The work begins

I took my first week off to explore the island and after a couple of days I felt like I could find my way around easy enough. I was eager to meet my principal, he is going to be my boss for the next two years so I was anxious to meet him and talk about his expectations for the upcoming years. My host mom is sisters with my principal so she said that on Sunday after church we could go to his house and meet him. So Sunday morning I got up, we went to church, which was beautiful. The church overlooks a beach and the view of the ocean is breath taking. The preist is from Indonesia, so the mass was half in English and half in Yapese. After church we got ice cream and hung out at the little store so my host mom could show me off to all the people in the village. We then went to the pricipals house, and his wife informed me he had gone fishing for the day. UGH is all I could think! Why doesnt the principal want to meet me? So on Monday at 8:00am I went to the school, all of the teachers had to be there because registration was happening. I met all of the 8 teachers that work at my small school. I just waited and got to know them a little. Around 11 the principal came in! Yay! I finally get to meet him. He is very nice and is happy to have me. He gave me a key to the library and told me if I had time to clean it up. Well, let me tell you something about this library, it has awesome potential, but it hadnt been used for the past 5 years, the dust and spider webs were enough to send someone into a coma! There was a huge beautiful map on the back wall that was created by a former Peace Corps member... But no one could see it because there were shelves and books everywhere! Soo many books and no one was reading them! Now, I am not a huge reader myself, but what a shame! I immediately got to work! Hair up, basketball shorts on, dust pan in hand, i was determined to make this library run by the time school started, which was a little under a week away. I worked all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. From 8:30-3 with a lunch break for about 20 min. I went home exhausted, and so dirty! But in those three days I turned a storage room into a beautiful library. School starts on Monday and I cant wait to show the kids it. I will also be running the library, which I dont know a lot about, but I am doing research. I also found our that I will be teaching 6,7 and 8th grade. My day will start at 8:30-10:00 with the 8th graders then I have a break from 10:00-11:00 where I will be fixing up the library or maybe I will start working on the computer lab ( they have 10 very nice computers that arent being used!!) then from 11:00-12:30 I will have my 7th grade students then lunch from 12:00-1:00. I will end the day with the 6th grade class from 1:00-2:30. Then I will have 2:30-4:00 to lesson plan for the next day. I think it will all work out. I am excited to start teaching, the first day is Monday! Oh, I almost forgot, there is no where in my village to use internet, so I have to go into town to use it, I will try to do this about once a week so you all can stay informed! I will say everything seems to be working out, but I cant shake the feeling of having no friends, I am still new and no one really talks to me. The other Peace Corps members live in town or far from me. I also feel like I am losing touch with my friends back home, leaving me feeling like I have no friends. Dont forget about me! I still miss you all so much! I talk to my host mom a lot, but sometimes I have no idea what she is saying to me. So we watch old episodes of desperate housewives and bond over that. Well thats all for now, next time I write I will have news about my first week of teaching!

