Away

It's a weird feeling, being away. You are voluntarily placing yourself in year long isolation from everything familiar. Friends, family, food, even your standard of living. Old expectations are abandoned and new ones are formed on the basis of totally difference standards. It used to be that I measured a good nights sleep by the comfort of my pillows, the arrangement of my comforter, or how often my dog started barking in the middle of the night. The constant presence of home often became claustrophobic. "I need to get out of the house!" or "let's go out and do something!", purely because sitting in the same two story building with only 4 people becomes pretty much unbearable after four hours.

Today I am thinking about all the people I know that chose this year to be "away." My best friend left this year to live 12 hours away from the place she has lived her entire life, just to "get away" and be on her own. The group that I was inseparable with for an entire year is now stretched across Alaska, Costa Rica, California, and Micronesia. We are all sitting away from each other. Oceans and several time zones apart. Today I miss them, but more than that I pray for them. We are all alone now.

These last two years my family has gone through more separation and distance than we have for my entire life. It's like someone grabbed my home, shook a couple people out of it and through them across the country unwillingly. Those rare, precious moments when we could be together can be counted on one hand. We take so many pictures in those moments, as if those pictures will help the moment last longer when we are all torn apart again. I have one of those pictures as the background on my laptop, but I think staring at is makes it worse.

But I chose to leave, I chose to leave complete and total comfort and familiarity. I left school - my addiction for the past five years. I left my baby nephews, missing out on a year of sweetness and smiles. I left my home, my dogs, and most of all I left my mom and dad. But, my reason for leaving was 100% unrelated to a desire to "get away." I want an adventure, I want a story, I want a live lived with unceasing passion.

Lord I lay me down
Bring me to my knees
I belong to you

Scattered across the world are people that are "away." Away from home, away from friends, and comfort. But what brings me comfort is that no one is ever really alone. I have heard it before, "God is always with you Kelsey!", but it hasn't been tangible for me. I like to think of it like this: God is all around. God shows himself to you in others. God can be revealed in the hearts of strangers, church members, and even little kids that barely know their ABC's or rebellious high school students that can't identify North America on a map. God is also in me. Every time I stand in front of my 85+ students and read a bible verse or pray for them on a quiz, I think He is with me. He knows that I want an adventure, a story, but He wants more for me than I could ever imagine.

Stephanie and I after she placed flowers in my hair.

Kaselehlia Mango? Kdub?

This weekend was stuffed full of ADVENTURE! All starting off with a ridiculously awkward Friday vespers service at Kolonia SDA (the largest church here on the Island, the pastor is also the chair of the school board here). The asked me to play piano, then kept requesting songs that I have never heard of, and when I turned to the number in the hymnal I was wonderfully surprised to find out that I had a complete different hymnal!! Then during another song, everyone started off key, so accompanying them became impossible. It was a very fun experience, one I hope to never repeat but most likely will quite often.

Saturday we split up. Those who had "Island families" in Kitti Church went to Kitti (a town on the opposite side of the Island) and those with family Kolonia just went there (it's about 5 min away). Unfortunately, it's been raining so much lately and everyone got soaked on the way to both churches. But that is sort of a common theme here in Pohnpei, and honestly getting soaked feels so nice in contrast to the sticky humidity. The church service was nice, and I am most likely going to be helping out with the Kolonia youth sabbath school. The youth room needs so much work though because of the SMELL. You see, the whole Church is in front of a huge pig pen, and at certain times of the day the stench is just revolting. The room also needs to be cleaned very badly, and hopefully we can help out with that. It's one thing to be hot and sticky without any fans, but then to have the smell of pigs wafting through the breeze...ugh

That afternoon we were invited to visit a couple here on the Island who are both American/Brazilian. Each year the sort of open up their home to the SMs and try to offer us a kind of, "home away from home." Their home is located up a crazy muddy road in Kitti, and unfortunately one of our trucks got stuck so a couple guy/girls including myself had to push the truck out of the mud.

This is their backyard - jealous? Although, it is surrounded in mud haha.




Marcus stuck the truck in the mud. Whoops.


She made soup for us.....mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm SOUP

Once we made the trip back we arrived at campus just in time for family gym night, which because of my swollen ankle I did not partake in. But my family wasn't there anyways... in the mean time some of us decided to have frog races. Since the ground is literally COVERED in frogs at night.




