I have a story to tell!

Last weekend I went to Three Bag Island, a small island in the Majuro lagoon, with Upward Bound. I had a good time, and I have an adventurous story to share. On Friday night I went fishing with three Marshallese and two Fijians. We got into this small skiff (no bigger than a standard-sized sedan) and headed for deep water. Unbeknownst to me, the plan was to tie our skiff to this open-water platform thingy that marks the location of the channel. And who was in charge of standing on the bow of the boat and tying the rope to the end of the rusted ladder on the platform? Yeah, that would be me. So I put on my sea legs and wobble over to the edge of the boat that’s bobbing up and down in the water because it’s the channel and there’s about a 3-4’ difference from trough to crest in the channel waves. I grab a hold of the ladder to tie the rope and of course the wave breaks and the boat goes down into the trough. That means I was hanging on to the ladder without anything to stand on cause the boat was now 2’ away from my feet. Then it came back up so I could stand on it, and then it went back down again, leaving me hanging there. After three attempts I finally managed to tie the boat onto the ladder and we started fishing. Every five minutes the ladder made this “I’m going to break now” noise to which my Fijian teacher friend responded by giving a nervous chuckle.

At around nine we decide to go back. I untie us from the creaking rusted ladder and immediately after the sky opens and we get absolutely dumped on. We start to take in water and begin to bail while heading back. Then we realize that we can’t see any lights because of the rain. We had no idea where our island was. To top it off, our island’s light was the equivalent of a mosquito zapper because the solar panels weren’t working and the only light we had was, well, a large mosquito zapper. So there we were, stuck in the rain, being pummeled by waves, in a skiff no larger than a sedan, and we had no idea where to go because we couldn’t see anything. We go in the general direction of our island, hoping that we’re going to see something. The rain stopped briefly and I noticed that we were surrounded by that phosfluorescent algae stuff in the water. The lagoon, was literally sparkling, which was kind of cool. But then the rain started again and I realized again that we were stuck in the lagoon in pitch darkness, taking in water, had no idea where we were going, and the glowing algae ceased to be cool. After about twenty minutes of going who knows where and being soaked to the bone, the Marshallese started speaking to each other in Marshallese, and the Fijians to each other in Fijian. I was like, “Where’s someone to speak Chinese with me?” But then I thought, “Hey, maybe they’re discussing traditional navigational methods so we can get back and stuff. No worries I’m with seasoned Pacific Islanders!” But then I started listening to one the Marshallese and realized that she was fucking praying! I was like, “What the fuck?! You can’t be scared! That’s my job as the landlubber. You have to get us out of here!”

Finally, we saw a light and made for it. Of course, when we got there, we realized it was the wrong island. We turned around and went back THE OTHER WAY in hopes of finding our island. Then we heard this crunch and the boat stopped moving. We were stuck on the reef. More Fijian. More Marshallese. Still no Chinese. This guy and I, as the only two grown men in the boat, jumped out and pushed us off the reef. We have the coral cuts to prove it. As we started heading in some other unknown direction, suddenly someone asks, “Hey how much gas do we have left?” The other man checks and says, “Um, let’s go back to that island.” We get back to the island and realize that we were on Eneko, only two islands down from ours. A man agrees to tow our boat back to our island. While disembarking, the Marshallese woman fell into the water. She says I rocked the boat when I stood up to get out. But I maintain it was the other Fijian lady because I never got out of the boat and she did. Anyways, we fished her out of the water and the other boat finally towed us back to our island. Yeah, it was awesome. That night two of my students put toothpaste on my face while I was asleep.

My second batch of homebrewed beer is almost ready. The previous batch I made had a slightly sour aftertaste, almost like I put a few skittles in each bottle. I’ve been told that this is either due to my using table sugar to prime my beer instead of a more appropriate priming sugar or the weather simply being too hot while the beer is fermenting. The weather I can’t change, but the sugar I can. This time I used corn syrup. Hopefully it’ll turn out better.

Upward Bound ends in two weeks. Afterwards my summer break finally begins. Faculty have to report back to work at the high school staring August 13^th, meaning I get about three weeks between the end of Upward Bound and the quasi-beginning of school. However, there’s no telling when school will actually start because, much like last year, we’re waiting for a few new buildings to be finished. The buildings themselves are done, I think, but they don’t have any power. We could probably begin school with no power in the buildings, which is what we did last year, but I’m not exactly sure what the plan is this year.