Easter

If there's any day to celebrate, it's definitely Easter!  It's a joyous day to remember that Jesus came to testify to the truth, He died for our sins, and He rose again!!!  Because He lives, we can have life.  What a thing to celebrate! So celebrate we did here in Pohnpei.
We began with yet another awesome meal by Maryanna for Good Friday.   It was a good time of everyone being together, hanging out on the porch, and playing Uno.

Salads by Laurel, tuna, breadfruit in coconut milk,
and BBQ chicken

My favorite tuna in coconut milk with chocolate cake for
dessert

The lovely ladies of our Good Friday dinner

I asked Maryanna if they had ever done an Easter egg hunt.  She said, "A what?!"  I took that as a no, and proceeded to explain to her how we hide eggs with candy in them and the kids run around trying to find them.  She told Jay who was immediately interested since it involved candy.  Luckily my mom had sent pre-filled Easter eggs because there weren't many available on the island.  So Saturday afternoon I sent Jay off to gather some of his friends from the neighborhood for their very first Easter egg hunt!

This is where they were confined while the eggs were
being hidden

A few more join to fun; we're ready!

Can you find the egg? :)

It was surprisingly a bit challenging to find
good hiding places in our yard

They caught on to the idea pretty quickly, giggling all the way.  What I loved the most was seeing how they acted at the end of it all.  Naturally, some were able to gather more than others.  But it didn't matter because they are wonderful at sharing.  They gathered together to empty their eggs, and soon it was like they had all gotten the same amount of eggs.  There was no pouting about getting less or hording it for themselves.  It was community candy and everyone was happy!

 Maryanna made sure to save the eggs so they can do it again next year.  It also rained just a bit while the kids were hunting.   I didn't mind though since it was followed by this:

Then Easter Sunday came, bursting with celebration the Jesus is risen!  The youth did some great little performances for us.

Some of my Sunday School kiddos!

It was also my Sunday to teach Sunday School, which I absolutely love getting to do!  My kids are so great!  I'm totally impressed by how attentive and well behaved they are.  They're very bright, eager to participate and love their crafts :)

 

 Following church, friends had made reservations for us to have Easter lunch together.  They're so good to us.  Such a delight!

I had just enough time to get home and prepare my dish for the next event of celebration - Easter potluck!  The whole congregation gathered at the youth center (I just discovered that we even had one) for crafts, games, and tons of food as usual.

 

I loved the decorations!!!  That took some time.

Craft time

You have to have bags to put the eggs in!

 After crafts, it was time for relay races for the young and old :)

Who can transfer the most water to the other bucket? 
Funny to see them realize it's not always about speed

The girls dominated the relays!  Go girls!!!

The boys thought this was a little too close to kissing

Get the marshmallow!

The classic egg relay

There is goes!

After a few other relays, it was time to corral the kids while the adults hid all the eggs.  What an adventure to find hiding places for all of them.

There's even one hidden inside all that hair

Palm trees transformed into ornament trees

Everyone became fair game for hiding

And they're released to hunt!

 With all the kids completely occupied with their piles of eggs and candy, it was time for the adults to have just one relay race - coconut husking and grinding.  The women would husk.  The men would grind.  A little role switch.  I was completely content to act as photographer while other women did the relay.  But oh no!   Lori and I were quickly informed that they want to see menwai ladies husk.  Of course so they can get a good laugh :D  We agreed to do it.  I saw it as an opportunity to husk my first coconut, plus I'm quite fine with giving people a good laugh.

Husking sticks ready

Carol's ready

Go Carol!  You can do it!

I've selected my coconut

This is certainly harder than they made it look

We both needed...

a little help :)

I did get it husked.  I don't think I'll be doing that again anytime soon.  I'll pay the 40 cents to get it at the market.  But I ran it down to the men where the grinding was taking place.

Go Bob!

 

 

 I don't even know which team won.  We just had fun laughing at each other as we all struggled through it.

After all that fun it was time to chow down on the long line of potluck dishes.  Do you get the idea that food is a big deal here?  And there's always tons of it?

You can't even see the end of it and that's
just the main dishes!

I didn't get a picture of all the desserts, but I did remember to get one of the impressive birthday cake.  One of the men was celebrating his 60th birthday on the same day.  A lady from our church made this beautiful, monster of a cake all by herself.

So sweet!

Quite a day.  I love celebrating the joys of life with so many wonderful people.

A little footage from the Easter weekend:

Happy Easter!!!

Founding Day

I've mentioned in a previous blog that students have been doing a lot of fundraising.  All of it was to raise money for the college endowment fund.  The college encourages more fundraising by making it a competition between student groups.  It begins with our Pohnpei State Campus being divided into groups based on the municipality that students are from.  They compete to raise the most money on our campus.  Each team picks a guy and a girl to represent them (kind of like a homecoming court).  Then we had a coronation at our campus to reveal the winning team.

