Save the date

June 21, 2008 - Richard Li makes his triumphant return to the United States after three years in the Pacific. Earlier this month I requested a change in my termination date from August 14th and June 21st and it was approved this week. I'll fly into Honolulu and spend a couple of days there with friends before flying to Los Angeles and spending time with more friends and attending my first wedding. I'll be back home in Idaho on the 28th of June.

At first it was simply a relief to get all of this stuff mostly out of the way. However, the more I ruminate about it, the more exciting it gets. Needless to say the amount of change in my life has been pretty minimal over the past three years. Of course I don’t regret any decision I’ve made in the past three years, but just the fact that I have something different on the horizon is a pretty exciting turn of events.

On Friday I also received a bit of unexpected yet very welcome news. I’ve been elected by the senior class to be the faculty speaker at graduation. Not only is it neat in and of itself, but it’s particularly significant because of this year’s class. When I first arrived in the Marshall Islands, I taught sophomores. Partially as a result of wanting to see those students graduate, I decided to stay for two more years. Now those students are graduating seniors and I get to address them before we part ways. In seven years of competitive speech and debate I must have given over 1000 speeches. All of them combined don’t equal half the significance of this one. I’m really looking forward to it, and will be even more so once I figure out what to say.

Jane has had her Taiwan Scholarship revoked. She became very ill and then became very scared. Her friends say she had a “large and hard bump” on the side of her stomach that was very painful. She begged her parents to come back and receive traditional Marshallese medicine for it. Her parents were hesitant because the plane ticket is very expensive and they didn’t want to risk the chance of not being able to treat her, or worse, that she would simply never go back. They urged her to stay in Taiwan. She did and failed her classes. Her scholarship was revoked and she returned last week. She’s putting on a good face but I can tell she feels like she disappointed everybody.

Her sister, Jean, interviewed for the Taiwan Scholarship four days before Jane returned.

Henry has once again applied for the Taiwan Scholarship. He interviewed the same day as Jean.