President's Day Weekend

Another three-day weekend and I have thoroughly enjoyed it! Let’s see… Friday started out good. We get out of school at 2pm and after that we all were very spirited because we knew we didn’t have to be back at school until Tuesday. I spent my afternoon by the ocean trying to think about what I was going to say for Vespers that night. I ended up speaking about the past and letting go of our pasts and the forgiveness of God. It went pretty well I think, even though I paced back and forth quite a bit. ;) I like speaking in front of people; I just wish I didn’t get so nervous beforehand. This time I wasn’t as nervous as I thought I would be though. Anyways. So that went pretty well. Then Jaimie, Travis, John, and I (we jokingly call ourselves “uno familia”, because there is a group of four high school students who call themselves “one family”) decided we wanted to sleep outside under the stars. Okay, wait, I lied. I didn’t really want to sleep out there because I knew it was probably going to rain and our beds would get wet. After some convincing though, I joined in and we all dragged our beds outside. We played sleepover games like “Would you rather?” and talked for awhile, until Travis was falling asleep and we decided to get some rest. It took me awhile to fall asleep (I was a little afraid some bugs would come after me or fall on me from the palm tree above our heads) but then I was fast asleep with the full moon overhead. Around 1 in the morning, I woke up to Jaimie saying, “John! John! Carrie?” I guess the security guard of our campus woke Jaimie up by saying, “WAKE UP!” So then we all woke up, decided we should listen to the security guard and go back inside. (Travis is not very happy about being woken up.) We took all of our beds and mattresses back into our rooms and went back to bed. Ten minutes later, it started raining. We’re not sure if the security guard didn’t want us out there, or if he knew it was going to rain, but either way we were glad we didn’t have to haul our beds in the rain. So that was our Friday.

Sabbath we decided we wanted to walk out to some of the outer islands again. This time though, we didn’t want to walk out quite as far; we mostly just wanted to find a place to relax and do some swimming. We walked out two or three islands to this old sunken ship that sticks out of the water. We swam around there for a while, looking for different parts of the ship (John insists he found the bathroom) and looked at fish. This is probably where we all got sunburned the most. (Well actually, Travis and I are really the only white people. John apparently doesn’t burn, and Jaimie is half Burmese so she doesn’t really burn either.) Anyhow. We decided we wanted to read and relax on sand, so we walked a few islands over to where a sand patch was. This also happened to be right next to some houses of the Marshallese. They didn’t mind us sitting on their patch of sand, and they even moved our stuff when the tide came in and would have gotten it wet. They owned a bunch of pigs and dogs and chickens. There were a lot of children playing in the water. I think our most outrageous moment on that island was seeing a little girl, probably around 3 years old, carrying a cleaver! She then passed it off to an even littler girl, who was probably 2. They played with it in the sand and the Marshallese didn’t seem to mind. It was crazy! We swam a bunch in the water there, and Travis and I tried to teach John how to play Phase Ten while Jaimie read her book. I think the most adventurous part of this trip was getting back. You see, last time we hiked out there, we headed back around 1 or 2, and we were fine. This time we waited until around 3 or 3:30. This was a bad plan. The tide had risen nearly 4 or 5 feet! When we could easily walk across when we first came out, we had to swim against the current to get to the other side. Travis and John were carrying our backpacks above their heads. At one crossing, Travis was trying to swim while holding the bag over his head with one arm. John even had to swim. (he is 6”4’) The last crossing was probably the worst. I was fine swimming across the others; I just had to do some intense sidestroke to keep from being swept with the current. This one though, was the widest crossing. Jaimie and I literally held on to Travis as he walked across. It was so crazy! When we finally got across, (tired and wet and sunburned) we hitched a ride back and got back pretty fast. We were so sleepy. We tried to watch a movie at night, and we all were falling asleep by like 10. We gave up and went to bed.

Sunday we decided we wanted to go out to Enamanit. There is a rather wealthy here on the island named Jerry Kramer. He owns an apartment chain, a few gas stations, and some other things. He owns the island of Enamanit. Anyways, he takes his nice fishing boat out there every week with his grandkids and family, and welcomes anyone else who can fit to come along. There was a huge group of us that wanted to go, but most of them backed out because they didn’t think there would be room on the boat for us all. Which, now that we have seen the boat, was true. So, Jaimie, Travis, Alana, and I hitched a ride with this Kramer guy and his family. We got there and it was a bit overcast and rainy, but after a few minutes it cleared up and we all went out. I guess last year sometime a plane crashed and half of it is in the water there. So we swam out to where the plane was (it wasn’t too far, mom), and it was very interesting to see. It was like something off of LOST. The plane had fish living in it now, but it makes me wonder if any people died during the crash, or if any of them survived. Perhaps I will look it up online to read about it. I think the airline was Star Pacific. I wonder what went wrong. So yeah, we swam a lot, read some, but mostly enjoyed ourselves in the shade and sand. We ate lunch right when we got there, and Kramer even offered us some of the food from their feast. He was the definition of generosity. It was pretty overcast for the rest of the day, and around 5 we all got on his ship and headed back. We have gotten pretty good at hitchhiking. (It is a thousand times different here than in the states. Here you only hitchhike with trucks, so you can pile in the back. You tell them where you want to go and they’ll take you as far as they can.) We got a ride all the way from Long Island to Delap. So last night we watched a movie and Travis left early to go to bed. Today I’m planning on doing a lot of catching up on grading and stuff. We have the accreditation team coming in on Tuesday, so we have to clean up our classrooms, double-check our lesson plans, and get up to date in our grade books. Tonight we’ll probably make our way to pasta night, because the Internet is shut down here at school. I’m hoping it will work at the resort because I haven’t been able to check my email for probably four or five days. Well, if it’s working I will post this later tonight then. I should go get ready for my day. Jaimie and I ate breakfast but now we’re kinda bumming around. I need to take a shower and then go take our laundry to get done. Anyways. Looks like a long day today, but it was a wonderful three-day weekend. I am content. : )