wouldn't it be nice?: Kwaj

It just occurred to me that I'll never do my Kwaj posts like I wanted to. So, here's a summation and a couple more photo albums. (Links to the albums with most of the pictures and descriptive captions are at the end of the post.)

Robbie and I visited with a lot of old family friends, high school/elementary school teachers, and plenty of other people who kept talking about how much they loved Robbie. This should come as no surprise to most people.

We visited other islands in the atoll, like Ebeye, Roi, and Bigej. Ebeye is right next to Kwaj (just after Little Bustard and Big Bustard... that made me laugh every time), and apparently it's the most densely populated place in the world (according to Wikipedia). So, needless to say, there's a lot of poverty, but the church is pretty strong there. Robbie's dad used to be the district president and he was quite a popular guy. So popular that one of the families (pictured above) named their baby Hamill David. I just love that. (They gave me the lovely necklace and basket, also pictured above.) Dave also told me that when he'd come to Ebeye everyone from church would greet him by saying "Hey Hamill!" Funny. Also, it's considered impolite for women to wear anything but skirts or dresses that go past their knees, so I had to wear a skirt to visit. Sisters, I really wanted to get a Marshallese muumuu for all of you but alas, we never saw places to buy them. I know you're sad about this.

Roi is where Robbie's dad used to work, and it's also where all the big radars are. Pretty cool. It's also a site of a big WWII battle, so there are a bunch of decrepit Japanese bunkers and one very large gun on a hill. A lot of people like to scuba dive and snorkel out there (unfortunately, the weather kind of sucked when we went, so the water wasn't as nice), and the divers find things like shells and other possibly live ammunition. I never actually saw anything like that, but there are posters everywhere warning you not to pick anything up if you see it, but to go tell someone. Helpful, I know. Anyway, it was pretty, and that's where we spent my birthday. We also flew in a tiny plane that gave me motion sickness.

Bigej is another island in the atoll that we boated to. The day we went boating was totally gorgeous. Clear blue sky, calm water, warm, etc. We went with a bunch of high school kids that had boating licenses, and we went spear fishing (okay, Robbie did), and snorkeled in the coral heads. Ahhh, it was really awesome. One of the kids took underwater pics but I have yet to see those, but isn't the water pretty? And do you love my Sea Bands? No motion sickness for me.

Then, of course, most days we just went on bike rides (there are no cars) or to the beach. Luckily, the island is like two miles long and a half mile wide, so... we could do that whenever we wanted. I can tell you're all jealous, so I'll just stop with that. Check out the photo album of Kwaj here (LOST fans will understand the Dharma Initiative reference), and my photo album solely devoted to crabs here.

Other highlights: sharks (check out the video of what happens when nurse sharks are feeding... no matter how "safe" they are I'm still wary), kayaking, tans, no makeup, minimal showering, and being away from real life for 11 days. Ah, I miss it.

(update: the shark video doesn't seem to be working for me when I click on it so if that doesn't work then go here.)

Well, we're back from our island getaway. And boy did we get away. No (high speed) internet, no cell phones... it was just like traveling back to the year 2000. No really, I think that being disconnected from the rest of the world was the best part. Also the crystal clear water and the average temperature every day being something like 80 degrees didn't hurt.

(It just occurred to me that maybe not all of my readers know that my husband grew up on Kwajalein, the biggest island in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. It's not really the easiest vacation spot to get to because it's a secure military base, and you have to have a sponsor in order to go out there. And since Robbie's parents moved away a year ago our chances of finding a sponsor as the years go on will be a little harder, so we got to take advantage of seeing Robbie's childhood home one last time thanks to my generous in-laws!! More details later.)

Anyway, I think that we took something like 400 pictures, so I think I might just pick the cream of the crop and do a series of posts... that might take a while, since we STILL don't have internet in our apartment.

But... here are some pictures to tide you over for the moment. (And by "you" I mostly mean my in-laws :) Dave and Diane, everyone sure missed you over there!)