A Painful Pit-Stop

On our way home from Koror on Friday afternoon, we had to make a stop at Peleliu (Angaur's closest neighboring island) as one of the men on our boat had slipped while tying his fishing line onto a hook, causing the hook to become embedded in his hand. It looked terribly painful! I felt really bad for our friend, Gino. He was trying to be tough ... but that faded when the nurse showed up at the dock to cut the hook out of his hand! Ouch! Of course, I got a picture for your viewing pleasure.

Photo catch-up

We're in Koror for a quick overnight, basically just to use the decent internet connection here so that we can start our job hunt for September 2009 ... we're looking forward to finding out what God has planned for us! Right now, Jason is applying at many of the international "American" schools as a teacher for the fall. They are literally all over the world, so it will be interesting to see what kind of responses we get. Meanwhile, I thought I'd try to catch up on posting a few photos from our time here so far...

The Big Trip.

Outside of Spokane's airport, at a VERY early hour - Monday, September 1st!



















A few images from our overnight in Manila:

















































Finally in Palau on Wednesday afternoon.
Jason, always making friends quickly. This gecko LOVED the icing from our Thursday morning breakfast treat!






















Some Palauan houses:


















































A hand-off from the previous caretakers - Steve & Marla:




















On our WAY!





















Leaving civilization ... a little scary!





















First view of Angaur on Friday afternoon - it looks like we'll be living on a pancake!

Our Arrival

Coming into the Angaur harbor:



















The road to our house:























Coming down the driveway to our new home:



















View from our deck:

A Rat!

Our very first (and very unwelcome) guest! Yuck ... lucky Jason gets the job of making this guy disappear.

High Chief's Funeral

We'd been here a week and were already attending our first major funeral. We were having some Tonga flashbacks for sure. Thankfully, the funerals here are MUCH more casual and...no need to wear all black clothing for months! Yay!

This funeral was at the Bai (or community center). We basically sat outside under the trees for an hour or two with a bunch of other Palauans who'd come in from Koror for the event, then we were each given a clear bag with a to-go box of food and several other small containers of food in it, and that was the end of the funeral. It felt a little odd.

Free Food!

These land crabs are literally everywhere here! Anytime that we are walking home around dusk, they are scurrying across the road or rustling around in the vegetation next to the road (with is a little scary at times!). This is the first crab we caught & cooked up. Jason loved it!



















We haven't gotten desperate enough to eat the bugs yet, but these huge green ones are always a filling looking option!

Checking things out

We spent a day exploring the north end of Angaur, checking out some of the war ruins and other things...

This is the northern shoreline:
























There are a TON of cool trees here ... lots of Banyan trees with crazy roots dropping down from the branches (that Jason likes to try climbing!) and cool Ironwood trees with roots growing above the soil.
















































This is the "airplane graveyard," where there are remnants of several airplanes ... sort of makes me feel like we're part of the 'Lost' cast!





























This photo is difficult to read, but it is a memorial built to commemorate the 100+ people of Angaur who had to hide out in caves for over a month during WWII (October 1944) to escape the intense fighting that was occurring. We are friends with a man who was a teenager during this time, he has some incredible stories. Every year in October, the island still celebrates the liberation day, or coming out of the caves day. We got to be part of the celebration this year - it was a day of softball, field event contests and lots of eating!















More war remnants in the harbor.

We live here!

It still doesn't seem real to me!

Homemade Carmels!

One of my favorite childhood memories with my fun Aunt Lori is going to her house to make carmels. What a long, painstaking process it was ... but SOOOO worth it when they were done. I don't know that we ever had very many left after sampling them :).

I mentioned to her a few weeks ago how good those would taste right now, but didn't know how they'd do in the mail ... well, she took the chance and made some to send us. They arrived on the boat on Friday and WOW are they good! Of course, I dove right in to "check" and see that they arrived tasting as they should (did they ever!). Then I promptly decided that I should take a photo of them before I ate them all, but my fingers were still a little slippery and I dropped my camera (breaking it temporarily) ... so no photos. All I can say though is YUM!

Thanks Aunt Lori!

1/21 - Managed to get a photo before I ate them all!

Pictures to go with my last post ...

A Coconut Crab:

























Our puppies - Yoda (because of the ears) & Chewy (decided to stick with the Star Wars theme):

Unexpected "gifts"

Christmas is often the season of giving - this year we received some unexpected gifts Christmas week. It started with Jason's friend, Graham, stopped after dark one night to drop off a Coconut Crab that he had grabbed while collecting Land Crabs. He suggested we cook the crab right up - and we did!

(I have a great photo with the crab, but for some reason, I haven't been able to upload ANY photos for the past 3 weeks ... Sad!)

A day later, we woke up to two wild, starving puppies hanging out outside of our house in our compost pile, gorging themselves on whatever they could find. Even though they are wild, we couldn't help but feel sorry for them and of course gave them some food. Now we have two miniature guard dogs watching our house. They aren't tame yet, but they still bark when people come down the driveway which is nice.

So, some pretty random gifts this holiday season. Thank you to Jamie, Jenny, Trudy, the Schlafmanns, Stormos, Swansons and Mom&Dad for sending us such incredible care packages! Your generosity is SO SO appreciated (and we haven't eaten ALL the food yet, just most of it!).

Going Bananas!

After being here for four months, we were finally given a beautiful bunch of bananas by our friends Titus & Calista, then a few days later, our friend Secu gave us another bunch, then a few days later Titus brought us some more bananas. And, they are all getting ripe at about the same time! We've been eating them several times a day, but still aren't able to keep up! Ahhhh! But, we are ever so thankful to have some fresh fruit since it is so difficult to come by here, so we thank the Lord for his provision to us and enjoy another banana!

Mold, mold ... everywhere!

We knew in coming here that everything would mold. I'm realizing though that perhaps I didn't know what "everything" really meant? So far, we've had a few articles of clothing mold and A LOT of food get moldy. I've never seen moldy beef jerky until now! And, I accidentally cooked up and ate some moldy oatmeal - that did not taste good at all! I definitely do not recommend it!