First week in Yap

Well, as you all read, my last post was a little down, so I thought I should let you all know I am doing much better. Yesterday I caught the bus into town, which picks me up right in front of my house ( how nice is that) and it is only $1 to get into town. A taxi on the other hand is $5.75 one way. Because of this I am going to take the bus as much as I can into town. But, heres the catch, it only runs Mon.-Fri. 6:30 it picks up and 4:45 it takes you back to the village from town. So when school starts that could become harder to do. I spent my first day unpacking, because I am a nut when everything is cooped up in my bags! My room is very nice, I have a bed and a closet and a night stand. I bought a fan because there is no way I could sleep through the night without one, for one because it is so hot and for two I can't stand the sound of the bugs. My house is also very nice, there is a kitchen with a sink with water that is purified! So I now don't have to worry about boiling my water.(which I never worried about at my last house either because my host mom or sister would already have it boiled any time I needed water - I was their little princess, ugh! I miss them) We have an indoor shower, and although it doesnt have hot water it is very nice! We also have an indoor bathroom, but it doesn't work :(, so I have to use the one across the street at the laundry mat. Yeah! You hear right! We have a laundry mat across the street!! I did laundry today and it is the first time I have been able to dry my clothes since being here and man, that was nice! I am living with an older women (65) and her grandson (11). My host mom is very funny and nice, she loves to talk to me although comunication can be a little hard considering her english is not very good. But somehow through broken English and my broken Yapese we figure eachother out. On my second day here i walked to the very nice sports complex with Anderson (the 11 year old grandson) he doesn't talk much, but the silence was nice. It is about a 35 min. Walk to the sports complex from my house. Here they have a full court indoor basketball and volleyball court, a full outdoor track with a soccer feild in the middle, a baseball feild and a full weight room, with a boxing bag!! 😍 I met the guy who runs it and he is an ex peace corps who got married and stayed on the island. He is very nice and I told him I was willing to help in anyway possible. Hopefully later on I will be able to coach or even play some sports myself! The Yap games are going on now, which is a competition between all the villages in all of the youth sports, so later that night I walked back to the sports complex with Anderson and we watched girls volleyball all night long. We got a ride home from a women in our village who knew Anderson. She asked me if anyone had shown me around Gagil, which is the village I live in, and I said no. So she then said "tomorrow I will show you around" The next day, sure enough, she showed up at my house and we walked all morning. She took me to the beach where we watched her kids (she has two little girls ages 4 and 6) play in the ocean and we drank coconuts under the trees. It was really nice to have someone show me around who was around my age. She had a cell phone so we exchanged numbers. The next day I wanted to go explore Colonia, the town. I wanted to see how easy the bus was and find things like the bank and post office and where the grocery stores were. I was about to explore all of town in less then half a day. It is very very small. Infact the whole island of Yap is very small. I got grocerys, went to the public library got some lunch and some wifi at lunch. Which it turns out that there are not a lot of places that have internet except for the one resturant I ate lunch at. Good thing the food is good, I bet I will be back. I also met with one of our response team members and he introduced me to some other volunteers on the island. They are going to be teaching at the high school and are going through a program with their church. They all live together, there are 5 of them, but I only met 2, hopefully in the upcoming weeks I will be able to meet them all. I still have not met my principal, but he is my host moms brother, she has scheduled us to meet on Sunday after church.( my host mom found out I was catholic and was so happy, she can't wait to take me to church) school doesnt start untill Sept. 1st so I still have time to get adjusted. I am going back into town tomorrow to get some tape and meet with another Peace Corps Volunteer. I ate lobster for lunch! Thats right, lobster! The food here on Yap is much better, there are much more freah veggies and fruit ready to be eaten. I even found brown rice and wheat bread. I already feel healthier. I am feeling much better then I did before, but I am still adjusting.

New home

I have made it safely to my new home in Yap. I am feeling exactly the way I knew that I would feel, alone. We stayed in a hotel the night before our flight so I left my Pohnpein family on Friday. On Thursday they through a huge fest for me. They even killed and roasted a whole  pig just for me! It was amazing and it really showed how much they cared about me. They also spent all day sewing me 3 new skirts! They are absolutely beautiful! I realized that day that I was really a part of the family... And it was going to be so hard to leave them! Friday we spent the night in a hotel, then we left at noon on Saturday to the airport. At the airport my host family was waiting for me to send me off. This just shows how great they were. We flew all day Saturday, Pohnpei to Chuuk, Chuuk to Guam and Guam to Yap. In Yap we were greeted by a traditionally dressed women, so yes she was topless. We got our luggage, and were off to the hotel for the night. The hotel was very nice! We had a meeting on Sunday morning, then my new host mother came to pick me up. I am now living with just a 65 year old women and her 11 year old grandson. Which is very different from the last host family I was in. I spent the day unpacking and organizing what will be my new room for the next two years. Transitioning to knew places is always hard for me, but this time I find myself home sick times two. One for my family back in the states and one for my family back in Pohnpei. I will never forget them. As I start my new journey here in Yap I must remember that I was very homesick in the beginning in Pohnpei and so it is normal to be while in Yap too. The village I am living in is very small, one store, one school and thats about it. My host mom doesn't have a car so getting into town could be hard, even though it is doable, I dont know how much I will actually do it. The bugs are worse here then they were on Pohnpei, but I will just continue killing the ants as the walk across my arm, chest or legs. Today was not an easy day for me, but I have to believe it will be better. 

Discloser

To who it may concern, 

The thoughts on this blog are that only of me, Jennifer Caquelin, and do not reflect the views or thoughts of the Peace Corps.