Karakar

Karakar means hot in Pohnpeian. This is a word I find myself saying all the time. My students usually fan themselves with pieces of paper and tell me the classroom is too Karakar and that I should open the door to the front porch. Since my classroom is a single building I have a front porch and a back porch, which is nice, the kids can hang out on it before and after class. It's also useful because I can go out onto it and yell at the students who are late and tell them to hurry up. I call my classroom "the shack" because well thats what it is but I love it. I've really taken a liking to all my classes and I can already tell the students will be the thing I miss most when I leave, weather thats June 09' or '10 ( I haven't decided if I will stay the second year yet). However I've only been teaching for two weeks and I may want to wring their necks in a month or two. I feel comfortable in front of the class now and some students are really helpful with translating things or explaining cultural differences. For example in Pohnpei it is culturally acceptable to say yes simply by raising your eye brows. So when I'm asking a student if x equals -7 he will raise his eyebrows and I find myself repeating the question. Since I don't have internet in Madolenihmw this is more than likely going to be a weekly or bi-weekly blog post, or whenever I make it into town. Last Sunday we hiked Sokehs rock, I know I wrote about hiking sokehs ridge a couple of weeks ago but these are two differnet hikes. Sokehs rock is a more technical climb that involves climbing up a steep rock face. Once we reached the top we found miniature pineapples and broke them open on rocks and ate them. They tasted absolutely delicious and were a wonderful treat while I checked out the reefs surrounding the island of Pohnpei. You can camp up there and plan on doing that when Chris comes out in December. Tomorrow I'm volunteering with the Pohnpei Surf Club at a teach kids how to surf day at Nahlap island. I won't be teaching anyone, more like acting like a lifeguard as the wave at Nahlap breaks on shallow reef. Hopefully I won't have to make any saves. Life is good out here, I find it to be very slow at times but I appreciate that because it seems like the last four years of my life flew by.  I'll try to put some more pictures up but I don't have a camera and have to steal pictures form other volunteers. Oh yeah we're planning a two day hike to the peak of the tallest mountain in Pohnpei. We camp out under a rock overhang the night we spend up on the mountain I think we're doing this sometime in late September, and I'm really looking forward to it. Lastly I apologize for the terrible grammatical mistakes and misspellings on my blog. Most of you are probably saying why is this guy teaching English. However I have very little time to spend on the internet and I try to write these posts as fast as I can. Thanks for understanding.