Scuba, Spearfishing, and School

Well it has been a few days since we posted, and we have been very busy.  School has had most of our attention as today was the first day with students!  We were both quite nervous when the day began, but it went very well.  Mindi has 7th, 9th, and 10th graders and Matt has 8th, 9th, and 12th grades.  We had some fun with the students today and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I (Matt) can't figure out how to set up his fish aquarium, since the pumps are really old, so I am bummed by that, but that isn't such a big deal.  The kids were really nice and respectful and that made it a smooth transition into school for us.  

The picture above is of a black tip reef shark, and this one got pretty close to me.  Mindi and I were out on the beach and a guy came walking by with a spear gun.  So i asked if i could follow him out into the water and watch him shoot fish.  I followed him and a few minutes later he shot a parrot fish.  He brought the thing up and pulled it off the spear with blood and guts filling the water.  About 30 seconds later this shark, which was about 6 feet long came swimming up to us.  It was very interested in the fish and didn't hang back like the other shark we had seen.  It was swimming around us and toward us.  The guy with the spear gun swam at it and it took off pretty fast and we didn't see it again.  It was pretty awesome!!!!

We went on a discovery scuba dive this week and really enjoyed it.  We just went out into a few feet of water to test it out.  Mindi's eyes are closed in the picture, but it was the only one our instructor took! We are going to start our scuba certification training soon and will be ready to dive in the next month!  We are very excited for that!

Here we are underwater trying out scuba diving!

Bigi

This weekend we were able to go on a field trip up to another island called Bigej, or Bigi as they call it. Only a few families live on this island, but other than that it truly is a remote island in the middle of the pacific.  It was pretty awesome. The coral grew out from the island in sections, separated by white sandy areas with crystal clear water. We wanted to post a few pictures of our outing! We will definitely have to take anyone who visits us here to this amazing place! ;);) I am trying to get the underwater camera down, so here are some fish from there. Other than that, we are doing well, just getting ready for school to start up on Thursday.

We feel like this could be a honeymoon picture, but we are constantly in awe of the fact that we live here. We hope it never settles in.

Here are a few damsel fish that were swimming around us.  They are one of our favorites.

Nemo!  These little fish kept darting in and out of the anemone that was growing with in the coral.

This little fish wanted to play peek-a-boo with us and wanted its picture taken.

On Bigi, the coral heads seem to be larger than the ones around our island.  They grow from a depth of about 25 feet and up to near the surface of the water.

These large clams are one of the coolest things to see since they are so colorful.  This was one of our favorites we found.  When little fish would swim by it would close up to protect itself.

Shark Attack!!!

Ok, there wasn't actually a shark attack, but there was a shark sighting!  We went snorkeling the other day and a little 4' reef shark went swimming by.  He was about 20 yards off, so Mindi was ok!  We had been talking about when we might see our first shark swimming with us, so we were excited when we finally saw one.

Not much else to report.  We have spent a large amount of time in our classroom this week getting ready for school.  As soon as we are both planned through our first unit we are going to reward ourselves by golfing.  Give us a call sometime! We would love to hear how everything is going back home.

Oh, and in case someone has a strong desire to send any care packages to:

Matt and Mindi Gerber
PO Box 495, CMR 701
APO AP 96555-0005

We have been dying for some single packages of Crystal Light mix.  An assortment of flavors would be nice :)  And there are no baked lays anywhere on island!  Mindi prefers sour cream! Of course, since we aren't in Nebraska anymore there is no Dorothy Lynch, either! haha  Oh how we miss some of the delicacies we took for granted back home and figured it never hurts to ask!  Haha we love you all!

Our Private Beach

Hello everyone!  We decided to post some pictures from one of our favorite spots on the island!  It is called coral sands, or what we like to call it, our private beach.  It turns out that people don't really travel very far from their houses around here and everyone goes to the beach close to the residential area.  However, Mindi and I like to ride our bikes a few miles and get away from everyone and come here.  Literally we spent 4 hours here today and we were the only ones for most of the time. We sun tanned (burned places that we missed with sunscreen) and did some snorkeling!

 There is us.....all alone......haha.

This is a trigger fish, very beautiful. Matt got a really good shot since these things are quick and don't like you being close to them. Most of the time Matt tries to get a picture of them they retreat into their holes in the coral. Who knew fish lived in holes?!

These are Damsels. Not sure what else to say about them but they were sweet and there were tons!

Once again, Matt got an amazing picture. This is the largest coral head at the beach. When the sun is out it makes it so much easier to see the color of fish and what you are actually swimming in. When a rain cloud appears and begins dumping it gets kinda murky and a little eerie.... But all is well I haven't been eaten by a shark yet :)

Just one more picture we wanted you guys to see from Coral Sands. 

UPDATE

Things have been going really well. School starts on the 25th and we have been working in our classrooms quite a bit. We still feel like we have a ton of work to do before the first day, but at least we have our wheels turning. We went to church again today and we really do like it there. We feel very comfortable and the worship and sermons have been uplifting. 

On Saturday night we had supper on the beach with a couple teachers and their families. The whole night made us feel like this was becoming home and that we are going to be just fine here. We continue to meet a lot of people and everyone is really nice, helpful, and encouraging. It is nice to wave a familiar faces when we are out and about. 