Ms. Madolenihmw getting ready

Mr. & Ms. Uh

Ms. Sokehs - my student!

They even had flower girls....

or guys to lead them in

 

And the winner is...

Kitti!!!

 So the winning pair became Mr. & Ms. Pohnpei Campus to represent our campus at the National Coronation.

Students from Pohnpei Campus raised over $18,800 for endowment fund!  Way more than all of the other teams combined.  They definitely earned the title of Mr. & Ms. Founding Day 2012.

The actual founding of the College of Micronesia was April 1, 1993, so they celebrate each year on that day alternating between cultural activities and sports.  This year was a sports year.  We all gathered at the track to represent our teams and once again have a little friendly competition.

Mr. & Ms. Founding day sat on their thrones all day looking beautiful...

 

...while everyone else got to have fun playing.  There were many events including the 100m, 200m, staff 50m, dizzy race, caterpillar race, coconut husking, coconut grinding, 2x100, and a final tug-o-war!

The Caterpillar Race

There was even a podium for the top 3 of each event

Purple team took 3rd for both the male and female caterpillar race

The coconut husking...

break the husk....

peel it off in sections

Go Brenda!

Faster Miranda!

Stop flirting with the boys Armihda!

Sandy & I were partners for the dizzy race.  Sandy was so
dizzy she ran off to the left and fell over.  We were all laughing
so hard that we happily took 3rd place :D

Coconut grinding

Pohnpei won all of the sprints!  So fast!

 The students had a great time competing, cheering, and plain being silly.  It was a long day but definitely worth it.  And yet again Pohnpei Campus wins!!!!  Go Purple Team!  We totally dominated Founding Day- all in good fun of course!

Cultural Day

One of the fears as the world becomes more globalized is that the islands will lose their culture and forget the really great customs of their ancestors.  So the FSM has created a national holiday called Cultural Day.  I think it's a great idea.  It's a day simply for the whole community to come together and perform traditional ceremonies and traditional dancing.  It's a way to ensure that customs and culture continue to be passed down to new generations. 

This year it was held in the botanical garden.  Laurel and I showed up early to make sure we didn't miss a thing.  Right off the bat we ran into one of the Chiefs that we know, and he promptly gave us really great seats where we could see everything.  So kind of him!

The very first thing on the agenda was, of course, a quick sakau ceremony.  The Nahnmwarki of Nett was present, as well as many other important officials from the Pacific.  They all participated in the sakau.

Shortly thereafter the day continued on with a few speeches.  We sat with the students who won the essay contest competition, and they got to read their essays to everyone and also got a certificate from the president of the FSM.

Pohnpeian Essay Winner

English Essay Winner

Before most of the entertainment started, they even served local foods in local baskets to people of importance towards the front.  Laurel and I were fortunate enough to share the day with a wonderful Japanese couple.  They were given a local food basket and insisted that we share and have lunch together.  Given my hunger and the appeal of the delicious local foods, I was not going to deny that invitation.

Fish, sea cucumber, taro, yam, tapioca, banana in banana leaf,
breadfruit, drinking coconut, pineapple

Breaking into it a little more

 For the record, I did eat the sea cucumber.  Not surprising since it lives it's whole life on the ocean floor, but it's very, very, very salty.  Not bad, just salty :)  I promise I'm getting to the good entertainment, but a quick side story before we get there.  We sat with the sweet Japanese couple all day throughout the event.  We made the most of conversations with limited English.  Then at the end of the day we discovered that they use to live in Panama and are fluent in Spanish.  From there we all began speaking Spanish and it went much smoother.  If only we'd known all day.  But I just loved that we were sitting in Pohnpei, 2 American women and a Japanese couple, speaking Spanish.  We should have called it Multi-Cultural Day :)

So as we indulged in our tasty food, the entertainment really got going.  There were about 10 groups performing from Pohnpei, outer islands of Pohnpei, and the sister islands in the FSM (Chuuk, Kosrae, Yap).  I knew it would best be experienced and remembered through video.  So here are short clips of the day for you to get a look at the great performances:

They were all really great, and I loved seeing so many traditions.  I would have to say that I do have a favorite though; it's still the Mokelese warriors.  They have the most energy and passion by far.  I also took some still shots to see the traditional dress and gifts.

The girl 3rd from the right is one of my students!

The kids couldn't resist peeping through the back of the stage

Adorable children dancers

Yapese

Presenting a gift of fish to the nahnmwarki

 

 

Chuuk

More fish gifts - that's a big one!

These kids can dance and entertain

The guys literally just stood there as the ladies danced; I'm
not sure of their purpose, maybe just moral support ;)

 

 

 

 

I was so glad I got to see and experience all of this.  I felt very cultured and it made me happy to see all of the islands and groups keeping their traditions alive!