Major Update on Life

Hello!  We have lots of fun things to blog about this time including spear fishing, youth fellowship, nearly burning down the school, dolphins, sharks, volleyball and rainbows.  We have had a good but busy last few days as the 1st quarter at school ended on Saturday.  Hard to believe 1/4 of the school year is done already.  Still feels like we just got here sometimes and time is going by fast!

We started leading the high school youth fellowship at the church here and have really enjoyed that.  We have enjoyed the kids and we feel like it is going really well.  We do it on Monday nights, with 3 weeks on and then 1 week off.    We are glad to be able to be a part of it!  

This week there was some extra excitement in Matt's 1st period class.  His room smelled bad when he got there in the morning because he had forgotten to clean up a lab that involved eggs.  So he put a candle on a burner to melt the candle and mask the smell.  Well the burner was up to hot and broke the candle and the wax spilled out and started on fire.  Before he got the burner out of the room and vented out the smoke the fire alarms were going off and the entire school had to be evacuated. The fire department came and it was very embarrassing, but students and people around the island like calling him fire chief when they see him around now.  

Also, volleyball season is starting up which will keep us busy.  Mindi is coaching the 9th grade team (Matt is helping) and we are playing on our own team in the rec league as well.  This will be a lot of fun with our first game tomorrow, but we are learning how out of shape we are!  

We went out spearfishing again this weekend and had a lot of fun.  A couple things were pretty awesome, the first happened just after we started fishing.  We heard some high pitched squeals in the water and found ourselves swimming right alongside a pod of dolphins.  There were probably 50-100 of them just swimming and jumping in and out of the water about 50 feet from us.  We had been hoping to see some dolphins since we got here, but to see them for the first time swimming around us was awesome!!!!  We were pretty shocked and we just sat there in awe for a while as they swam past us.  

Then after we had been fishing for awhile Matt shot and actually hit a fish for the first time!  He was pretty excited about that!  The picture above shows him trying to take aim at one of the fish.  I don't know who was more surprised, the fish or Matt for actually hitting it!!  Either way we are going to grill it up today or tomorrow sometime!

 Here is Matt proudly displaying his surgeon fish.  It was all black until it turned this striped pattern in the picture when he hit it with the spear.  During the spear fishing trip we also had a giant manta ray swim right up next to us and we saw a lot of sharks!!!  Sometimes we thought there were more sharks than anything else, and we had to move spots once because there were to many sharks and at the end we had to get out because the sharks were starting to become to "ornery," as the more experienced fishermen call them when they won't swim away.  These are the sharks that are actually dangerous..... Mindi was so frightened since you know they could have eaten her! Matt didn't think there was anything to be afraid of....But that is a man speaking! As we were boating home from the spearfishing it was raining really hard in the distance, which created one of the best rainbows we have ever seen.  It literally looked like it was coming out of the water just a little ways away.  It was pretty awesome! It seriously seemed like that was the closest we have ever been to a rainbow!

We got another fun scuba dive in that was highlighted by this sleeping blacktip reef shark.  It just kind of sat there on the bottom of the sand and let us swim around it and look at it.  

We went and ate out by the sunset one night and took a few pictures on the end of the island.  So here we are after getting takeout from one of the island's finest restaurants (subway).

A few other things:  Happy Birthday to Lynn Gerber!  Way to go dad!  Remember, age is just a number!

Sandy and Cal booked flights out here, Matt's uncle and aunt are going to come  visit and Lynn and Sue are going to be here in about 6 weeks!  We couldn't be more excited for all of them to come!!!!

We love and miss you all so very much!

Matt and Mindi

Scuba Diving

Here are few pictures from our most recent scuba dive.  This was a walk in dive off the Northpoint of the island into the lagoon.  When we were walking in there were some clouds building up and while we were under water it poured very hard and we could see all the drops coming down on the surface of the water.  Luckily we didn't get soaked by the rain while we were diving!  When we came back up, the storm had passed and we had a great time diving.

Here is Mindi in about 40 feet of water

This is looking up the reef after we went over the first drop off, which drops from 10 feet to about 40 feet 

Here is Matt posing in front of a coral head

This little puffer fish wanted its picture taken!  These things are pretty common and they swim around like a fish pushing around a baseball.  We haven't seen any puff up yet, but they are weird fish to watch swim around because they are slow and clumsy.  

School and Spearfishing

Here are some pictures of our classrooms (where we spend most of our time), and a picture from Matt's spearfishing trip.

Here is what students see when they walk into Mindi's room.  

This is what the class looks like from Mindi's podium.  From here she has a great vantage point to keep an eye on all 10 of the students in her biggest class!

Once a week one of her students has to select a place in the world to present a short "travel guide" about the location.  They usually make some food that would be traditional to the place and the class spends a few minutes learning about different places in the world. They map where they have been on this bulletin board.  Also, Mindi keeps track of birthdays on the calenders and they celebrate them! (thanks, Carla)  The students really like it. 

On this bulletin board students have to present a world or U.S. news story to the class.  On the red board her students get see pictures of their teacher when she was in school and growing up.  

