Beginning with my June 2008 post "It's Been Five Years," the following is the continuing story of my travels from the United States into Micronesia ~ Pohnpei, Guam and Saipan ~ and my life since June 2003.
Monday, July 7, 2003 ~ Pohnpei
Getting adjusted day by day. It's one thing to be here as a visitor/diver/spectator. Quite another to think about moving in long term. I've seen people from Kwajalein here, taking tours, but it's totally not the same. But the expats here seem quite happy, and I'm trying to follow their lead. I'm told everyone goes through the same adjustment period.
Looks like I may spend a bit of time on Chuuk (Truk). I have an important case involving a mayor of a local island there -- election corruption, intimidation, pulling guns and inciting a riot on national (ours) police trying to execute a search warrant, also involving two asst. attorneys general, one of whom is still here. We need to put on a good face to the U.S. that we're serious about public corruption prosecution. I hope I get time to get some diving in. The AG asked me again if I'd be interested in going to Taiwan for a terrorism conference. No details. Of course, I said yes. Why else am I here?
The scenery is so fantastic. It rains out of nowhere, but stops in 10-15 minutes, and then, if you're smart and leave your car in the open, your car is clean. It's a soft gentle rain that everyone walks in. Nobody wears ponchos.
I don't get to see the scenery the way I'd like because the two lane roads are winding around and through, and you have to be cautious of people of all ages, including naked youngsters and dogs and chickens and old women, you name it, walking where you want to drive. I'm terrified I'm going to kill someone; people, dogs, chickens appear on the road out of nowhere.
My house is coming along. Far from ready for visitors from the states, but it's coming. It's a 3 BR/1 Bath. Only one room has a phone connection. That'll be the office, I suppose, but it's hard to cool. One bathroom that's primitive in terms of cleanliness. Ants depending on if you leave water or toothpaste / mouthwash in the sink. No cable TV yet. Micronesia Time is not so much frustrating as odd for me. I'm the foreigner. Everyone else goes through it and adjusts, so I'm sure I will too.
No easy way to cool the house yet. The living room cools pretty readily at night, but the rest of the house I haven't spent in enough -- or the house generally -- to know how to prepare for visitors. By the time I get home, I can prepare my back bedroom for myself, but I still have a way to go before my body adjusts to island temperatures, or how to prepare it for stateside visitors should they come to visit.
The laptop my sister gave me has seriously come in handy. I worry it won't survive, but that's just another thing islanders here adjust to, and pretty readily by the looks of them. I'm concerned I left too much back home to ship here, but people sell off what most of what they bring when they leave, and I was told that. I see people making adjustments to technical things that we wouldn't tolerate at home. The living room/kitchen has two electrical outlets; the other rooms have one each. And its take four times as many steps to get the simplest things accomplished that we take for granted -- getting power, your lease agreement abided to, cable. But you adjust, and I see it everywhere among those who are expats and those who say they're not.
There are still many holes in window panes around here, and the cats want in very badly. I just closed up the last one of many, and haven't had a visitor in a few hours. I'm just not up to being mewed at by anyone. It's 8:45 p.m. here and I still hear the roosters crowing. The dogs are just starting up their fighting and yapping. I'll learn to sleep through that pretty soon, I anticipate.
Bugs aren't that bad.
There are many problems here ~ I don't want to talk about them because I have no answers.
It is, indeed, a visitor's paradise. It's another thing to contemplate being an expat here. I've been here two weeks, and my internal thermometer is still adapting through a combination of factors. As a visitor, in a hotel, with constant AC, trips to the sea, etc., it'd be a different experience.
I miss certain things, things that I'd been missing without having for years. But I really look forward to acquiring the happy acceptance the expats I've met have. And the locals are something else. Smiling at them is total acceptance ~ there's good and bad to that.
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