Our shipment comes in on Sept 7 so it will be like Christmas that day. We are really excited for our things to get here. But, we did go ahead and buy a convection oven and burner so now we are able to do some cooking from our rooms. This is just another aspect that has helped us to feel normal and like we are at home instead of just on a vacation. 

We love and miss you all. You are all in our thoughts and prayers. 

All The Places We Go

Here is a picture of our BQ's. Our windows are the 2nd and 3rd from the left on the 3rd floor!! I thought you would all want to know that. We get to see those palm trees every time we look outside.

This is the a picture of our main street. It is kind of hard to see what all is down this road, but let me tell you! There are three stores - one is like a walgreens, one is like a small department store, and that last is similar to a hardware/electronic store. Oh and there is a beauty shop and post office!

This is the where we are spending most of our meals. It is called the PDR (Pacific Dining Room or Pacific Cafe). The picture shows you the view when you first walk in the door. After the salad bar you can go right and left to get the main dish! It really isn't that bad in fact we have enjoyed most of the meals there.

This is the food court which has Subway, Burger King, Anthony's Pizza, and Baskin Robins. This is also were we went for our first date night on the island. Matt got buffalo wings from Anthony's (they burnt his mouth) and I got Subway. Yes it was very romantic! Although the whole time we were there we wished we were at LAZLO'S :(

CHURCH! This is where we went this last Sunday to church. It is the first open air sanctuary that we have ever been to. It was amazing when we were singing the worship song 'Grace Like Rain' as we watched, smelled, and even felt the rain that was pouring down around us. We really enjoyed the service - the music and sermon were good and we look forward to going back next week.

We love and miss you all very much!!!!!

Update

Hello everyone! With our slow internet we have to wait for large chunks of time to upload pictures (it literally took almost 2 hours to upload these 5 pictures) but we are happy to share it with everyone! We are doing very well, the last few days we have spent some time in our classrooms getting ready for the start of school, which has been nice. We are still adjusting to the time change, which has us falling to sleep pretty early and waking up early as well. Maybe we will convert ourselves into becoming "morning people"! Our room is rather empty as we are waiting on our shipment of stuff to arrive from the states.  Right now no one we talk to seems to know anything about it or when it might arrive.  Therefore, we don't spend very much time in our room, but we continue to enjoy the island and the beautiful scenery around us.  Also, we just got our voicemail set up in our room, so sorry if we have missed anyone's calls and weren't able to get a message.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for us as we continue to transition into this new place. We also need prayer as school gets closer and our nerves increase about teaching. Also, please pray that our shipment will be found and make it to Kwaj rather quickly.

Pictures

This is a view from the 1st tee box at the golf course. Please notice at the left side of the picture there is the pacific ocean. In fact, you can see the ocean from 8 out of the 9 holes. Therefore we will be scuba diving for Matt's balls on a regular basis because of his nasty hook.

This is a picture of a giant radar system on the island that we were able to tour on the first day we were here.  We were able to climb to the top of the radar dish inside of the giant globe and were 80' off the ground.  This is amazing because many people on the island have never had the chance to tour the facility.  We felt very blessed with our tour!

Most stop signs you see are for other vehicles.  However, on our bike ride around the island we have a stop sign for airplanes!  We have to make sure a plane isn't landing or taking off because the blast from the engines could knock us over.

We went out snorkeling for the first time today and it was absolutely amazing!  Only one of our snorkels worked, so we had to take turns, but it was a lot of fun.  We hope to spend plenty of time doing this (with the snorkeling gear that hopefully will arrive with our shipment!).  Hopefully Matt will be more ready for the picture next time!

This was my first attempt with the underwater camera and I am still trying to get the hang of it.  hopefully there will be more to come!

Well, off to bed and we are looking forward to checking out the church for the first time tomorrow.

Pictures Upon Arrival

We have now been on Kwaj for three days and are still trying to adjust to the time change. We have enjoyed riding our bikes around the island to see all that it has to offer. The main draw back is our bottoms are seriously hurting from the 7 mile bike ride we did yesterday. It is safe to say that we haven't ridden a bike in years and are not yet use to it. Good news we haven't fallen YET! The people here are very kind and helpful and we have loved meeting new people. We have many more pictures and information we want to share with you all. BUT here are just a few to begin with!

Our first view of the Atoll! Our island isn't pictured here, but this gives you somewhat of an aerial view of Kwajalein Atoll. Also, this was by far the craziest landing Matt and I have ever experienced. We were praying for the plane to stop before it ran out of runway. AND out of the window you could pretty much only see water. But everything went perfect and we made it to Kwaj safely.

This picture made us realize just how far away from Nebraska we are.

One of the first sights we saw after arriving was this! Yep, right at the marina. The fisherman clean their fish and then throw in the byproducts for the sharks to eat. Someone should tell the fisherman that when you feed things they keep coming back. However, if the sharks are not hungry I suppose they wont bite us! (Don't worry moms I am only kidding - kinda)

The view from one of the beaches on island. It truly took our breath away. It is much more beautiful in person then this picture portrays....Therefore, you should come and visit us :)

Here is our first picture on one of the beaches! Notice the land behind us....that is the opposite side of the island. So where we are standing is the south side of the island.

This is a picture of the first sunset that Matt and I were able to watch. This is from the North shore and looks out across the lagoon toward another island on the atoll. Matt and I also saw a shark chasing a school of bait fish! It was amazing.....and a little scary to think we had swam in that same water an hour earlier!