Just hear those sleighbells ringaling, Please turn off the Christmas Music.

The Christmas season is in full force on our little island home. I like Christmas as much as the next guy but there is just something not quite right about an 85 degree December. All the businesses have their halls decked with holly, the Nativity on top of Ace Hardware is massive and impressive, and Trieste saw a shirtless black Santa in board shorts as a decoration. Ho Ho Ho, I love it all. But I don't like Christmas music, call me a Grinch, but it's irritating. All those years of working retail probably. Oh well three weeks to go.

So we had our first Micronesian thanksgiving, or I should say our first Thanksgiving in Micronesia, because this is not a Micronesian Holiday as lot's of people pointed out to me. Even if the College Campus on Chuuk got the day off, I'm not bitter because we went to TWO Thanksgivings, one on Thursday and one the following Saturday. We had all the standards, Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, because apparently you can import just about anything. After the Saturday Thanksgiving we went to a variety show. Our People we know here did a lot of crazy and silly things and it was fun, more or less. I didn't do anything because my talent for annoying Trieste doesn't really translate to a audience situation, even if my art is superb.

I feel like I have more to say, but that's it.
jp

I heart Kitti.

Yes, we moved. For a month we'd been whining to anyone who would listen about how badly we wanted to move, but what it took was saying, just once, that we wanted to move somewhere not by other mehn wai (that's you, whitey). As soon as that flag was dropped, the most beautiful house was just handed to us, and we got the world's greatest neighbors along with it. (Don't think we didn't try looking ourselves--we did--but the thing is is that the only folks who are advertising housing are trying to reach mehn wai, and therefore were no good to us. But we tried.) Since we don't have addresses on this little island, our new house is "the Pink House, in Dien," and people usually know what we're talking about. The commute to Kolonia seems long to locals (it's 7 miles). We had to buy a car to do it--let me tell you about our car. It was made in 1995--think about how old that is, how many days that car's been driving. Now. It has 60,000 miles on it. That is why 7 miles seems like a far distance. Also, our car has a racing wheel and three nifty (gigantic) decals (I won't spoil the surprise--someday I'll have a connection that will allow me to post photos of it). Also, the steering wheel's on the wrong side of the car. This makes it hard (impossible) to see around corners (which, the circular island road, on which we live, is made only out of corners) and all the corners invariably have children/drunken teenagers/sakau-lo'd old guys/dogs/giant rats/crazy school children flailing around in the road at the end of them. Almost all the cars on the island have steering wheels on the wrong side. I vote we just start driving on the left side of the road, for the love of god.

Our immediate neighbors are a really beautiful family. They sure bailed us out with that gigantic pig thing, and also it seems like every time we're feeling too tired and down to take care of ourselves, someone comes over bearing a giant plate of food for us. They bring us food a lot, and we try to reciprocate. In desperation, once I'd accumulated more of their dishes and platters than we owned ourselves, I sent over a platter of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I cut them into little triangles! It was the best I could do. That night they sent over a beautifully prepared whole fish, filleted on a bed of rice and topped with a long thing that was either a giant clam or the tongue of a possibly mythical beast. It didn't look like a clam part.

On the other side of our house is a sakau market that makes the strongest sakau I've ever tasted--instant numbness of the lips, tongue, and throat. The regulars are a hilarious and super sweet bunch of people, and Jonathan and I are always trying to make time to go sit with them.

Behind our house is a creek, and across the road from our house is...nothing. It's wonderful.

I could go on and on about our new neighborhood. We love it. I was reading one of the letters left for us by last year's volunteers, and one piece of advice given especially to College of Micronesia-Pohnpei volunteers was: "At COM and Kolonia you will be daily exposed to the worst the culture of Pohnpei has to offer. Get away from the college, spend time out of Kolonia, or you will end up hating Micronesia." I have to say, after a month in the boonies, we are so much more relaxed about living here, and I can easily see staying longer than this year. Our new house is just up the road from COM-National, at which I am teaching a Chemistry class (lecture and lab!) next semester. I. Am. So. Excited. I saw my new office/workspace/classroom the other day, and it is all wonderful...chemicals, computers, books boooks booooooooks, and the students are the absolute best that Micronesia has to offer. I'll still be teaching full time at COM-Pophnpei, but hey, I live in Kitti now. I can handle a little extra workload. Especially if it means teaching college chemistry.

Here's what else is good about Pohnpei: gecko noises (they growl!), skinks (are beautiful), giant bats, kittens all over the place, food growing outside your windows, green green crazy green vines-trees-mountains-grass-moss everywhere, "water features," random volcano remnants, snorkeling, the reef, atolls on the reef, flowers year-round, and the sky. Pardon my french, but what the hell is up with the sky here? Even on my home-sickiest days, the sky is always the prettiest thing I've ever seen. What happens to the sky? Is it the equator? The island? What the hell?

Anyway, I'll sign off now before I say anything else optimistic. You know I hate that.
Love,
Trieste