I see the bad moon rising

It’s not just a CCR song, it’s also what I’m looking at right now. As far as I know, this is the first time in my life that I’ve seen a red moon. I’m sure it has something to do with the sun and I’m sure it can be seen in other parts of the world as well, but I’m going to pretend that it’s something that can only be viewed in the Marshall Islands. It is, however, appearing on a perfectly cloudless night which, if you’ve been reading this blog since its inception, also means that I can see the Milky Way. Thus, even if you can see the red moon, just know that I can see it with the Milky Way and like a bajillion other stars.

The Taiwan girls left last Thursday. It’s a terrible understatement, but I was really happy to see them go. It was just genuine, unadulterated delight. They’ve worked very hard and overcome more than anyone should ever have to, and I was just pleased to have been a small part of their stories. Truthfully, I don’t think I’ve felt a purer joy in my life. It was just a very special moment. The pictures above are of them at the airport right before they left. There were two more, but unfortunately my camera literally broke at the airport. At least I got those four.

I was witness to a mini-miracle this past week. One of my students received a travel grant to attend Palau Community College, like the other two I’ve mentioned before. He was supposed to leave on the same flight as the others but was unable to because he was stuck on an outer island. He was visiting relatives and was unable to return to Majuro because Air Marshall Islands, the domestic carrier, had both of its planes grounded due to mechanical failures. Five canceled flights later, my student was still on his outer island while the other three were flying to Palau. It was a terrible shame, given what he’s had to do to even reach this point and finally to be deterred by the domestic airline of all things. I asked Palau Community College and they said that my student could still attend next semester, but that they could not pay for his ticket. Frustrated and disappointed by the way things turned out, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper requesting that steps be taken to ensure that a similar predicament not arise in the future.

The next day, I returned to my office after lunch and found a note attached to my door. A random stranger was leaving for Honolulu that night but offered to pay for my student’s plane ticket from Majuro to Palau if he decided to attend next semester. I was flabbergasted. I called around town and tracked him down to his hotel (yeah, this actually works pretty well in Majuro). I arranged to accost him before he got on his shuttle to the airport. I bought him a drink and we chatted for a bit. He was a diver who came to dive Bikini. Unfortunately for him, the only carrier from Majuro to Bikini is also Air Marshall Islands. He couldn’t reach Bikini and had to leave, but before he did he read my article and decided to help out someone who was in a similar situation. Random acts of kindness, gotta love them.

School still hasn’t started yet. However, I’ll be teaching an out-of-school TOEFL class this year and that will begin tomorrow. My students can take the same class during school, but I’ve received a few requests from members of the community who are unable to attend a TOEFL class during school hours, since those are also work hours. The vast majority of these came from Chinese who either wanted to take a TOEFL themselves, or who had kids who needed to take TOEFLs (Chinese students all attend private schools so they can’t make it to my TOEFL classes offered during school). I gladly offered to teach a course during evening hours. If you can’t tell, I’ve become decidedly more Chinese since I’ve been here and thought this would be a good way to get myself more involved in the Chinese community.

It floors me sometimes to see the similarities between the Chinese families here and the one in which I grew up. The obvious parallels are that they and my family both immigrated from China to a foreign country in order to pursue better opportunities and give better opportunities to their children. The foreign country in question is different, but the culture so to speak is exactly the same. I was eating dinner with a Chinese family one night – they have a 16 year old son who will be attending my TOEFL class – and thought I was looking ten years back in time. Everything down to the food we were eating (they’re from the same part of China as my family), to our topics of discussion, to how they talked about their son was a mirror image of what I remember growing up. Conversation was laden with school and future academic plans. Their son was never good enough and needed to study harder.

When I spoke with their son alone, he conveyed how frustrated he was at always being inadequate in his parents’ eyes. My head was just throbbing at that point because I felt like I almost knew too much about what he was talking about. I wasn’t even sure where to start because everything just wanted to spill out like a bursting dam. In the end, I just told him that all Chinese parents are like that and it’s just their way of encouraging us to work harder. In addition, I told him that it’s unfair for them to criticize him like that, particularly publicly in a foreign country that doesn’t obey the same conventions, and to not be discouraged by what the say. I like to think that I would’ve appreciated such a comment from a slightly older Chinese male when I was 16. But oh wait, I was in Idaho and that wasn’t going to happen.

Alright, I’m going to go look at this moon one last time. Have a good night.