January

 We wish we had updates from vacations and trips all the time, but sadly we don't!  Life has been settling back into normal the last few weeks as we have finished up the semester, welcomed the Huwes and started dog/house sitting.  Here are some pictures to pass along!

One of the first things we made sure to do with the Huwes was dinner on the beach.  We grilled out and watched the sunset!  Here is a picture of us enjoying a nice evening beneath the stars!  

Here is Mindi walking Gidget.  Dog sitting has gotten us up and out for a walk in the mornings which has been fun.

The sunrises in the mornings are great and here is a picture of us during our morning walk of the dog.  It is worth noting that we hadn't intended on matching that day and we always end up getting a hard time when that happens!

While in Pohnpei we went on a crazy, but really fun adventure that had us riding in lawn chairs in the back of a truck and hiking through the jungle up and swimming through eel-infested waters!  The pictures below depict the 6 waterfall hike we went on while staying at The Village in Pohnpei.

Here we are sitting in the back of the truck.  We are on plastic lawn chairs with the bottom half of the legs cut off.  Just sitting in the back of the truck.  Pretty sure there are laws against that in the US!  They picked us up in the morning to drive us to the other side of the island!

Mindi's face says it all as we were literally hanging on the sides as we raced down the roads and around the corners.  We didn't fall out though, so we'll count it as part of the fun.

Here are the chairs we were sitting in and example of the road we were driving on in the background!  We were sliding around in the back of this truck!  

We rode in the truck for nearly and hour and stopped to have our driver head off into the jungle to find our guide.  He was gone for about 5 minutes and came back followed by the guy above in the picture, who you see here leading us into the jungle during the start of the hike.  He was wearing flip flops as we climbed some seriously steep stuff and looked like a shorter version of rambo.  He carried a machete the whole time to cut the path through the jungle. In many places, the trail was created as we walked on it and he cut through the brush.  

Here is a picture showing the trail.  Or lack there of.  Literally we were tromping through and in the jungle.  in many places the trail was us walking through the stream that cut through the hills because there was no where else to walk.  As you can see in the picture above the hike and trails are as natural as it can get!  We hadn't really been in a tropical rain forest before and it was awesome going through this one.  It is very different than  the Amazon, because there were virtually no bugs out during the day to attack us and temperatures were pretty pleseant!  We still don't know how that guy managed this hike in flip flops, but he said he could do it with his eyes closed since he has been guiding these hikes for a long time several times a week.

Here is us in front of the first waterfall!  It was probably 40 feet high or so I would guess and was very beautiful!

The second was the largest and we swam into it and up to the falls.  We didn't let the eel swimming with us scare us off! haha

Here we are in front of the third waterfall, which emptied into this stream and was breathtaking.  The pictures hardly do it justice, but it was really neat after hiking through the jungle to be in front of these waterfalls.  Parts of Pohnpei get around 400 inches of rain a year, so there is plenty of water to fall!

We had lunch right here in front of the 4th waterfall on the rock we are taking this picture on.  It was a nice break from the hike and a great place to stop and eat!

Here we are for falls number 5.  They were all a bit different and beautiful in their own way for sure!  We definitely counted this as one of the most fun parts of our vacation!

We had to swim through a miniature canyon to get to the 6th and last falls, which is off in the distance.  They said that if you kept going you find more and more falls as you followed the stream up, but this one fell from a cliff and there was no way to get up it or further from here as the trail ended here and we headed back!  This one was really neat as well!

This waterfall was not a part of the hike, but was probably the most spectacular.  We saw this when we went on the Nan Madol tour a few days later.  It was probably 50 or 60 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base.  Seeing these were a lot of fun for sure!!!

Pohnpei Trip

Over Christmas break we were able to take a vacation to Pohnpei, which is the largest island in Micronesia. It was almost a 2 hour flight from Kwaj and we greatly enjoyed the vacation.  It was definitely different than any other vacation we have ever been on, since we have never slept under mosquito nets before or hiked through the rain forest! We were on Pohnpei for 4 nights. and were able to do a lot of fun things.  We went on a 6 waterfall hike, we snorkeled, kayaked, ate at restaurants, explored the island, watched the Hobbit at a movie theater with popcorn, and thoroughly enjoyed our vacation!  This first post is going to highlight our visit, the hotel, and some of the things we did.  Another post will be coming that shows the waterfall hike.

Above is a picture of our room.  It was literally in the jungle.  It was up on stilts on a hill at the edge of the hotel grounds.  You can see the roof is made out of palm frond leaves.  I think the picture above gives a better description than my typing does.  The rooms were stand alone units more like a tree house than anything else

Here is the view from our room looking through the screen windows.  The rooms were open air, with a ceiling fan.  The view was pretty cool, though!  We don't have hills on Kwajalein, so to be up off the water like this was great.

Here is a picture of our room during the day.  The bug nets are pulled up and you can see straight into the jungle around us.

When we came in at night the bug nets had been draped over the beds to keep the misquitoes and other critters off of us as we slept.

This picture shows one of the many geckos in the room every night.  Matt would try to catch them and throw them out, but eventually there was to many and they would just run away so we just let them be.  This was particularly hard to do, because on the first night here one managed to get into the bug net.  Mindi woke up and it was hanging inside the net directly over her head!!!!!!  Quite the way to start our first morning on vacation!  We made sure to tuck the bug net very, very tightly each night after that!

