My trip to Hawaii: from A to Z; or, Lost in the Supermarket

Aloft aboard a noisy 747 (it's strange, relearning the feeling of it), I watch my tiny island
disappear behind the wings, quickly lost in an overwhelming sea of
Blue. Blue, blue, blue floods my tiny window view. It begins in turquoise, clinging to the sandy
shore, then weeping itself into a deep as azure as the island disappears in the distance,
beyond our limited sphere of vision.
Colored clouds serve as our guideposts, pointing our way toward Hawaii. Like the sea, they too
metamorphose--first a mist, then light, fluffy wisps, then puffy cotton ball clouds, too perfect
for real life. We chase the sunset the whole flight, nipping at its heels.
Dark arrives, at long last, as we near the Honolulu Airport and descend into the glowing
phosphorescence of Civilization.
Emerging from the jetway, I see people, white people, EVERYWHERE. I feel like I'm living in a
Dr. Seuss poem, yet it takes not fishes or driving dogs as its subject, but people.

"Fat people, thin people, short people, tall people,
Old people, young people, big people, small people.
Gee! There are people everywhere--it's frenziness beyond compare--"

my poetic musings are interrupted by a glorious vision. A glimmering dream of green and
white. The long-awaited mermaid heralds my joy, singing the siren song of civilization. I've
no choice but to follow. Free will is a non-entity at this point.

How sweet it is! How rich, how creamy~nirvana has arrived in the (not-quite-so) surprising
form of a 24-oz travel cup (made from several percent post-consumer materials, they'll have
you know): a venti (VENTI!) Caramel Macchiato. Extra caramel. Happiness slides over me
like a drug.
I have officially entered the United Starbucks of America. Screw "immigration"--
Starbucks is my customs.
Joyously, I cry, deep in my soul:

"Kosrae, farewell,
Lihue, hello!"

My honeymoon has just begun, however.
Never before has a simple trip to Safeway so overwhelmed/overjoyed/unnerved/fulfilled me. A
whole AISLE of sliced bread?!
O the wonder! O the extravagance! O the gluttonous capitalist excesses of my homeland that I
have so long (and completely unbeknownst to me) sorely missed. And yet what is that sound?
That dull crash in the distance?
Poipu beach calls! Sun, sand, surf! Best yet, the opportunity to lie around (even walk around!) in
a bikini and short shorts! Will wonders never cease?

Quite knackered from this exhausting day of America, I chill out with a mai tai as I
(psychologically) stretch and purr.
Rest of the trip flies by in a blur, a flurried montage of images; images which become barely
discernible as the week speeds by, our surroundings clear at first, then becoming a blur,
almost in the same peculiar way that people on a subway platform melt into each other as
the train speeds up before, finally, disappearing from view entirely as you plunge into the
dark ahead:

Singing "Grease" in the rain, wiggling my ass across a Hanalei street as I revel in a moment,

Trying a new drink every time (every time) we pass a Starbucks,

Up in the air, flying across a green river valley on a zipline as I scream delightedly and throw
a shaka sign to anyone watching,

Vying for the "Craziest Snorkeler Ever" award with my mom, as we fight five foot waves and
a beastly current in order to meet our stated objective of "seeing fish on the east side of the
island with these snorkels we've just rented, dammit!"

Watching Indiana Jones swashbuckle his way through another adventure (followed, of course,
by repeated, possibly tunefully humming/singing of said film's extremely catchy theme song
throughout the rest of the trip when I think no one else is listening)--
Xhausted (c'mon, give me a break--I really don't care to discuss the "x-raying" of my
baggage, and there are no xylophones--at least that I saw--on Oahu or Kauai), I pour myself
into my seat on the plane.
Lucky You will be my farewell to American culture. Lucky me, indeed.
Zooming back through the clouds, I look back on my brief, confusing (and yet, ultimately)
joyous encounter with the States. Vacation's over, back to the "real world." Good thing my
real world is paradise.

an ode

warm smell
warm sweet smell
of afternoon, of slanting sunlight,
golden
beautiful moment, I breathe deeply, fill my nostrils, savor
serene

light and soft
under my arm
nestled neatly in the nook between
my shoulder and my elbow,
as though it were always, forever
meant to be
almost
written in the stars

open breathe
again, deeply
jealously guarding the seductive scent,
my treasure
mine alone.

half of me is ready to
pounce devour destroy,
the other half resists, desiring to perch,
here,
on the cusp of the having for eternity

the flesh
(I perch)
is
(I teeter)
weak
(I fall)
fall
into the ecstasy of the having,
loving, worshipping that first moment
when the desire, the dream
becomes the real, the mine
all all all mine

it and I
I and it,
at last are one.
destiny fulfilled.

