A day in Majuro

Today was a big day in town. First we took a trip to the capitol building, and got to meet the President of the RMI! That was a pretty cool experience. He didn’t know we were coming, but because our field director knows a lot of people here, we just got to walk right up and go into his office! This picture is me in the Arno representatives' chair – haha - we thought we were pretty cool doing that. 

After the tour we went to lunch at the Marshall Island Club – where we got to meet the 16 year old that is sailing around the world. A kid named Zac is currently trying to set the record for youngest person to sail around the world by himself – and he stopped in the Marshall Islands for the week. He left from LA about two months ago, and has had a pretty good journey so far – from what we heard. We got to sit and ask him questions for a while, and hung out near the beach for a good part of the afternoon. If you want to check out his live blog you can go to: Zacsunderland.com and he is updating it through radio e-mail while he is out there. He is here for another 7 days, so we will probably see him again.

We also did a trash pick up around Majuro which was good – but sad at the same time. We were walking through town and picking up garbage off of peoples front lawn, and it was actually somewhat of an awkward feeling! Danielle and I took a detour down to the beach at one point, and I almost wanted to cry. The beach was the filthiest thing I had ever seen – I wanted to be cleaning up. No one ever goes to the beaches here – and I see why. You could barley see the sand because there was so much trash everywhere. Junk was piled everywhere and rusted cars were sticking out of the water. It was just so, so sad, and I really wished we could have cleaned up the beaches. Although cleaning Majuro was definitely helpful – it wasn’t filthy. I didn’t even fill up one large bag in a 1 mile walk – and I could have filled up 3 large bags standing in one spot on the beach. Maybe that 's something I can organize when I get to Arno; although the outer islands are apparently a bit cleaner. I will just have to wait to see.  

Well, we are going shopping now to get supplies for the outer islands. Someone donated a lot of money for school supplies from last years group – so we were each given $60 to get supplies for our school. And we also received bags filled with supplies, donated from the same person, the other night at dinner when we had a raffle. Everyone got a bag – the raffle was just a way to distributing the bags because there were different things in all of them. This person really helped the Marshall Islands out in a large way!  

I will try to write more soon, but I don’t know when we will be in town again. One week before I head out to ARNO!!!! Yikes. I am getting really excited. Hope everyone at home is doing well – and I am really jealous of all of you at Keith and Swartz’s lake houses this weekendddd!! I miss all you guys!

Don’t forget to write letterssss ☺
Love,
Taylor