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Thursday… my last day of working with my speaker, Ierutia. We actually had a lot of fun, and I got some good data. She then stayed for lunch and we ate leftovers from Wednesday night. Delicious.

I decided to go snorkeling again that afternoon. So after lunch I walked out to the bridge, only this time there were tons of little boys around. It’s always funny to me when I go swimming because for some reason all the Marshallese people want to watch me swim. After a few minutes, they usually lose interest though. This time around the kids stayed long enough to move my flipflops away from the water for me. The snorkeling was much better this time around. The tide was a little bit further in, and there were more fish in the water.

As I was getting out, I talked for a few minutes with some boys who were playing this game where one of them threw a starfish into the water and the others dove in after it. I played and won once, but I am much bigger than them and can swim faster. Here’s a picture of them.

That evening, the ladies from the Jenrok Ward Relief Society (a church organization) had a goodbye party for Ierutia, who went back to Hawaii on Saturday. The party consisted of eating dinner, dancing, and giving Ierutia goodbye presents (a typical Marshallese party). I’ve never been to a goodbye party with only women, and it got a little wild. I was pretty shocked. I guess it was nothing too bad; just lots of teasing and flashing each other. I’ll put a few pictures up here, but you can see all of them on my Facebook page.