~An ode to sliced bread
M. McCrea

Ants, Hem, and My Bicycle

It's a funny thing. Some days (e.g. when I forget that escalators are a real life thing and not some made-up fantasy in my head, when I realize "holy shit! I live in a foreign country!"), I almost feel as if I've lived here forever. Other days, I do things so idiotic that I wonder if I didn't actually step off of the plane from LA yesterday and somehow go through an eight-month time warp to the present day. Let me give you a couple of examples.

The other week, my friend M was sleeping over. We'd been up late talking, and I was exhausted and ready to crash. I sit down under my mosquito net and start writing in my journal (my usual pre-sleep activity). Then I notice something strange. One ant. No, two. No fifteen! Holy shit! There are little tiny ants crawling ALL OVER MY BED. Now, by this point in time I am semi-seasoned to this sort of thing, so I didn't scream. I just gingerly jumped out of my bed and ran into the main room of the house in my frantic search for bug spray.
"Gah!! M! How did this happen? Where did all these fuckers come from?" I asked in dismay, my voice reaching a pitch not attained since those voice lessons oh-so-long-ago (high school).
"Is there anything in your room they might want? Food? Candy?"
"No!" (What did she take me for? An idiot?)
At this point, M casually walks over to the foot of my bed and gestures toward an open cardboard box.
"What about this?"
Oh no, I silently curse myself, the Lemonheads!
Yes, believe it or not, after eight months of living in a tropical, insect-infested country, I had left an OPEN BAG OF LEMONHEADS sitting on the floor next to the foot of my bed. Way to go, Megan.

[In a somewhat ridiculous post-script to this incident, I left a skirt that had been soaked in hot chocolate hanging from the fishing line that connects my curtain rod to my mosquito net not one week after the Lemonhead incident. It totally slipped my mind until, hours later, to my dismay, I saw an army of ants marching along the fishing line as though it were a gangplank onto my sweet-smelling skirt. Good times.]

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I recently had a project that I had been working on since December go down in flames. I have yet to make sense of it, except to know that I am really really angry. However, I was flipping through For Whom the Bell Tolls the other day, and I came across a passage which particularly spoke to me. I feel like it speaks a lot to the whole "Peace Corps experience"--whatever that is. I also found it somehow comforting, and I hope you like it.

" How little we know of what there is to know. I wish that I were going to live a long time instead of going to die today because I have learned much about life in these four days; more, I think, than in all other time. I'd like to be an old man and really know. I wonder if you keep on learning or if there is only a certain amount each man can understand. I thought I knew about so many things that I know nothing of. I wish there was more time."
-E. Hemingway

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Sometimes I think that I must like embarrassing myself. That's really the only workable explanation for why I do it so much. So, without further ado, I present (part of the continued and, I'm sure, well-loved series) Megan & Her Bicycle.

The other day I was riding in to Tofol when I saw this car headed toward me, coming in the opposite direction. It was, in fact, quite a snazzy-looking car. The first thing I thought to myself was, Does someone on Kosrae have a Rolls-Royce? It had, you know, those little silvery side mirrors, a hood ornament. It was black. And then it hit me. It's Nina Rumina! (I LOVE this woman.)
It is customary here on Kosrae, if you know a person who's driving along in a car, to acknowledge them by yelling, "Nice driver!" (This actually means "you're hot," so it can be said either as a joke among friends or in a sketchy, lecherous fashion to a member of the opposite sex.)
So, excited in my recognition of her car, voice abnormally loud as I yell over my iPod, I shout,
"NICE DRIVER!!!"
The usual response to this is "Nice kom, pac" [trans: "you're hot, too]. I don't hear this, but I figure that it's just because Rumina wasn't quite as enthusiastic in her response as I was in my compliment. No worries.
Five minutes later, my (real) Nina Rumina passes by in her car. Fuck. I'm an idiot.

