July 8 - Honolulu

Yokwe!

I’m off to the Marshall Islands again. The first time I went back (4 years ago), I remember thinking “Wow! This is a miracle.” The second time (3 years ago), I kept thinking “I can’t believe it: another miracle.” I think my reaction this time around was something more like, “Holy crap! My flight is tomorrow. I guess I should pack or something.” OK, maybe it wasn’t quite like that. I’ve been planning this trip for the last 7 months, so I think that fact has kept it from seeming real. It’s still hard to believe that I’ll be there in about 8 hours.

I’m in Hawaii right now, waiting my flight. For those who don’t know, the main purpose of my trip is to study how well speakers are learning the sounds of Marshallese when they are learning it as a second language. It is a co-authored project with another BYU professor and three students. They will be coming over in about a month, but I’m going over early to do some fieldwork first.

I don’t have much to say about my short 14-hour stay in Hawaii. I arrived around 2:30 and got to my 5 star hotel about an hour after that. One thing I know for sure is that I won’t be staying in that hotel again. I figured that out the moment I walked in my room. The décor was a little on the ugly side: yellow and green walls and one of those bedspreads that you see on the 20/20 specials (the ones about how dirty your hotel room is). In spite of this fact, I kept telling myself that it wasn’t too bad. The location was great, the room had a beautiful view from the balcony (see pictures), and my toilet had this strange mechanical advice attached to the side that claimed to have a massage function (I couldn’t figure out how it worked). However, I finally decided to admit the truth about the low quality of the hotel when I realized that my bed did not have a fitted sheet on the bottom: it was just a flat sheet tucked in.

After I arrived at my hotel, I walked around Waikiki for about an hour and half and then decided to just go to bed, since I was exhausted and had to be at the airport at 4:30AM. I am looking forward to arriving in Majuro and seeing all my friends there. It should be a great trip and another wonderful experience.