Tonight, I made my first decent dinner meal. This is a huge milestone. In the past, my experience with dinner prep during the periods of independent living often consisted of saying the phrase “I’ll take this to go” and Styrofoam boxes in ThankYou plastic bags. In Kosrae, there aren’t many restaurants where you can say that, because there aren’t many restaurants, period. This leaves the hungry with two options: learn how to cook, or continue current plan of eating canned pork & beans.

I’m fairly spoiled by the fact that I get care packages of food sent to me. In all honestly, we don’t really need care packages of food to survive on this island; the basics are here. Severely limited and over represented by canned meats and ramen, but here. The unintended purpose of food care packages are to serve as reminders of my ineptitude in the kitchen.

Cooking is physically hard work. I blame food blogs like Tastespotting and people like Rachel Ray who somehow led me astray believing that cooking is an easy, beautiful process, and one can do it with nice hair and take wonderful pictures throughout the process. It’s false, false to the extreme.

Episode 1: Cooking ground beef with Nate, another WorldTeach volunteer.

With lofty goals of preparing a grand meal to thank the people who have been hospitable to us thus far in Kosrae, Nate and I instead nearly caused food poisoning to half the community. How ground beef can be burnt black outside, but bleeding red inside, is a feat that can only be accomplished by the most inept of inept. Two hours of cooking resulted in blood burgers and WWIII in the kitchen. Luckily, no one died that night, and we have not been excommunicated from the community.

Episode 2: Scaling a fish with Kristen, a roommate.

Kristen, one of my three wonderful roommates, just graduated from college in the East Coast and her arms are seasoned from her life’s commitment to athletics thus far. Still, with Kristen’s arms and my knife, we were no match for the fish we were trying to gut and scale. That night, the blood of three was taken: Hers, mine, and the fish. Gutting a fish is disgusting. There is nothing FoodNetwork-y or FoodBlog-esque about this part in food prep. Gutting, or rather, engaging in a tug of war battle with fish guts, resulted in gills and guts spewed about a blood spattered countertop. Still, this process was better than scaling, which was me dangling a fish upside down, trying not to gag, and causing scales to project themselves to distances that reached the dining table. Hours later that night, I was still picking scales out of my hair.

With these two episodes as the back story, you hopefully understand why earlier tonight was momentous. I took a chicken through the whole shebang: defrosting, washing, cutting, washing some more, marinating, cooking, seasoning to taste, eating. And it was good and edible. Sure, I forgot an ingredient or two, but the operative word is edible. On the stove is a pot of fully cooked chicken that can be eaten without fears of food poisoning, which is a lot more than what I could have said earlier. This moves mountains, because if a person can successfully cook a chicken, there isn’t much that she can’t do now is there? =)

On laundry

While coconut trees and stunning sunsets over calm seas are part of daily life here in The Micro, one can't ALWAYS be thinking about trees and looking into the sky. One does, occasionally, get interrupted by the more immediate responsibilities she must tend to, and even those can be a handful. Take the example of doing laundry, a simple chore at most. Maybe it is medium hard if it was cashmere (non applicable in this region). It then never ceases to amaze me how this simple chore can cause such complex problems.

Let it be known that our laundry machine is a raging beast. It ingests perfectly normal clothing of typical proportions, chomps on it some, and then spits back a pile that resembles the original, but maybe stretched out, stained (where there weren't stains), ripped, bleached (when there wasn't bleach).

So now that my clothes are effectively over-stretched, spotted all over with mysterious black dots, ripped, and bleached in awkward places, I'm thinking that this doing laundry business needs to be re examined. Serious consideration is being placed on the hand washing route: time consuming, but perhaps the preventative solution to the black dot mystery.

It's possible that I may be the worst Micronesian laundry washer, ever. People who have a knack for it seem to possess an intuitive gift of timing. Taking the clothes off the line too early will lead to a moldy stench entrenched into the fabric that will decrease your likability at an exponential rate. Taking the clothes off too late will lead to it becoming re-drenched by the next onslaught of rain, thus ruining your efforts to produce clean clothes. Laundry timing skills are clutch for survival, and go hand in hand with cloud watching skills (something I also lack at the moment).

Cloud watching skills are equally, if not more important, than the former; mostly because skilled cloud watchers are able to reduce the number of sticky situations they find themselves in. Aside from producing consistent and excellent laundry results, a seasoned cloud watcher can reduce the occurrence of a larger situation, like getting stuck on the opposite side of the island because of a thunderstorm. At the very best, my cloud watching skills can be currently classified at the basic CloudRunner level. CloudRunners are not able to predict the movement or severity of the clouds at a preferable distance, but see the oncoming heavy clouds right about the cross over the island, acknowledges their presence, and then engages in a heart pounding bike vs. nature race home to see who can first get to the clothes on the laundry line.

Since we're on the topic of clothes, my tastes have changed considerably. Granted, I've never really had an affinity for fashion. Nonetheless, a recent desire to add more frills, sequins, and bows to the already colorful knee length potato sacks we call "nuk nuks" was nonexistent prior to arriving the Micro. A typical conversation exchange concerning daily attire goes something like this:

"Hey, I really like your nuk nuk. The two buttons at the bottom really complement the sewn apron at the collar."