Coming back that same night, I was reveling in the cool night air, the gorgeous island views, and (of course) my newly returned (shall I say prodigal?) iPod. Now, every PCV has certain things that he or she misses more than others, and apparently my miss is singing (loudly) to myself in my car. I'm coming around this unpopulated curve in the road as "Don't Speak" comes on (which just so happens to be my favorite No Doubt song ever).
I begin crooning along with Gwen, first hesitantly, then at full-girl-power volume. I pass over the bridge going in toward Tafunsak, and I'm so excited by the night and the song that I completely forget myself. I'm now passing by hotels, people as I croon,

Touch me, touch me, darling
Touch me, touch me--

when I realize (to the tune of a curious and, possibly, semi-scandalized stare from a Kosraen: Oh! Shit! Singing on your bicycle isn't like singing in your car at all. People can hear me!!
Again, way to go, Megan. Great choice of song to belt out to the entire island of Kosrae. Not at all sketchy.

A day in the life...

6:20 a.m. Wake up. Curse, slam my alarm off. Back to sleep.
6:40 a.m. Wake up for real: go shower and get ready.
7:40 a.m. Freak out as I'm eating breakfast--I'm late for work!!! Gah!

Nina: Shra, it's only 7:40. You're not late.
Me: My clock says it's 8.
Nina: The TV says it's 7:40.
(I proceed to make my host mom call telecomm and verify that yes, in fact, the
time on our TV is correct. I am wrong?!? Horror of horrors! Well, I suppose
this might explain how I've miraculously been on time to work for the last few
weeks. And how I biked in to Tofol in 20 minutes once. Everything is
illuminated!~that's for you, Jang.)

8:15 a.m. Work starts.
8:24 a.m. Suddenly, all of my students' attention is GONE. They're all staring out the
window and pointing excitedly at something, speaking rapidly in Kosraen. I walk
over sternly (in teacher-cop mode) to break it up. I ask, "meac inge?" ["what's
going on here?"] They tell me: "Shra! There's a giant lizard out there!"

Me: Where?
[They point.]
Me: [seeing this crazy giant--we're talking 6-8 foot--lizard on a tree outside my
classroom] Whoa! You're right!

I have seen a big lizard for one minute. I have also lost all of my classroom
management credibility points forever.
9:05 a.m. Our guest environmental speaker wraps up his talk on the native environments of
Kosrae. It is gorgeous outside: all the better for admiring our island environment.
9:10 a.m. We make our way out to the schoolyard to plant trees.
9:13 a.m. It starts POURING.
9:24 a.m. To my pleased surprise, one of my 8th graders makes his way intrepidly out into the
downpour with his seedling and shovel. He starts digging.
9:28 a.m. Hole complete, P puts his seedling in the ground. He carefully places the wet dirt
around the little tree, tamps it down, and then picks up an object--that I can't quite
distinguish--off of the ground. He puts the object on the ground next to the tree and
steps away, admiring his work. I scamper out into the rain to see what he's put on
his tree as a decoration. It's...a dead battery?!? This is why I love teaching.

Me: Is that to give it energy? [I start laughing hysterically]
My Kosraen co-teacher: What are you doing? Take that off of your tree!
That will kill it!*

*This is why I have a co-teacher.
1:30 p.m. School's out for the summer. School's out for-ever! (Well, or maybe just until
tomorrow.)
2:30 p.m. I start my bike ride in to Tofol for yoga that my lovely fellow PCV, M, teaches.
2:42 p.m. As I pass a particularly stately palm, I look up and admire the way the light is falling
on the branches. I should take a picture of this! This could very well be an iconic
image of my life on Kosrae. The harmony of colors, the balance--and then my bike
careens off the side of the road and I eat shit. Way to go, McCrea.
4:07 p.m. Yoga starts.
4:10 p.m. I have sweat out approximately a pint of water. Gotta love the equator!
4:50 p.m. We start relaxation.
4:52 p.m. I have passed out on my mat.
5:05 p.m. I get up to see that everyone else has already put away their mats and left. Sweet.
5:20 p.m. As I'm sitting in the computer room of the office checking my email, I notice some
small winged visitors arrive. No biggie, they're just the subterranean termites that
usually hang out in the office. They're flocking toward the light above my head, and
as the seconds pass, the population is multiply exponentially, like one of those
scientific-y graphs of fruit fly population or something.
Before I know it, they're crawling on the desk, the walls, me.

M: I can't take this! I gotta get the fuck out of here!! [She flails her arms and
shakes her head in a vain attempt to get the disgusting little creatures out
of her hair.]
Me: [Thirty seconds later] Gah! Me too!