Sunday morning, though it was pouring, we embarked on our trip to Nahlap! A beautiful island which is about a 20min boat ride that leaves from Kitti. Unfortunately we have all been eating a little too much rice, so the guys and a couple girls (including myself) had to push the boat forever. Finally we cleared the muck and were able to make it to Nahlap. It probably only took me 5 minutes to run to the other dock and get my snorkel gear on to start exploring! It was breathtaking. Clown fish, parrot fish, needle fish, blue starfish, pink starfish, sooooo beautiful. The water was so clear and warm, covered in funny sea cucumbers :) Nahlap is such a beautiful island, full of little tin huts that you can camp at or hang up your hammock. The boat ride cost 4 bucks (even though we had to push the boat...) and we all managed to enjoy ourselves.


Pushing the boat. I got out and pushed for a while but of course fell in the mud on my way back into the boat haha.





That's Pohnpei mainland on the right - the area of Kitti.


Marcus, me and Carl. Hanging out after snorkeling like pros.


The ride back was accompanied by a stop in the lake to wash off the salt water. Then after taking a shower we all enjoyed a wonderful dinner at "Cliff Rainbow." Salad, french fries, vegetables, iced coffee! So delicious. But I unfortunately took an asprin right before downing a cup of iced coffee, and the result was unpleasant. I became crazy, shaky, and anxious!! Remind me not to down caffeine after going off of it for 2 months while also taking a blood thinner. Hahaha.

Tomorrow is our first day, but it is only a half day in which we will just be discussing syllabus and class procedures. Wish me luck and please pray for all of us as we start getting into our routine. Many of us are nervous and overwhelmed at this new responsibility. I will be teaching three sections of World History, two of US History, and one World Geography. I have over 85 students total, and will be up and at the school from 7:30-4pm. I am just anxious to get into the swing of things - I think it will actually help the slight "achey" homesick feelings throughout these first couple weeks as the shock of being completely away from family and home starts hitting me, and the other teachers here.


I am also attempting to fix the digital piano in the chapel. I need to take it apart and see if the hammers are broken first, and then hopefully order new parts. It is a good digital piano, but had about five keys that are not functioning. I'm hoping that this will fix it and I won't destroy the piano in the process ;)

Love you all, please pray for me as I start my first week as Ms. Kellar in Room 3.

Drowsy Days

Little Esther :) The Principal's daughter

Paul, this little crazy kid that runs around the school during the day and helps me set up my new board!

I quizzed them on History questions for an hour which they loved, haha.

Well, not much has happened here in Kolonia. We have been busy with orientation each morning, and today I spent most of the day working on lesson plans and a syllabus for my two (most likely three) classes: World History, US History, and Geography. I have the best classroom in my opinion and I am so thankful - it is bright, breezy, and beautiful. Fairly clean with new desks and two big chalk boards.

This afternoon Carly, Carl, David, Brandon, Marcus, and I all took the truck out around Kolonia looking for a good place to eat with no luck. We just ate at Angies, which is not the best place haha. But I got some Ice Cream - ahhh it tastes so good :) Tonight everyone came over to our apartment, made banana pancakes with whole wheat flour (with my urging haha) and played mafia! I was killed off instantly and of course I was the mafia and everyone suspected me. Tomorrow is the first day of registration, and no I don't exactly know what that entails as far as my duties but I guess I will find out!!

Sunday we are going out to surf and snorkel, so I am extremely stoked to try out my gear. Unfortunately I sprained my ankle while walking around in flip flops with my huge books so I have an iced, wrapped ankle elevated on my bed :( Hopefully it is better by tomorrow! Probably not. Ahhhhhhhhh. Miss you all!!!

Island Time

Hello from Pohnpei! Kaselehlie maingko!! Ia iromw?

Hello from Pohnpei Apartment 6! Currently I am sitting on my bed sharing a fan with Carley. We fight over proximity to the fan and the perfect equal spot that the fan rotates between us. Before I talk about the wonderful things that went on today I want to discuss a little of the...interesting... things that occurred after we all got settled in. Friday we woke up and deep cleaned the apartment. We successfully killed five cockroaches, hundreds of spiders, two earwigs, and located two friendly geckos :) Paul is a boy that kind of wanders around campus here (his mother works for the government here) and he helped us destroy our friends few unwelcome guests.