The hotel was very beautiful and offered some great views.  We really liked hanging out in this little gazebo which hung out into the jungle and offered great views!

From our hotel we had a great view of Sokeh's Rock, which is one of the main landmarks on the island. 

We really enjoyed some great food at the restaurant at our hotel and tried to take advantage of it.  Above is a picture right before eating dinner.

Here is the picture we took before dinner on the 2nd night!

It turned into a tradition to take this picture before each meal.  Here we are again out in that little gazebo.

For one of our excursions we took a taxi into the village and walked through a part of the island called Kapingamarangi Village.  The people are densely populated in this area, and it is known for wood carvers.  We were able to see people carving the sculptures that we have as decorations on Kwajalein.

We had the carvers make a nativity scene for us and here is a picture of it.  The guy who carved it is walking through the picture as well.  You can see some of the sharks and other things they have carved in the background.

We were able to go to a real movie with popcorn!  We saw the Hobbit, which was awesome!  It was fun to see a movie that hadn't been released 6 months ago.  This was a lot of fun, and the taxi ride to the and from the theater certainly offered some entertainment as well as we learned about some local folklore and more!

Here is a picture from the ruins on Pohnpei.  There is an anceint city built out on the water called Nan Madol.  The rocks were all moved in by hand and placed here to build islands and a village.  We kayaked through the ruins and observed the old city!

Here is a picture of some locals kayaking through the ruins in a hand made boat out of an old tree trunk.

Our kayaking adventures were not limited to Nan Madol, we also went on a long kayak one afternoon that was around 5 miles.  Needless to say this was an adventure and then some.  I don't know if we will become professional kayakers, though.

Our kayak took us right through the middle of a mangrove swamp!  This was pretty interesting as we hadn't been in a mangrove swamp before.

Pohnpei was a lot of fun!  These pictures definitely do not do it justice! 

One aspect of our trip was the 6 waterfall hike and we will have another post coming soon to highlight that!

Diving with the Pitkins

We were able to do 14 dives over the 2 weeks the Pitkins were out here and we saw a lot of neat stuff!  We saw a number of sharks, rays, turtles, fish, and an octopus or 2!  Here are some pictures of our dives.

Here is a picture of us from the front of our boat right before our first ocean side dive!  Ryan and Leisha had earned their diving certification in the Philippines earlier this year, so it was exciting to take them diving in the Marshall Islands.

This is right before descending on our first dive!  We are near the drop off, close to the island of Carlson! 

Here is Ryan waving to the camera!

Here is the octopus we saw, which was very friendly and photogenic!  It hunted over the reef and flashed its camouflage at us!  If Mindi hadn't seen it, everyone else would have swam right over it as it looked exactly like a piece of coral before it got comfortable with us and turned back to its normal red color.

Here is the octopus moving over the reef.  We all sat around it and watched for about 10 minutes until we had to surface.

Ryan and Leisha diving in the background of this coral!  This picture is near Emon Beach.

Here is a turtle that let us get pretty close to it.  Usually they swim away, but this one swam around us a few times really close!  It looks like something had been chewing on the back of its shell!

Here are Ryan and Leisha on the back of the Ski Boat Wreck just off of Kwaj.  We toured this sunken ship and saw the fish and coral that are taking it over!

We had a great time under water during the break and enjoyed all of the fun things that we saw!

Pictures from Pohnpei will be coming soon!

Holidays with the Pitkins

We were very happy to have Ryan and Leisha Pitkin visit us over our Christmas vacation.  They came from South Korea for 2 weeks and we had a ton of fun while they were here!  Here are some pictures highlighting the trip.  There will be another blog coming with pictures from our scuba dives.

Above is a picture of Ryan golfing at our little course.  This shot was only 30 yards from where he Tee'd off, but it didn't take many holes before he was back to his old form!  

The golf course had a Christmas putting green set up and Mindi and Leisha are laughing about the tags still being on the ornaments used for decorations.  

We had a themed Christmas Eve party at our friends, Mark and Tarah's home.  The theme was footed pajamas. Matt wasn't sure about posting this picture wearing that color, but it is going to be a gift for his dad, so the surprise is up.  Maybe Lynn will wear it to the next Husker party he goes to!  Also, you can see Ryan's excitement with wearing a mickey mouse onesie.  

On Christmas day we went over to Ebeye to watch the dancers.  This picture was taken of a group of our students who performed a dance.  This is a traditional Marshallese Christmas celebration and is truly a site to behold as different dance groups tour through the churches all day performing their choreographed dances.

Here is one of the sunsets we took in on Roi.

We all took pictures on the leaning tree up on Roi.  Here we are sitting on the tree.

We were able to take out a boat for a little while on Roi and here is Mindi and Leisha riding on the front as we troll up to one of the uninhabited islands.  It was a beautiful day for a boat ride!

Here is a picture of that little island with a rainstorm coming in the background

Here are Mindi, Leisha, and Ryan riding the front of the boat.

This is a picture of Ryan and Leisha in front of the sign showing how far it is from Kwaj to different places around the world.

Leisha wanted the perfect angle on this winding palm tree on Roi.  Hope the picture turned out!

We had a blast with the Pitkins!  There will be another post following soon showing our adventures scuba diving!  

We also just returned from Pohnpei, which is in Micronesia.  We will be posting some pictures from there in the next few days as well, but wanted to space out our blog posts a little bit!