We sneak out the back door, but our stuff is still in the main room. As I walk
around to the front of the office, I see M peering cautiously (and somewhat
horrified-ly) into the front window. "Look at them," she says to me in a low
whisper of mingled fear and awe. I look. There is literally a CLOUD of about
2,000 of these mofos hovering right over our couches. (That's where my bag is,
by the way.)
I take a deep breath and steel myself for the adventure to come. "Well," I say
resignedly, "it doesn't look like they're going anywhere." We open the front door
and rush in. I've put my skirt on my head to protect my hair--I looked something
akin to the Great Bungholio, no lie--, and I scamper gingerly over to the couch
where all of my stuff is, squinting my eyes in order to keep the bugs out (even as I
try not to step on any of the ones crawling on the floor on my way over).
Meanwhile I'm yelling, cursing at these ridiculous little bugs: "They're touching my
eyes and my face and I don't like it!!"
And best of all, as I get back to the safety of the door, I see that my
compatriot M has gotten it all on video, laughing hysterically the entire time.
"You f***ing videoed that s**t? You b******d!" We have a good laugh before we
shut the door and walk away, feeling as though we've just survived a very-B
horror movie.
6:20 p.m. On my bike ride home, I drop in to Dollar Up to buy a couple of packs of Ramen. On
the shelf ahead of me, I discover both the Miraculously Happy Dog and Dr. Happy. I
love my life sometimes.
8:00 p.m. Time for my weekly kahs kosrae lesson with Baba Isaac.
9:00 p.m. In the past hour, I learned that:

a) I've been asking my Nina "how was your birthday?" every day for the last
month.
b) The reason that the neighborhood kids have been refusing to race me on my
bicycle for the past--oh--three months isn't because they were scared of
losing, it was because I was asking them to "recognize." ("Ah, so that explains
those looks they gave me!")*

*This is why I still need a tutor.
10:30 p.m. I tuck my mosquito net into bed and drift peacefully off to sleep.

And such is my life...

A slice of random. Eat up!

Infinite mosquito bites
Island-wide renown for my lack of skill at balancing on that crazy new-fangled contraption--the
bicycle
Strep throat
Dr. Happy (a tooth brush)

Mangoes and tangerines (as presents from my students!)
Care packages
Chocolate shake--mmm, goodness
A 40-pound bag of rice for Christmas

A haircut as I sat outside on a balcony with the breeze on my face, looking out over the Pacific,
admiring the blue glow the full moon casts on the rocks and sand at low tide
Goosebumps as I read Coleridge to my creative writing class, on the singular below-80 degree
day that I've seen here
Fleas

30 flat men
--in the mail--
two glorious hours on the radio
zero days of "vacation"
173 days of awesome

A wicked hot Reef tan
3.5 custom nuknuks
A bottle of (disturbingly orange) Bellagio bath gel
Soaked to the bone on a number of occasions

Never-ending fame for my fabtastic marching performance
(I'm the tall awkward white girl singing made-up words--"Ole!"--and shaking her kahpuh on
TV)
The satisfaction of seeing the look on my friend's face when we gave him a DVD of the Christmas
marching--which is shown 24/7 on TV--for his birthday
Yes!

The dullest snorkeling experience ever
The greatest diving experience ever
A sunburn (or several)
An ovation during volleyball

Frustrated
Amazed
Depressed
Ecstatic
Bored
Perfectly content

M. McCrea
"Things I've gotten on Kosrae"

You know you live in Kosrae when..., the wonders of capitalism at Dollar Up, other random sources of amusement

Inspired by several recent experiences/revelations, I decided to compile a brief checklist. If any of the following things have happened to you recently, then reach for an atlas! You may very well be living in Kosrae:

+You open your vitamin bottle in order to find that your vitamins are covered with mold.

+You become unexplainably excited when you realize that you haven't eaten white rice in 24 hours.

+You wake up one morning to the old, familiar, persistent blare of your alarm clock. You roll over and reluctantly open your eyes, finding yourself staring a large cockroach in the face. (He's on the inside of the mosquito net, by the way.) Your first thought is: "Dammit. Is it time for work already??"

+When you somehow miraculously manage to get cold, you're really stoked!

+You've started to become tired of eating fresh-from-the-sea lobster and crab all the time.

+You begin to wonder: "why don't any English words start with 'sr' or 'ng'??"