Friday afternoon we got to go to Twin Falls and swim in one of the smaller but still BEAUTIFUL waterfalls!! We climbed into the back of the trucks and rode for about 20 minutes up this gravel road to swim in the falls. It was amazing. (Photos all stolen from Christina D, who has a waterproof camera :D)
It was kind of just a huge current pool - it was exhausting swimming around that waterfall! But at some point several of us swam from the left of the waterfall underneath it, climbed up a few rocks and jumped into it!! It was amazing.


It was SO refreshing to jump in that cool water. We would prefer it if every single afternoon consisted of waterfall jumping.

After that we went to a 6pm vespers held at the SDA church. It was a nice vespers, quite short, which is unusual! The weather was not too hot, and we left and went back home to sleep. Saturday though, was quite a long day.

Residents of apartment 6: L to R, Carley Holm (2nd Grade), Kelsey Hebard (3rd Grade) Brittany Jacobson (sub and office), Sophie Anderson (PE) and myself! After the church service was over we all looked like this, except completely drenched.

Church was fun, for sabbath school I played a song on the piano and sang, and during the church service I sang with Sophie, Nikki, and Jalisa a quartet to "How Deep the Fathers Love." One of the guys here from Union, Carl Dupper, played the accordion - he played It is Well and was of course a big hit, most of them have never seen such a funky lookin' instrument!! During the church service we were all dedicated. The congregation spoke to us in unison, as did the children and the pastor. We were all given beautiful flowers, and they prayed for us. It was so amazing to see people truly appreciating of our commitment to come teach for a year. They give us so much respect. Many of the church members and even elders are products of the SM teaching program, some have even gone to University. They value us as teachers, which makes us, in turn, value them and their support. They have trusted us with helping to educate and minister to their children!

One of the big issues here on the island is what to do on Sabbath. There have been issues in the past supposedly with teachers going on hike and swimming, which unfortunately in their culture is not really appropriate. I think it has something to do with the fact that many of the people that go to the ocean or waterfalls to play drink, so it has negative connotations. That means we either get to lounge in our apartments or outside in the hammock.The other option is going with the church members to the Hospital - I was not up for it yesterday and our apartment stayed back to rest up and prepare for the vespers as we were going to lead out for the sunset service.

For the service each of us went up and talked about what led us to Pohnpei. Many of the students replied with "Well, Palau was taken!!" haha. haha. I really don't know what specifically led me to Pohnpei so I just spoke about what led me to be an SM. I spoke about my family heritage, the Dutch side of me which consisted of amazing radical adventist missionaries to India - where my Grandpa Kellar was born. I quoted the part in "Over Yonder" (Hymn in the SDA Hymnal) where Uncle Henry (my great uncle) wrote, "Help spread the invitation, tell it to men everywhere." I said that I really just wanted to do something in a position where I felt that I was valuable.

Sunday we had orientation, and that is what leads me to discussing Island Time. Let me tell you...it is also referred to here as "Micronesian Time." I'm sure you've heard of this, but it does not just apply to meetings times. It also applies conversationally. Here they all take their time, details and "getting to the point" are not really important. It may take three people and twenty minutes to answer a question that you're pretty sure you could answer in two. It's essentially a 10 month lesson in patience, and I'm sure by the time I get back to the US I'm going to pick up on it and annoy you all. I spoke with Jesse yesterday and he say's I already do this - but he has NO idea. It is insane :) Patience patience patience patience. We Americans (plus....SOPHIE) just want to start scheduling, decorating, planning...but there is a discussion that goes on prior to that...a slow preamble that is painful for us. But it will just get some taking used to and also some lower expectation for the productivity of meetings here!!!

Sunday night we had the big teacher dinner in the gym!! It basically seemed as if every single SDA on the Island drove out and made us food. At this dinner we were randomly assigned an Island family!


Us before the meeting, all accidentally wore the same shirt :)

Christina and one of her possible 4th graders! Playing around with the kids in the rusty playground. Those kids tired us out!


They sat us all at the end of the gym like honored guests!! It was so weird!

