Francis and the Farm

HOPEFULLY MY FARM WILL LOOK LIKE THIS SOMEDAYI have found my saving grace on Arno! Melissa and I went to the farm again this weekend – like we will do every weekend – and we happened to meet the owner! Boy did we luck out. Francis Reimers, the owner, is one of the best guys in the Marshall Islands to know. His father owns RRE (The number one resort here) his brother is the owner of the Arno, Majuro Boat and he owns a Bed and Breakfast on Arno as well as the farm. This weekend he let Melissa and I stay in the bed and breakfast for free, and said that we were welcome any weekend and told us where the key is! It is AMAZING!!! We get to sleep in a bed, have a flushing toilet, sleep without bugs, drink ICE WATER, go kayaking, and thoroughly enjoy ourselves every Friday night now! Francis is also an amazing resource because he knows so much about farming and is willing to help us get grants. He is on the board of some agriculture committee in the Marshall Islands and is working on getting a grant for Melissa and I to start our farms! He is so amazing.

Melissa and I both plan to start farms on Ine and Lukoj…I might have already talked about that. Anyway, he is giving a bunch of stuff to start off with, and then helping us get grants for the rest. He thinks it is just so wonderful that not only are we helping by teaching the kids of his country English but that we also want to teach them about farming and nutrition. The nutrition here is so miserably horrible that it is hard to stand. I would really really love it if we were able to grow something of nutritional value here and take a break from our daily fried pancakes and donuts! Watermelon sounds soooo delicious!

On the farm though, aside from enjoying life with Fancis and the bed and breakfast – we had new baby pigs this week!!! They were so adorable. And we got to feed the runt! It was less then a week old and fit in one of my hands! It was so adorable…until it went to the bathroom on me and made me smell so bad I wanted to vomit. But that was ok…Tanki gave me a psychedelic mumu to wear, so I was ok.

Walking back from the farm was a bit of an interesting walk. We left directly after lunch, and I proceeded to extract every bit of lunch out of my body. Apparently my body didn’t like the corned beef…I puked it all up! Nasty. I felt completely fine though and just continued on my way with Melissa. We stopped to make our weekly calls which was nice…but Phil somehow always manages to not be around whenever I actually have service – so we always have to have broken conversations when I stand down by the ocean. I did get to talk to Tit and the fam though, which was really nice. I reallyyyyyy miss Chapel Hill right now though, and would love to be able to just hop over there for a weekend. But unfortunately it isn’t just a hop away. Oh well. Now I am preparing for school for the week (ugh) and am excited to make coconut oil tomorrow! Francis taught us how to make coconut oil so I am going to make some for the family tomorrow. My dad said they would cook with it – rather than shortening – if I made it…so I am definitely going to make some!