8-2

My routine changed dramatically today. My friend/speaker Ierutia has gone back to Hawaii, and so I need to find someone else to work with during the day. First, though, I have to do a few things before my students & my collaborator come on Saturday. My main task today was cleaning and getting a few things for their apartment. Having spent half of last Friday and Saturday kayaking and snorkeling, I can adamantly say that the weekend was much more fun. I wish I could also say that it wasn’t so bad, but honestly, it was. It is clear that no one has lived there in a while.

After returning from Ace Hardware with a new bucket and rubber gloves, I got down to work cleaning the bedroom. Mostly, it was just dusty, and the floor was dirty. So after sweeping everything, I got down on my hands and knees and scrubbed the floor. The real trial came in the afternoon, after I had Skyped with my family. The focus of the afternoon was the bathroom. But it was the little extra things that happened that made things memorable, such as the three huge cockroaches I had to kill and the dirt and cobwebs everywhere. The last straw was when I kicked the wall just hard enough to kill a spider (so not very hard) and put a hole in it. After that, I decided I couldn’t take anymore and went home feeling like I needed to bathe in a chemical shower. I don’t know how I’m going to go back in there tomorrow. If only I had a hazmat suit.

In the evening I met with Lanny, and then I planned to walk down to a store and look for some pillows for my students, but it started raining as I was walking home. So I didn’t go out again. I’m very glad that it did because about half an hour after I got home, my friend Melanie knocked at my door. She is a former missionary who I got to know when I was here in 2006. She just got back to Majuro yesterday and is going to be teaching at the Coop school here for 2 years. I am so excited to see her. We are hoping to do something fun in the next week before school starts and before my students get here. And it was great to have someone to talk to tonight. Maybe she has a hazmat suit I can use.