 This is my classroom from the front door.  The walls are all painted like the ocean with dolphins and turtles and marlin and fish everywhere.  The tables don't move around, so this is the way it must stay.  I like it for the most part.  The huskers have one of the bulletin boards up front and we have a pick the score contest every week.  There is no football here, so often the score predictions are something like 89-58 or 19-4 or something like that.  Might have been well served to avoid a pick the score game this last weekend.

This is a picture I took when spearfishing last weekend.  Spearfishing was a ton of fun and something we hope to do again.  What you do is you snorkel around until you see the type of fish you are hunting, like grouper.  Then you have dive down about 30 feet to where they are hiding in the coral below.  You have to have enough breath to steady yourself, wait for it to stop moving, shoot it and then pull it in.  That is where it gets tricky.  Because the moment the fish is hit by the spear it starts bleeding and vibrating like crazy, which attracts the sharks.  And the sharks will literally take the fish from you.  So you have to get the fish pulled in against your body because the sharks don't want anything to do with you, they just want the fish.  When this guy, another teacher, shot the black fish at the top of the picture i was suppose to watch for sharks and drive them off if they were getting too close.  When he got to the surface one followed him up and was about 6 feet away from me.  I kicked my fins at it and it swam off, but that was pretty exciting.  I had 4 shots at groupers, and missed every single time.  It didn't do me much good to scream in anger 30 feet under water though. 

Traveled to Ebeye

This weekend we went to Ebeye, which is the island 6 miles to the North of Kwajalein up the reef.  Ebeye is an island about half the size of Kwaj, but home to nearly 12,000 people.  Ebeye is considered a third world nation and has no American presence on the island.  It really opened our eyes to what life is like for the Marshallese.  We walked the island and observed the living conditions of the residents of the island.  From a teaching perspective, it was very good to see where some of our students live.  The people were incredibly friendly and all of the little kids wanted to give us "high fives" when we would walk past them.  We were also able to enjoy a restaurant on the island, our first sit down restaurant since we left Nebraska!  Check out the pictures below for a glimpse of the island.

A young girl was washing her clothes in the ocean.  The water supply is not always available to the Marshallese.

Housing consists of piecing together wood scraps and tin pieces that people can find.  

Only half of the kids have the option of going to school due to limited availability of space.  Therefore, at all hours of the day you will see young children out and about with out any adult supervision.  

Here is a graveyard and a house in the background.

Basketball is one of the most popular sports on the island.  This picture was taken during school hours, so we assumed these were some of the kids with out the opportunity to attend school.  

Fishing...sort of.

We are now fully into the swing of school and work and haven't had as much time to post on here as we would like, but are thankful for a day off today to post a few things.  School is going well and we are enjoying our classes and the students.  We are working hard, but liking it.  In the last week we started our scuba certification classes and had fun watching the huskers play early Sunday morning.  Here are a few pictures and some stories to go with them.

This weekend we were able to go out with some people who have a boat and they took us to a few awesome places around the lagoon.  This is called the Prinz Eugen and it is a German tanker that was captured during WWII.  It was taken to Bikini Atoll where it was used to test the effects of the first Nuclear Bomb.  After the test it was dragged to our island, and it had enough damage that some high winds came up and it was turned over.  It is well over 100 yards long and was pretty fun to snorkel around.  Many people have carved their names into the boat over time and it is now mostly covered in rust and coral.

Last Sunday I had the chance to go fishing with a few guys, so Mindi and I boarded a boat and went out.  We only caught one fish and i got to reel it in.  Our fishing trip was cut pretty short though.

Our fishing trip was cut short because I got so incredibly sea sick that we had to come back.  This is me finally back on the dock trying to stop throwing up.  It was pretty miserable.  I got sick on the way to the fishing spot, and couldn't quit "chumming the water" as they call it when someone throws up over the side of the boat.  After letting my breakfast go a few times we got the first bite and the guys on the boat started yelling at me to go to the back and reel it in.  I went back there and started to reel it in, but it was about 200 yards out and they didn't slow down the boat to make it easier.  After 10 minutes of them screaming at me to reel faster and being called an assortment of names for how slow i was going we finally got the fish into the boat and i headed straight for the railing so i could dry heave some more.  I found out that the first time someone goes fishing they make them reel the fish in by themself, instead of taking turns at it, and they scream at them the whole time to speed up.  After that my stomach and my arms hurt.  Anyways, i was leaning over the edge of the boat after the fish was in, just trying to stop throwing up, when one of the big waves (They were about 10 feet that day) crashed over the side of the boat and completely took me out.  It was at that point that I thought we had better go back or I may leave my stomach out to sea.  Oh, and i better add who didn't get sick, my wonderful wife who is much tougher than I!  The other guys who were fishing like to remind me of that fact when i see them.  I will try some dramimine or something next time we go out.

We saw our first turtle while snorkeling on Monday!  I tried to swim after it, but this is the closest I got.

Some other fish we saw while snorkeling.

Anyways, that is a small update from the last week, and it was nice to have a long weekend with labor day. 

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.