Carl and David stacking up on so much food - bananas, rice, curry, noodles, and of course a plethora of fish - yuckkkk. That will take getting used to! But of course these guys don't mind.

I was assigned to the best family!!! At least in my opinion. The father Mr. Joseph works at the Bank and his wife is a Doctor.


Stephanie is going into 4th grade, (L to R) Alexandara is in the green behind me going into 6th, and Ember is almost 4. There is an older one, Trelan (sp?) who is going to be a freshman in highschool and will be in my history class!! :) They are all adorable and I love them.

Carl brought his Accordion and so of course all the kids went crazy!!!



Carley, Me, and Kelsey :) All happy and well fed with new Pohnpei families!


After that we all went to our apartment and the boys came over to chill out and play a huge game a Dutch Blitz. Christina was the winner of most of the rounds, much to me bitter disappointment. This next week consists of more and more orientation and hopefully some more time to explore the Island. Love you all so much!!

Well, Sophie, Nikki and I just completed P90X and I desperately need a shower. See ya!!!!

Menseng mwahu!!

Kaselehlia!

Prior to taking off for Pohnpei, the Guam Mission leaders allowed us some time to explore O'ahu. In the morning I woke up at 5am and went to Waikiki Beach! It was beautiful and we swam out to a rock wall and watched dozens of surfers attempt to get a good wave. After that we had worship and more meetings until lunch time. Around noon we went to Punchbowl Crater, which is a Pearl Harbor memorial cemetery. It was very beautiful as we climbed up the mountain, and it was extremely fascinating to see the timeline of WWII in the Pacific that they had tiled into the walls.

Each of the walls had depictions of battles that had taken place in the Pacific Islands. Micronesia, Marshall Islands, the Marianas, all were fought over in various pivotal battles throughout the war in the Pacific.

After that we visited Pali lookout point that looks out at the otherside of the Island. It was very windy but it was beautiful! We ate Lunch there and goofed around.

Carley Holm (My Roommate!) Marcus Peterson, and David Bryson. All Pohnpei!

It was very windy, also very interesting for those in SKIRTS. :)

After having some fun it was quickly ceased by more meetings. They were very informative, but it was very hard to stay awake for a 2 hour meeting straight through after having so many meetings already. We were all glad when worship was over and we could go pack, weigh our bags, and go to sleep. Those going to Pohnpei, Majuro, Chuuk, or Ebye, had to wake up at 2:30am and get to the bus at 3am in order to board the 6:35am flight. It was insane having all those people line up at the gate with their luggage. We had a huge moving truck take our two large bags to the airport. I don't know of anyone that had a weight problem, so that was very nice! My bags were underweight.

On the plane I sat next to Sophie Anderson and Young Ohsie, both teaching in Pohnpei. I had the window so I konked out for about 2-3 hours. The most amazing thing was looking over the Marshall islands and looking at Majuro.

If you look close you can see Marcus watching his chip dropping on the floor. Haha.

Kelsey Hebard and Carley after 6 hours?

Long strip of Island..the largest in the Marshalls - can you believe it!?

After we unloaded those going to Majuro, we boarded the plane and left for Kwajalein. This is an Atoll that is a military base, we were not allowd to take pictures. They had people come on board and look at all our baggage in a quick check and then we took off! It was a pretty small Island but it had many strange military buildings on it.


Then after about an hour 1/2 we stated our decent towards out new home!!!! We were quite nervous, but in a very excited way. This is how our home looked to us as we started to land:

Franky Edward's (our Principal) little daughter crowned us all with these beauties as we got into the van/bus to go to our school!!


The view from outside my apartment. Can you believe it?

This is our living room!! We have five in here now, Kelsey's sister is coming next week so that will make six. Sophie Anderson and Brittany Jacobson from southern are in one room, Carley and I are in this next room, and Kelsey Hebard and her sister are in the other room. There is a large Kitchen, and one bathroom. Everything is nice, just kind of mucky, and moldy, due to all the moisture! A good clean will do it good tomorrow! We love our room.

We all went to go get Grocery's. For our apartment, we spent about $200. Cereal is around 7 dollars for a small box, a can of corn is about three dollars, but of course you can get enough white rice for months for 12 bucks!! Haha. I don't think our next trips will be that expensive, we needed a lot of cleaning supplies, etc.


