You thought Oneonta was hard...

Sabbath Mwahu! I'm sitting in my apartment at our table, which is actually some piece of lawn furniture, but it's one of the nicest pieces of furniture we have. We love plastic things here, they are easy to clean, don't rust or get all moldy as fast as other things. It also isn't infested with termites! We have a problem currently in our apartment with termites. Our termites come out in holes at night and sprout their wings. They are attracted to anything bright - computer screens, blinking oven lights, light bulbs, anything. We have started trying to trap from coming out, but since I ran out of duct tape we've been using band-aids. It looks like our kitchen has a lot of owies. This is a problem. Cockroaches don't seem to be much of a problem right now, I traded 3 cups of chocolate chips to get 10 cockroach traps from Carl that he got in the mail. They seem to be working! I keep finding cockroach wings on the floor and little shriveled up legs in the corners....victory? I don't want to speak too soon. They might hear me and get inspired.

I feel as though it is necessary to backtrack my records. Before all that hospital stuff, sickness, and general yuckiness, we went on one adventure that I am sure never to forgot (actually, I probably will forget - so obviously that's why I'm writing this down).


Most of the other teachers got smart and decided not to go on this adventure, because they would be too physically and mentally exhausted to be effective teachers the next day. True. But...whatever. I wanted to go! We woke up early, and it was raining. We met a few other people from around the world (Lebanon, Sweden, Australia, and us - America!), and we jumped in the back of the truck and departed from Wall-Mart (yes that's right, Wall Mart). It was a long windy bumpy drive into Kitti (pronounced, Kitchie). We all got out and after a quick bathroom break in the jungle (Carley and Kelsey's first time! Haha) we started our trek on the ...6 WATERFALL HIKE..... Now, I knew it was going to be muddy and exhausting, but I didn't realize it would be mainly due to all the balancing maneuvers. Walking on slippery mud and rocks down huge cliffs and then up again demands a lot of your cerebellum. It's like walking next to a river, on all those tiny little rocks, for miles and miles. But it's all worth it. Every mile or so or sometimes all at once you'll see huge, amazing waterfalls. As you may have guessed, six waterfalls. To get to the sixth watefall, you literally have to swim there. I also almost slipped and died at one point on this hike, I lost my grip and almost fell off this tiny cliff with lots of nice sharp rocks perfect for slicing my head open. David heard me yelping and grabbed my arms and just pulled me up. I took a wrong turn, haha. On this hike you don't want to get badly injured- Think how long it would take to actually get help. You'd be so dead.


David fell, hurt his knee with a bad cut. Carley, otherwise known as "mud-butt," fell, and then fell, and fell again. I only had one particularly embarrassing fall. Because I fell two feet and then into a big pool of water. One waterfall had a cave behind it, the other had a shoe covered in moss. Each was breathtaking. Trekking through that jungle it really feels like you're some kind of world-explorer, Indiana Jones type adventurer, about to see something in the wild that no one has ever seen before. Well, except this is a pretty popular hike for Micronesian tourists. But that's the thing, there's not that many Micronesian tourists- ha.

Our group made it back first, of course. We waited around at the truck for hours (...15 minutes?) for the rest of the group to get there. What an exhausting, ridiculous, insane hike. Even though it's was humid, hot, and covered in tropical plants, the hike reminded me so much of home. I'm a world class-northwest-waterfall hiker. Columbia-Gorge is my specialty. Being surrounded by green, looking up at these huge beautiful cascading waterfalls. I could close my eyes and almost pretend I was looking up at Horsetail, Ramona, or even Multnomah, with my Dad right next to me eating some trail mix.

I'm so insanely blessed to have seen so much beauty in my life. I just want to see more and more.

Also, I also might have gotten the virus that landed me in the hospital while on this hike. Maybe I should have stayed home ;)