7-28

I haven’t written in the past few days because they have seemed very typical and not all that worth writing about. However, it occurs to me that people may not know what a typical day in Majuro is like for me. So here goes…

6:30ish: Wake up and go for a run. If I’m lucky, I get out early enough so that there won’t be too many Marshallese people out to stare at me. Marshallese people don’t really exercise, although a few people have taken up walking in the past few years for health reasons. It’s pretty rare to see someone running. A week or so ago, I saw a Marshallese woman out running in tennis shoes and a moo-moo. I was pretty shocked.

7:30 – 9ish: get ready and eat breakfast. And no, I don’t eat rice or pig for breakfast. You can buy American food in the stores, so I usually eat cereal, oatmeal or eggs.

9AM: One of two things, either walk down to the RRE Hotel and check my email or do some work. Thank heavens for the islands few wireless hotspots.

10AM – 12PM: Study Marshallese with my friend Ierutia. Although this is technically work, it is loads of fun. Ierutia is in her early 20’s and a student at BYU Hawaii who has been home here for the past few weeks. As you may have noticed from my pictures or blog, we are great friends, and we laugh a lot.

12PM – early evening: Eat lunch, work, run errands, maybe take a nap.

6ish: Study Marshallese with my friend Lanny. Lanny is an alap (landowner) and the Mayor of the island of Jaluit. He is really kind to me. I really enjoy spending time with his family.

7 –bedtime: eat, visit friends, work or relax.

As you can see, it’s quite similar to what I would be doing in America, only I speak Marshallese all day and get to go swimming in the ocean. And it’s less stressful. I think the biggest decisions I had to make today were whether to buy the expensive package of dried mangoes from EZ Price Mart and what color to paint my toenails.

This strenuous schedule can be interrupted when it rains, as has been happening a lot this week. On Saturday night, it rained so much that I couldn’t go out to my evening meeting. I know it sounds strange to stay home because it’s raining, but you’ve probably never seen storms like this. The rain is often so loud that I have to stop my meetings with my speakers because the rain is so loud. On Saturday night, the streets were all completely flooded. It was insane.

One question I get asked a lot is what is Marshallese

food like. So tonight, when I was eating with my friend Lanny, I took some pictures. In the pictures, there is ma ‘breadfruit’, waini ‘coconut’, a rice ball and some bao ‘chicken.’ It was delicious!!!