about 10 minutes. Luckily it was early and there weren’t many cars out yet. I was walking and got a pretty good view.

Tonight was Britt’s Yokwe (‘goodbye’) party. There are certain moments that seem to typify Marshallese culture, and a yokwe party is one of them. On Sunday, Britt was told that the party was going to start at 5PM, but we kind of thought people wouldn’t show up until 7PM at the earliest. So we came at 8PM and were the first people there. It actually turned out to be a good thing because Britt got the chance to talk to people as they came in. The party started around 9:15PM. Britt and the party’s other honoree, a boy who is about to leave on a mission to Hawaii, each gave a short speech, and then we ate. I am glad I had baked cookies because whoever was supposed to be bringing the cakes didn’t. I hadn’t had time to make real, from scratch cookies, so I just bought the cookie dough in the tube. I was very flattered that one of the women asked me for the recipe. So I told her, “You go down to Payless (one of the grocery stores here), go to the diary section, and you buy the premade dough.” She laughed.

After we ate, the Relief Society (the women’s organization at the church) did a couple of dances. Unfortunately, the video is too big to post. In the second dance, Britt and our friend Mary Swain joined in. After the dancing, they make the honorees stand up at the front of the room, and they sing a song and we all get up and give them handicrafts. My pictures didn’t turn out too well, but I’m going to post a couple anyway.

It was another late night. We didn’t get home until just before midnight, and it took me a while to fall asleep because I’d eaten dinner so late. But it was a lot of fun. The party gave me the chance to see friends from the Uliga ward that I hadn’t had a chance to see yet. And it was a nice chance for Britt to say goodbye to everyone.