So It's Been Awhile...

So I have had many complaints recently on my lack of posting. I apologize. Things got a little crazy with the end of second quarter and break so far has been full of activities and events. But here I am!

I usually like to have a theme or an idea for a post before I write it but I’m just going to wing this one.

I cannot believe it is the last day of 2013. So much has happened this year. I sadly saw my last semester at BC come and go, I became a college graduate, I went on an amazing road trip throughout the southeast with my best friend, I moved to Micronesia and I became an exhausted middle school teacher. I could barely envision my life now, this time last year and yet here I am. It’s pretty remarkable.

This next year will be slightly different. This time next year I know exactly where I will be, but I don’t know how or who I’ll be or how I will have changed. It’s a tad overwhelming. But it’s also exciting.

I hope I will be a better teacher. I hope I will be a better community member. I hope I will be a better member of my host family. Mostly, I hope I will be taking full advantage of this amazing and beautiful place and not taking a second of my time here for granted.

It’s been slightly difficult to fulfill those hopes at present. It really stinks to be away from family over the holidays. We’ve had such an amazing experience here and spent time with some really incredible people but it’s not the same. Especially when it feels like you’re in the movie Groundhog Day, where the weather and temperature is exactly the same every day. Being a born and raised New Englander, it totally blows my mind. It does not feel like New Years. It feels like July.

I also finished second quarter not so hot and probably about a month behind in grading. It’s hard to tell students their grades when you don’t have them.

And to top it off I’ve had some unwelcomed guests make a home on my head. That’s right I’ve got lice. I also happen to have possibly the thickest and most abundant hair on the planet so it’s not that fun for me or my community mates. Never sleep with half a jar of mayo in your hair; it’s not worth it.

But, despite these annoying and frustrating problems I’m pretty happy.

Christmas was beautiful and going to an absolutely packed Pohnpeian mass on Christmas Eve reminded me of how amazing and beautiful this place is. Their singing is hard to explain. Sometimes it doesn’t really sound that good but it’s mesmerizing and powerful with the deep male voices and almost screeching and wailing female voices. It brought me back and reminded me that this is where I am supposed to be.

We’ve also had some guests from Xavier staying with us that have reminded us that Pohnpei is awesome and way better than Chuuk. Just kidding. But it’s nice to hear their perspective. Another reason it is really nice is because one of our guests is actually a BC grad from 2010. He’s done so much in the past three and a half years and it gives me hope that there really is life after BC and that I eventually will be able to fully move on from my amazing time there. It’s so clear he loved his time there but he has also experienced so much more awesomeness elsewhere.  And it’s just nice to talk to somebody from Massachusetts and get some Dunkins coffee.

Other than that I have just been enjoying break. We’ve watched a lot of movies, swam at Nett point the day after Christmas (in the words of a former JV, it is way better to be swimming on Christmas than shoveling snow), visited waterfalls, went out to eat a bunch, saw the Hobbit 2, and enjoyed the high school basketball tournament that brought our Xavier friends here.

OLM lost all four of their games but it was still so fun going to watch them. The rules were slightly different, such as, their shot clock was basically perpetually on 15 seconds and there is no such thing as 1-1 (instead it’s bonus every quarter and you get two shots). Also, since most players have barely ever played in a gym, traveling, double dribbling, and fouls run rampant and at least on our team the island way of life or that really laid-back mentality wins out over competitiveness.

But despite all this it was super fun to watch. And the championship game last night between Xavier and PICS (Pohnpei Island Central School) was really great.  Unfortunately, for our Xavier friends PICS won but it was still great basketball.

However, my favorite part of the whole basketball tournament was our means of transportation to get to the gym in Palikir (about a 30 minute drive). For every OLM game we got to ride in the back of the Sisters' pickup. If I had to pick one means of transportation for the rest of my life, I think I would have to choose riding in the back of a pickup; especially, on an island. Riding through the jungle with the beautiful greenery and the sun shinning on you but with the cool air blowing on your face and with the view of the ocean. It’s unreal. It shoves the beauty of the island in your face and reminds you that you cannot take this for granted and allows you fully to breathe it all in.

Hopefully I can convince the Sisters to let me jump in the back whenever they need to do errands so that feeling can stay with me for the whole next year!

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and will have an incredible New Years! (New Years here is supposed to be NUTS, so I’ll try to post about that soon!)

I love you all so much and I just want to say thank you to every single person that impacted my life over the past year. I will always carry you in my heart and in the words of John Muir (thank you Cali) “no miles of any measurement can separate your soul from mine.”

Oceans of Love,

Britt