“Thanks. Are you thinking of asking your host mother to make you another nuk- nuk?”

“Yeah, she’s great with frills at the skirt bottom. I bought the floral fabric yesterday. Do you think I should add more sequins across the top, or sew a flower across the skirt middle? Would doing both be too much?”

Clearly, it's a silly question, because we all know that there is no such thing as it being too much.

Perusing through old blog posts is an activity I highly enjoy. A high school friend once wrote on the back of a staged prom photo, “Pictures are worth a thousand words; pictures can be the greatest liars,” a thought I strongly agree with. In a way, though, I think writing can do the same. Maybe it’s because I’m (again, surprise, surprise) in a foreign country, or maybe the amount of sweat release rivals that of backyard sprinkler systems; whatever the reason, it’s making me revisit the days of Southeast Asia. In similar fashion to the staged poses, unnaturally white smiles, hair styled to perfection, my excessive use of the exclamation mark and the word “amazing” in describing the days of studying abroad kind of makes me vomit a little in the mouth.

But what’s done is done; it’s cheating to go back and edit. Beneath the façade, I guess a few remnants of what Southeast Asia was like at the time can still be extracted. Had one of those “wow, I’m really not in college anymore moments” when I realized that at that time, my responsibilities were twofold: putting in some semblance of an effort into passing class, and putting in maximum effort into living life to best of a 21 year old’s ability…which really isn’t that hard in that region of the world. Travels and escapades aside, I don’t think the actual region actually mattered in the larger picture.

I cringe at the cliché statement, “Studying abroad was life changing” and similar ones like it, but I wonder if it holds some truth. If I didn’t get on that plane to Asia the first time, would I have gone the second time next year? And if the second time didn’t happen, would there have been this time in Micronesia?

I’m tired of feeling like I made a series of bad decisions in the eyes of others. My roommate Mackenzie just got a puppy, I think we’re naming it Cabbage. She’s received about 20 “best ways to raise/train a puppy” lectures. The effective training strategy ended up being from Google, found by a search we conducted ourselves. The melodramatic teenager inside is screaming “let me live my life!” Except, I am nearing the mid twenties mark (scary). No, scary can be in a sentence by itself. Scary.

A postcard arrived for me from Hong Kong yesterday, which was a treat of enormous proportions on several levels. Sent by Aga, my brilliant scientifically minded roommate who introduced me to Polish culture, the minute gesture of sending cordial greetings on a unassuming 4 x 6 served as a hello, a treasure from Asia, and mostly as a comforting reminder that there is a vast world beyond the horizon visible on this pacific island.

Aga is an adventurist. Ever since our freshman dormitory days of nerdishly cool parties with unforgivably poor vodka and musings of star constellations, Aga consistently transformed the terrain of Berkeley into a land meant for exploring and a setting for memorable stories. And so Berkeley became; whether it was chasing people in banana suits into the sunset, witnessing deer battles that commenced on the hillsides, hammock lounging on rooftops, biking in a “tour de Franzia” competition. Recently, Aga elected to take a train ride across Siberia and experience the traveler’s life from Eastern Europe- all the way to Hong Kong, China.

Here, story comes to an abrupt halt, a place of blank space. I have no idea how her trip went. I’ve been to some of the places in Asia she has; like Yangshuo, the place on the postcard, China’s Yosemite. When Bill Clinton visited China during his presidency, Yangshuo was on the itinerary, so you can bet this location is one of China’s winners both culturally and aesthetically. Yet, traveling is not just about aesthetics and Lonely Planet culture excerpts. Well, at least, I don’t like to think that is what makes it addicting, and definitely not why someone would endure an uncomfortable inter-country train ride for.

Aga’s returned from her travels and back at Berk, continuing on an academic track I can only watch movies about. The semester’s started, and the Campanile bells on campus are ringing three times a day again. Somewhere in the Pacific, I lost my voice yelling across a flooded classroom what the word “mandatory” means, as in “it is mandatory that you turn in your homework!” Our days have gone from being synchronized daily rituals of dining commons meals with slight variations in class scheduling, to waking up in different regions of the world. The postcard shatters the distance, and for a brief while brings out that familiar feeling of connection that only a postcard in the hand can muster.

Yesterday

Yesterday was June 17th. It was the closing of a 9 month chapter. It ended with ice cream, hugs, a final round of Around the World and Horse, a final parent meeting, a few thank yous, and a few goodbyes.

I guess I will miss my students after all. I know that even if I come back and visit, it won't be the same. Today as the last bell rang, each student came running to the snack area with a report card in hand. All had passed the 4th grade and were promoted to 5th. Their "4th gradeness" will soon fade into the memory of playground swings and monkey bars; soon they will take on new identities in their journey through life. Eventually, forgotten will be the incessant need for tattletelling and front/back cuts in line. Lost in the past will be the interest in telling scary stories and calling on spiritual bodies amongst avocado trees. Civilized as their manners emerge, hurt, and the intention to hurt, will be better covered with formality. While their raw honesty and sharp, unrefined words can cut like a sword, so can their compassion and love for life flood through gates of that elementary school.


Today, June 18th, marks the beginning of the next chapter.