A few of the students have underwater cameras so I’ll share some pictures.

mostly black-tip reef sharks, curious but otherwise relatively harmless to divers nearby

We have video footage of us with the octopus but no still images.

Chris showing the camera something; I’m one of the divers in the blue above.

This health message is posted in the center of town.

This sign pretty much sums up some of the food issues on Yap.  As on other Pacific islands, the ease of fast, prepared foods is luring many people, children and adults alike, to choose Vienna sausages, SPAM, and Pringles over a traditional native diet of taro root and fish.  Lots of sweetened cereals, sweetened breads, canned fruits in heavy syrup, sodas.  Some fruits (mangoes, papayas, pineapple, etc.) are grown on the island, plus taro, breadfruit, beans, sweet potatoes, and a bunch of leafy greens.  And lots of fish (caught nearby, not grown). But the vast majority of food is brought by  container ships, or on one of the 3 flights that lands here weekly.

We usually go out to one of the 5 local restaurants for dinner, but breakfasts and lunches we eat here at home. Tuna and ramen: cheap and easy favorites.  For something different, today I mixed a handful of raisins into my dry tuna. Yummm.

During yesterday’s dive, one of the Yapese on the boat “free dove” down to the bottom and kept bringing us fresh giant clams.  We pried them open with knives and some of us tried the delicacy, but much of the meat we brought home to share with our neighbors.  They made us up a soup with unidentifiable flavors, and we politely ate as much as we could.  A better version of  it was the coconut clam soup I had earlier in the week for dinner.

Chris cutting up fresh giant clam during our break between dives

The second dive blew my mind.  We went another 1/2 mile out, to the edge of the reef and the open sea.  The dive is called “vertigo.”  Things get *really* deep around here. We’re  near some of the deepest oceanic trenches in the world.  This was my deepest dive so far, down to about 60′.  But the amazing part was the tremendous clarity of the water – on a clear day, you can easily see for 150′ or more. Swimming in and around fish that I can’t even describe for their patterns and colors. AND, there are dozens of gray reef and black tip sharks hovering around. Relatively small sharks (5′ or less in length), and honestly they’re as scared of us as we are of them.  But once you fall off that boat, get your bearings, start breathing, looking around way into the clear and vast deep distance, and see about 20 sharks circling about 20-40 feet away, it’s pretty memorable.  Hope I can share a picture one of these days.

What a fantastic Mother’s Day!

last night’s sunset

Our home is a 2-room cement building, with one large open space of about 30′ x 35′, and then a kitchen off of it.  It used to be a Head Start day care, but now seems to be used by visiting groups like ours. There are 15 of us: 2 faculty from Queens, 12 students (6 men, 6 women), and myself.  We all share the one large room.  Fifteen cots, our assorted luggage and diving gear, a long plastic table and chairs, and 7 or 8 fans, placed strategically around the room with snaked extension cords stretched to inconveniently placed outlets.  All around the walls are 6’ tall windows, covered in louvers and screens. Doors lead out to a large porch that wraps around two sides of the building, and from the porch is access to a bathroom with two toilets and a shower.

The kitchen has a regular fridge/freezer, an electric hot plate with 2 burners, and counters with bags of both our “common” food and our personal food collections.  Any food item not marked with someone’s name on it is fair game, on the counter or in the fridge.  Group food is mostly breakfast items:  small bunches of native bananas that folks are bringing us, eggs, bags of fruity loops.  My current personal stock includes one box of raisins, one box of Maria cookies, two (cold, fridge) cans of milky sweet coffee, and one small watermelon.  Sharpie magic markers work on watermelons too!

Activities of Yapese Daily Life that have taken place in the last three days, in no particular order:

• shopping for groceries, fans, magic markers, clothes line,
• walking the 50’ across our back yard to step directly into the Pacific Ocean to snorkel (see pic of view to ocean);
• learning to ID tropical fish that live in the waters off of our backyard;
• watching students trying to set up  ‘chore charts’ to keep our communal household organized;
• walking along stone pathways many centuries old;
• several meetings with the Yapese directors of the Divisions of Marine Resources, and the Division of Land Resources, and the Division of Forestry and Agriculture, all about the different mapping projects that we begin on Monday;
• learning to prepare, chew, and spit betel nuts (and their juice);
• waking up at 4am to walk into “town” in order to use the entirety of Yap’s wifi capacity to upload a 12 mb file to the online class I’m currently teaching for Redlands;
• taking 2-3 cold showers daily to soothe my sweaty body;
• getting to know the students as we share meals, walks, meetings, outings, sleeping, etc;
• buying a beer mug from the Stone Money Brewing Company (part of the Manta Ray Bay Hotel here), sipping a Hammerhead Amber while we sat on the top deck of an old Dutch (?) ship while watching underwater diving movies projected onto a 10’ x 15’ screen hanging from the ship’s mast.  My mug will stay safely at the ship’s bar until we’re ready to leave Yap in a few weeks, until then ready for me to enjoy drinking from it whenever I stop by (since it’s been tagged with my name, just like at our house).  The microbrewery’s motto:  drink, pee, repeat.

Today I completed the first part of my open-water scuba diving certification, learning all the steps but in a pool.  So far, so good!  I’ve mastered how to control my buoyancy with my buoyancy control device; how to share my breathing regulator with a buddy; how to clear my mask and balance my ears.  In addition to learning these skills, I’ve spent about 45 minutes “diving” so far, with a full set of scuba equipment, all underwater in a pool that’s only 6’ deep and 25’ long.  Isn’t that a scene from The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman?

Meanwhile, everyone else in the group either completed this pool part earlier in the States, or they’ve been certified divers for years.  FINALLY, tomorrow I join them for my first open-water dive in the ocean.  Still, it’s all been great fun so far.  And as the Yapese say, “lo wiki wangin.”  Which means “better than nothing.”

one of the original public “highways” that stretch across parts of the island.

abundant vegetation

the sunrise view from our back porch

innovative students manage to hang multiple stories of hammocks

My part in all of this? Being another “adult” on the trip, contributing GIS expertise, learning to scuba dive, and some weeks of off-work time.

To travel from Ithaca (NY) to Colonia (Yap, FSM) required me first to pass through EWR to CLT on day one.  Then about 27 hrs ago we left CLT for IAH, then HNL (where I’d never been before, but an hour in the airport doesn’t count for crossing the state off my list), and now Guam (GUM).

Guam, enough part of the US to still have my cell phone plan work, but still 15 hrs of combined flight time from Texas.  The touristy part of “downtown” of Guam City (?) looks like one gigantic Duty Free shop. All neon, all luxury stores. Cartier, Tiffany, Rolex, Louis Vuitton. Not where the Guamese hang out. But with our 5-hr layover, close enough to find a sushi restaurant for dinner (breakfast, EDT).  Dee-licious.

Almost time for the short flight over to Yap.  We found a wall of free wifi leaking through from the United Club. Fifteen people, thirsty for their internet stream after a dry day of travel.  

Nice work, Beth!

H/t to All Points Blog.

via The Atlantic Cities

Thought I’d gotten this via FlowingData, but maybe not?

via Nag on the Lake