+You find sliced bread on the island and have an ensuing party for yourself.

+You know what a sea cucumber is (believe it or not, not a food or an innuendo).

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Let me begin by stating that, at the moment, I don't feel that I'm up to the daunting task of putting the incredibleness(?) that is Dollar Up into words. It's almost as presumptuous an undertaking as endeavoring to explain human nature/the meaning of it all/etc. My first visit blew my mind almost the way Harrod's did, but in very different ways.
Anyway, my favorite thing about this retail outpost is the names of the products one can buy there. For Christmas, I bought a fellow a PCV a toy called the "Miraculous Happy Dog." Honestly, how could you not shell out for a product entitled the "Miraculous Happy Dog"?? Another wondrous plastic contraption, next to the dog on the shelf, bore the missive: "every styles fully wonderful." Sounds good enough for me! My very favorite Dollar Up product, however, has to be a certain powder detergent. Now, I've grown rather accustomed to interesting uses of my native tongue here, but still, imagine my surprise when I picked up the detergent next to the machine to find that I was doing my laundry with White Power detergent. Who knew a laundry soap could be an argument for better social studies/English education in youngsters?

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Last but not least: other random amusing shit.
I was at a New Year's picnic the other week (hey, we like to stretch the holidays out here) when the grill we were using caught on fire. Apparently there was no water around, as people started (futilely) pouring their sodas on it in an effort to quelch the flames. To no avail. This only made the fire rage more. Then the guy who'd been barbequing tipped his beer on it. The fire was out like that.
All kidding aside for a second, diabetes is a HUGE health problem here on Kosrae. Thus, there have been many ensuing public health campaigns in order to fight this trend. Anyway, for New Year's, all of us PCVs went out to dinner at the nicest restaurant on the island. Our eyes were all aglow when they came to rest on the tantalizing menu. Very excited about my first restaurant meal in weeks/months/I really don't know, I ordered curry for dinner and chocolate cake for dessert. As we were eating our dinners, the waitress came out to ask me about my dessert.
"Do you want chocolate sauce or caramel on it?"
"How about both!" I excitedly replied.
"Oh!! Kom ac diabetes!" ["You're going to get diabetes!"] she delightedly exclaimed.
Best part of this story? She's not the first person on Kosrae to tell me I'm going to get diabetes. Ah, what a way to ring in the new year.

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an irreverent nocturnal reverie, in tribute to the unique phenomenon that is Kosrae Christmas. in verse.

'Twas the month before Christmas
And all throught the isle
Was nary a creature
Not sporting a smile.
The palm leaves were hung
With white lights galore
Giantplastic Santa guarded
The front of Senny's store.
As planeload on planeload
Of visitors arrived
--I'd ne'er seen the island
Quite so alive.

Then one magical, mystical tropical night,
I lay under my net
Watching mosquitos fight
When into my ears
There arrived such a sound
That I open'd my eyes,
Took a good look around.

At first, 'twas a hum
Like the buzzing of bees,
Maybe o'erzealous wind
In the coconut trees
But the buzz was increasing,
The wind had a beat,
I listen'd, discerned
THE SHUFFLING OF FEET!

Curiosity peaked, outside I crept
What ritual was happ'ning
Out there as I slept?
I followed that sound,
With all of my might,
Saw the church up ahead
All a-blaze with light.

Here was the birthplace, the source
Of the sound
Sung by all my neighbors
As they walked around!
I stood at the window
And watched them with glee--
They spelled "MXM,"
And then "H," and then "P"!

The flock ne'er tired in pursuit
Of their stars;
O'er the course of the night,
They travelled quite far.
Spellbound I stood,
I know not how long;
Bewitched by the stars,
Marching feet, and the song.
The crowd made a turn,
Crossed over the floor--
Oh! It looked like--
They were headed straight for the door!

I panicked, I freaked, tried utmost to hide...
But too late, alas,
They were already outside.
When what should I feel
Hitting me on the nose,
But a butterscotch sucker
And pack of Rolos?

The shower continued--
I took off my hat
In time to catch mints,
Gumdrops, and a Kit-Kat.
I understood not,
But that was okay--
It was the best Christmas ever
That day!

And, as I staggered off under
The weight of my haul,
I turned back around toward the crowd,
I recall.
And I shouted with joy,
Ere I journeyed on back:
"Merry Christmas to all,
nofon mwet Tafunsak!"

M. McCrea