Friday, October 9, 2009

3 Month Update

Hello everyone,

I am quickly approaching the three month mark in Pohnpei. I am pretty settled into my house now and everything is getting much easier. School is going very well and my students are progressing nicely. We just finished our midterms for this semester. The high school that I am working at has a schedule similar to college classes. We have 4 classes a day, each 1.5 hours each. I will be getting a new set of students next year for algebra. It is very crazy trying to teach them all one year of Algebra II in 4 months. But...it is going well so far. It is pretty tiring teaching for 6 hours each day. Next semester I should only have 3 classes which will be a huge break for me.
I have some more pictures from the past 2 weeks. I was able to take another trip out to Ant Atoll this past weekend. I was able to do some more spear fishing, some lobster hunting, and coconut crab hunting. I am pretty confident that if I was every stranded on a deserted island that I might actually be able to survive with all of these new skills that I've acquired.
The past two weeks we had a guest on the island from Kuwait. Matt is a soldier in the army and has been stationed in Kuwait for a while now. He took a vacation to Pohnpei because one of his military friends was from Pohnpei. So the past two weeks we have been doing a lot of cool stuff with Matt's friend's family here. His family brought us out to Ant and took a few of us out to go shark fishing last week.
Here is a picture of Matt and I going out spear fishing at Ant. This picture give you an idea of how tan I am. I am going to have the best tan when I return in June 10.



We had a very successful spear fishing trip. We swam out from the island a really long way into some of the deeper water and we ran into this huge mound of coral. There were some bigger fish and some sharks swimming around. It was between 30 and 40 feet deep at the coral so it was quite a workout getting to the bottom to shoot some of the fish. I had to equalize 3 to 4 times on the way down. I'm getting much better at holding my breath and going much deeper to get to the bigger fish. We shot an angel fish, parrot fish, UD fish (they are blue and gold), and a strange looking fish with really tough skin (looked like a zebra but black and blue). Here is a picture of me coming up from the bottom with a speared fish.




While I was out spear fishing on Sunday morning a tornado touched down in the lagoon and made a water spout. I did not see it because I was swimming around but here is a picture of the water spout. I will have a better picture sometime soon.



On Saturday night Reiner, the Pohnpeian who took us to Ant, took us lobster fishing on the reef. It was a full moon on Saturday night and that is the best time to get lobster. We went out hunting for them around 10 pm (low tide) and came back around 12. To catch these lobsters you have to take a flash light and find them on the shallow reef and then you have to stab them with a spear before the next wave comes and they swim away. We were successful in catching 4 lobsters which we ate for breakfast Sunday morning.

Another Pohnpeian who came with us (Barney) went hunting for coconut crabs in the jungle. He came back with 3 huge coconut crabs that we ended up eating for lunch on Sunday afternoon. To catch one of these crabs is pretty difficult but it is well worth the struggle. You have to walk around the jungle at night and then find one of their burrows. Then you have to smoke them out with a burning stick. Once they come out of their hole then you have to grab them. This is probably the toughest part because you are risking your fingers. The crabs are gigantic and I think that they could probably take a finger off if you happened to get bitten by one of the big ones. I can say that coconut crab is the best tasting crab that I have ever had. It was way better than king crab legs. I will probably only have these a few times in my life and it is the best treat ever. The shells of the crabs are super tough. I don't think that crackers from home would be able to break their shells. We had to find some coral hammers and smash their shells between pieces of coral. It was a lot of work to get to the meat but it was well worth it. If you ever have a chance to eat one...don't pass it up. Here is a picture of Sunday morning breakfast...lobster, reef fish (grouper, Parrot fish, bullock, bullock ...top to bottom), and a picture of a coconut crab. This crab is not one that we caught but it does represent what we had. I forgot to take a picture of the crab.





The trip to Ant was awesome and the boat ride home was amazing as well. It was pouring the whole way home and we were flying through mangrove swamps dodging logs and plants. I wish I had a video of the trip through the mangrove because it was insane. The boat drivers clearly knew the way but they made it seem like we were just barreling through these mangroves with no clear direction at all. It was awesome.

This past Tuesday I went up to one of the local waterfalls with some friends and did some swimming and cliff jumping. Here is another picture of the waterfall in Nett that I posted about on a previous blog. You can see me on the left side of the photo climbing up the rocks.




Here is a picture of a white tipped reef shark that was swimming around me while I was spear fishing. These are the most docile sharks in the area. When I was at ant a larger black tipped reef shark was swimming around me but I did not get a picture of it. Hopefully I will get a picture of some of the bigger sharks sometime.




This weekend I might be hiking up Sokehs rock. Here is a sunset picture with Sokehs rock in the background.




I have skype working now and if you want to call me just search for me on skype.

my skype name is tyler.rabe

I will probably be online friday and saturday nights (at home) if you want to talk.

Also, some people have expressed interest in sending letters and packages here. So if you want to send a letter or something my address is below.

Tyler Rabe
World Teach
PO Box 2378
Kolonia, Pohnpei 96941
Federated States of Micronesia

Talk to you soon.



Tyler