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!