7-30

Friday was fun, fun, fun. Ierutia had invited me to go kayaking with her. Her plan was to kayak out to a place called Enemanit. But our plans changed when someone told us that it was 30 miles away. We then decided to paddle to Rita and then down to the Marshall Islands resort, which is closer to the bridge. We got off to an interesting start. It was cloudy and the water was a little rough. Plus we had to figure out which kayak and which paddle we each like best, and we stopped for a minute down in Rita. But the sun came out and the water was more calm after a bit.

To avoid being out on the lagoon where we could be capzied and drown, we stayed close to the shore. This, as it turns out, was a lot of fun because we got to talk to and wave at people. Ierutia is pretty outgoing, and so we ended up talking to a lot of people. I was quite popular myself. At one point, two Marshallese guys asked if I was married.

When we paddled back from Rita past the place we started from, we stopped for a few minutes so that Ierutia’s sister could go buy us some Marshallese donuts. So I guess eating those as we paddled probably negated any benefit of the exercise we were getting. As you can see from the picture, we figured out that the best place to put the donuts was on the front of my kayak. But that only enabled us to eat more.

We soon reach downtown, and paddled past the RRE Hotel, which owns the little bungalows in this picture. Just past RRE is the dock, which has a few really big ships. At that point, we realized it was probably best to head back, especially since the water was really deep there and we weren’t wearing life jackets. Other than a couple of brief stops to go swimming, we made it home around noon without incident.

I spent the afternoon working, but also stopped in to use the internet at the RRE Hotel. As I was exiting down the stairs, this old man, probably in his 80s, said Yokwe Yokwe likatu, which roughly means ‘hello beautiful.’ I was in a good mood, so I responded yokwe lakatu, which mean ‘hello handsome.’ At that point he took my hand and said “no, you are the beautiful one,” and he kissed my hand twice. It was sweet but also kind of funny. I guess I quite the hot ticket here in Majuro.