Rambling

Remember Pollap Category: Blogging
I am trying to commit to blogging at least once a week. I feel better when I do (although I don't feel so hot now as my FFFFFF key is not working so well) For all of you dedicated readers... I have also been blogging once in awhile at myspace which you can get to by going to http://www.myspace.com/the_world_is_myplayground and checking out the blog. I also have some pictures posted there...
I have been thinking of my home in Micronesia a lot lately; is this a recurring theme? It feels like it and lately it seems I blab a lot about it here too. My room mate has a machete we use for protection (that's a joke mom) and we bought a coconut a week or so ago at the store. I found myself wondering if I would know which hole to try to open up; I did, and I wondered if I would be able to open the whole coconut with said machete upon completion of drinking the nut; again, I did. Disappointingly, it didn't taste right; but we drank it and I taught (not really) my roomie and pal how to slurp appropriately. Then I cut it open and we ate the meet. Then the other day during lunch during real estate class I ordered this awful chicken and rice dish so I asked for soyu. Interesting story about soy sauce; I think I never used it or had reason to call it by name before Micronesia, so to me, the stuff is soyu which is soy sauce in Chuukese. Anyway, I added it to my rice and wow; now THAT tasted exactly right. I was immediately transferred back "home" to Pollap on a day when someone magically appeared with soyu and we had the good fortune of eating rice three times in one day WITH soyu versus just plain. I think my stomach even started rumbling in remembrance of those days. And finally, there is a spot when I am driving down the mountain from Flagstaff where I am taking classes where the air smells like sakau, not alcohol but the sakau (was it kava?) found on Pohnpei and made from the pepper root. I always thought sakau smelled, as well as tasted, like almost a minty flavored dirt (I must have had that flavor in my days of mud pies). I am sure the smell I get coming down the mountain is dirt mixed with some kind of plant or tree; but everytime it hits me I am brought back to my first day after drinking that junk when everywhere I went in the city all I could smell was sakau.
We are in monsoon season here; you'd think that would draw images of Korea but it doesn't. Korean monsoon were like week long water works. Here we have showers and at times some hard core storms that blow through very quickly. It is an amazing contrast to what the weather had been like. After spending a summer in Egypt I had thought to maybe never see rain in Arizona and maybe just some flucuation in temperature. The rains have been here a week or more and everything has greened up some. Before the world seemed so brown, now it is brown and green, which again feels a huge contrast to me. I have enjoyed it a lot. I could spend my days watching the clouds roll in and then out again; listening to the rumble of far off thunder move closer and wow, the lightning here is like none I have ever seen, even in WI and I think Wisconsin has some pretty amazing thunderstorms. I like the place I am temporarily living; although I miss the house sometimes. Mostly I miss its location and how quiet it was and the sounds I heard in the night there. But alas, I am a person of contrasts and while I love the silence of a country place, something about living in a more urban area appeals to me as well. As I drift off to sleep to the sounds of traffic and people I rather like the thought of life going on around me.
Currently listening : Surfacing By Sarah McLachlan Release date: 15 July, 1997