Sophie, Brittany and I

After this, we picked up some amazing bananas at a local market, and headed back to the school where the ladies prepared and AMAZING feast for us. Banana patties, banana rolls, brown rice, tofu tomato dish, breadfruit chips, yam chips. It was delicious. The mango's they have are so delicious, I've never seen a mango that orange and it definitely has never tasted as good as the one I had today! The bananas are so sweet!! It is delicious. Bananas are in a lot of meals as they are very inexpensive. I got about, 15-20 small bananas for 60 cents.

After this, torture began. We were told we had a meeting at the church at 6pm. So we went, the church is quite lovely from what I saw late in the evening. But immediately we were separated into men's and women's worship. It was a wonderful talk at least for the women, but it went three hours. We were running on 3 hours of sleep, and we had been awake for 20 hours. This talk was by a lady from Australia who was visiting from Guam. She was very nice and it was a good talk, but none of us could handle it. It was a three hour struggle against the head, fatigue, and ones eyelids. It was unfortunately never ending, and it was the most miserable I've ever felt in a church! It was just unfortunate that we had to attend that meeting on so little sleep. The men also had a very difficult time, they took a view videos of one of the guy's falling asleep and it was so hilarious. We got back and made our beds and finally got internet access! It is wonderful to share this experience with you.

This is my address:

Kelsey Kellar, Teacher
Pohnpei SDA School
P.O Box 518
Kolonia, Pohnpei, FSM 96941

A flat rate box is $15. I can't wait to send things to everyone and write letters but I would also love your letters! Granola and cereal are probably my biggest food wishes at this point. But other than that I am unsure. These next few weeks will be difficult - planning my year out for all my classes and looking at textbooks. But I am excited! I hope we get to see more of this beautiful Island tomorrow - I promise you it's so amazing.

I am sitting in my bed with the fan blowing and the windows open, there is a rainstorm outside and I just saw thunder flash by my window. Love you all!

Hawaiian Mission Academy

Greetings from Honolulu!!

On the plane. Daniel is far left and going to Chuuk, Bradly is in the middle and is going to Majuro (in the Marshall Islands)


Walked about 2 miles from HMA down a busy street downtown to visit a nice beach and huge park next to Waikiki (Ale Moena) and then visited the huge shopping mall (the largest in Honolulu) and purchased myself some Coconut Tea!!


Jalisa (Going to Pohnpei to teach Elementary) Suzie (Going to Saipan to help with little kids program) and Me!



This is upstairs in the classrooms at HMA. We are sleeping in these and they have provided us with some mats.

Beautiful view of O'ahu!

The flight was about 6 hours long and the time passed by very quickly! The flight attendant gave us a movie watching device for free (usually $14) and I watched "Blind Side." We landed and the five of us on the Portland flight met with Jeanne and drove in her husbands rented van to HMA. We passed by Pearl Harbor and the beach and downtown Honolulu. It is so busy here! I am the newbie as most people here have been to Hawaii before but this is a totally new experience for me. What shocked me most was the BLUE blue ocean!! So clear and warm compared to my cold northwest ocean. The beach we went to was man made since the 70s or something, but tomorrow we have the option of going to either Waikiki or Diamondhead. I am not sure what I will do yet, maybe neither. Many of us have been up 24+ hours and are so exhausted. We did not have much downtime today and I led out worship with other girls from Walla Walla (including a fellow ICantori singer who played the piano who is headed for Yap!). We had our first meeting with our Principal from Pohnpei and he seems very nice! We will learn more about teaching etc, in the days to come but ultimately most information will be gained once we actually arrive at Pohnpei and get finalized at orientation.

Love you all! It is nice to have such an "Americanized" western break between home and Pohnpei. Seeing malls and home depots are kind of comforting. But it is so weird for all of us to realize we will not be going home for 10 months. We are have butterflies in our stomachs but are so tired at this point that we can't even think about being nervous or homesick. There is air-conditioning in this room, meaning I will sleep like a baby.

Pray for all the moms and dads tonight sad to see their kids go off into the corners of the world. All heading out to help and spread some of God's love and message all over the Pacific.