This past weekend was a busy one! Saturday was the date for the Xavier entrance exam, so schools across Micronesia and on Hawaii administered the test. On Friday, Rey and I went to Tonoas, accompanied by three students who could help us with translations. Tonoas, like Weno, is a lagoon island in Chuuk. Despite its relative closeness to Weno (only Etten might be slightly closer) I found that it seems much more remote. The boat ride over was not what I expected - we were guided by a very small boy with very long fingernails who had a darkened, old kind of expression permanently set on his face. The water was more rough than expected, and the boat so small and shaky we would leap over the water over the waves and land violently back down. It was a really wet ride, but pretty exciting. We landed around 5 just as the sun was starting its slow setting routine. I was stunned at how quiet the island was, and how thick the jungle seemed to be from the dock. The small boy showed us up to St. Anthony’s Parish; a sparkling, largely uninhabited group of buildings. I found out from the groundskeeper that I would be staying with a separate host family instead of the Parish with Rey and the students. This made me a little nervous at first since my own host family at the Korean Research Center back on Weno is vastly different than the majority of host families, and even so I don’t stay there frequently. I was reassured by the students who insisted I was actually the lucky one. We took a walk together through the more heavily condensed jungle areas, discovering some funky old Japanese WWII machinery and then made our way to the Memorial School where the test would be given the next day. We saw an old Japanese bunker, and hospital – both made of concrete and thus impressive in what stature remained, but nonetheless creaky, dilapidated, and crumbled like strange relics. The hospital especially was a unique sight. You could get a sense of its significance, but most of the walls had fallen and so it was left open to the air and encroaching foliage. We spoke to an old man there, somewhat of a relic himself, who spoke little English and little Chuukese, and mostly Japanese. He said he had seen the war happen on his island, and the silence we heard now is sometimes welcomed and sometimes only ghostly.

We returned to the parish around 7 and ate dinner – barbecue chicken, fried reef fish, rice, bananas, coconuts, cucumber, and kon (pounded breadfruit). We were also able to listen in on the musical practice for Diocesan Day, and had some good conversation with the resident pastor, Fr. Julio. One of my sponsor sisters came and picked me up, and I made my way over to their house realizing she did not speak any English. Her mother, Terusa, did speak a good deal of English which put me at ease and she invited me to take a shower and watch movies with them. The entire family – mother, father, sisters, brother, uncle and aunt sat crowded around a tiny laptop screen watching an American movie that none of them could understand except for Terusa and myself. They kept asking me to explain, and I tried in my very basic Chuukese. The room I slept in, and my bed, belonged to my sister and was much bigger and cleaner than my room at Xavier. I slept deeply, trying to forgo the warning of my host mother to keep one eye open for ghosts.

The test itself was given the next morning. It was supposed to start at 8, but instead we began at 9:30 because as expected, several students wandered in late, and it took them a while to understand and complete the registration. The time period for the test was longer than most of their school days, and I felt bad watching the struggle and squirm to complete as much as they could. All the while, small children stood outside peering in the windows trying to make sense of what was going on, and pointing at me, either laughing quietly or staring in disbelief at the unfamiliar white person. Once in a while, one of them would wander in and sit on the floor silently gazing up at their older counterparts. It was amazing to see – in the States, I could only imagine such children being loud, restless distractions instead of quiet, curious onlookers. During the half hour break, I chased some of them around all the while listening to them jokingly call me the Chuukese word for “ghost.” A few of the younger ones wanted me to hold their hand or let them sit on my lap, but a lot of the older ones seemed both excited by my presence, and wary of it. I would chase them, but they would never let me catch them, instead running further into the jungle where they correctly assumed I would not follow.

After the test ended, we took our time walking back and ate lunch at the parish. The entirety of the meal, one of our students conversed with the cook who did most of the talking. I couldn’t understand her, but I was content to just listen to rhythm of her speech and the language. We returned to Weno around 2:30 and spent the next four hours on a bus picking people up and dropping them off, which was a decidedly less fun excursion.

Today marked the beginning of Catholic Schools Week. I woke up at 5:30 am in order to catch the 6:15 bus downtown to Saramen Chuuk Academy where the mass was held. I’m not the biggest morning person, but in the coolness of the early day, I’m pretty certain there’s not much more beautiful than a Micronesian morning. I was rushing though, and barely had a chance to enjoy the sunrise. I was able to sleep a little at Saram before the mass, which was nice, and afterwards all three Catholic schools (Xavier, Saram, and St. Cecilia’s Elementary) ate lunch in the Saram gym and then had a few hours of field-day type games. It was really nice seeing all the schools working together, and to see the older kids helping out the younger ones who really enjoyed being included. We ended at about 2:30 and rode the flatbed truck home, which had to stop in Penia for a downed line (which means we won’t have power for at least a few days) so Meg and I walked home from there. The weekend ends without power, but maybe that means I’ll get a goodnight’s sleep after a long few days.