Damian and Mary

This weekend was a biggie - three parties, a scuba dive and a chick flick to cram in. Given that I repeated the karaoke/3am thing again on Friday night (no duet with the Governor this time, hallelujah) I'm pretty impressed I managed to fit it all in. I blame Mary for the karaoke, by the way. When it's your last week on island you can get people to do anything.......

Which brings me to the sad, sad news that two of our best friends have now left Pohnpei. Damian and Mary are moving to Mauritania. I think they deserve a prize for living in consecutive countries that 99.99% of the world does not know exist.

They are lovely, fun, generous and both have a naughty sense of humour. Anyway, some of us (OK, mostly me) may have been a little unkind at times, teasing Mary incessantly about wearing a burka, sending her the burqini website (I really want one of those, by the way), laughing about the sand sticking to the vaseline you have to wear on your face, mentioning, oh, about 30 times a day that it's a dry country (and I'm not talking about the weather), and pointing out all the great things about Pohnpei whilst wondering aloud "why would anyone want to leave a place like this?", but it's really because we all want to scream "DON'T LEAVE US! YOU NEED TO STAY! WHY ARE YOU GOING? DID I DO SOMETHING WRONG? DON'T GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO *sob* *sob* *little sniffly shudder*"

We will miss them very much, and their beautiful doggies, Mali/Molly and Jamaica. We don't put photos of people on the blog without their permission, but Mary said we could, so here are a few.....




Ok, so here is one. I have been trying to upload photos for 6 weekes now, this is the only one that has worked.......

snorkeling the headache away

Last weekend I went snorkeling. Whoopdie doo, big deal, I hear you say. She's always snorkeling. Well, that's true. But this was the BEST SNORKELING EVER. Or, as our little friend Anya would say, BEST SNORKERING EVER!!

Perhaps my senses were heightened by the cracker of a hangover I was suffereing (note to self - do not expect to get off scott free from a night involving singing a karaoke duet with the Governor of Pohnpei and ending with 4 police squad cars despatched to turf the stragglers out of the bar at 3am). Anyways, there I was, feeling mighty sorry for myself, sitting on a boat in the rain. I was kinda over snorkeling, too. I know it sounds like someone complaining they are too rich or too thin (neither of which living on Pohnpei is helping me with) and I sound like a spoiled brat. But, you know. I was kinda over it.

Back to my epiphany. The water was deep, deep blue. Electric, even. My wobbly eyes looked at the reef and I was convinced I was hallucinating because the reef was moving around a lot. Turns out there were so many fish there they looked like a solid reef! The visibility was incredible. We saw a pod of dolphins, I saw a manta ray (thus breaking my pohnpei + snorkeling manta curse. aiiieeee. [insert Miss Piggy chop]. Take that, Manta curse). The aquatic scene looked like those photos of a reef they used to stick to TV sets in shops. It was amazing. It reminded me how special Pohnpei and the FSM are. Sometimes, after being at work, I forget that.

And then I got out, had a beer, and the world was OK again (sorry, Mum, but it was medicinal).