Ooh, do have it looked at Shari (I changed my name, hated the other one). I recall my folks talking about the lack of surfers. It is so strange to me, being from coastal NC, where there are tons of surfers and little east coast waves! I hope your foot gets better. Awhile agao someone asked if my adopted sister was an orphan-no, she was not. Her grandmother and mother had cancer and were very poor. My sister is smart and there was no real opportunity for her to be educated there, so she moved to the states with my mom-got homesick a couple years later and opted to go back.
Help with plant ID
Be careful with that coral Shari-it can start to grow in your foot. I think thats the main danger with the coral-that and it can shredd you up pretty bad if you hit it the wrong way. Staph is also a concern, depending on how clean the water is...i know that surfers really take risks surfing in Lahaina harbor (Maui) because the water is so dirty and if you cut yourself on the coral, the cuts get infected easily.
Surfers are crazy-they will surf in very shallow water with coral 2' underneath the water....lol all they need to see is that the waves are breaking right and thats it. It gets pretty common place to see surfers walking around with cut skin on their body!
Yep....I know. I'm a transplanted Californian, surfing was my life as a teen. Moved to Colorado many years ago and pretty much gave it up, into snorkeling and diving and lots of other stuff now...we travel a lot, and I love to see the sea-life in other parts of the world. But nothing beats the lagoon out here.
What a fascination discussion of coral and it's wounds. I am trying NOT to picture a piece of coral growing our of Shari's leg!
Tropicanna...what did your mother do about a WC?
WC? ? Showing my ignorance here.
Happy Birthday lillyo!!!!
Thank you for the birthday wishes!
WC is water closet. It's what the British call bathrooms. I was trying to be discrete as it is a very personal thing to ask a stranger how her mother addressed waste issues in a hut. Living in a hut sounds fine, but I would definitely want an American bathroom attached to the hut! That's why I don't go camping.
ShariScott: Did you ever find out what your plant was? I have read through this thread and WOW .... So educational! We haven't learned yet which plant you want Identified, but I sure have learned a lot about the area where you live. I Thank You all for your great knowledge and information! I like to travel, but don't like being on an airplane for more than 2 hours at a time, and my husband is a College Professor at an Aeronautical University and teaches about planes! He loves to Scuba Dive and I bet he would love the Marshall Islands .... sounds like a beautiful place to visit!
Boy, talk about straying from original intent. I am living vicariously through Shari's wonderful weather as I face single digits at night here. Every time I see the "Marshall Island" address I smile, thinking of beautiful beaches. Shari...how about some pictures?
Oh Yes Shari .... Please, Please, post some photo's of your Beautiful Islands!
We can pretend we are there.
Hi everyone! Yes....we have strayed off topic, but its so much fun to share info on a place that I love. Its so nice that you have all been so interested. Plantladylin - I'm sorry I hadn't mentioned that the plant was identified in the ID forum as a Euphorbia neriifolia. This site is just so great that I tend to get carried away. As for all of you who want pictures it would actually be better to see my husbands site. He has gazillions so you can look to your hearts content. He has them separated into folders of diving, plants, etc. So you can pic and choose what you want to see. Go to Webshots, community, and islanddood. islanddood is my dearly beloved. have fun and tell me what you think! Big smiles to all!
Shari, sorry for talking all over you thread. lillyo, you asked about the bathroom-they actually bought an actual toilet, dug a hole about 6 ft. deep, filled it w/ rocks, them put a layer of snad, and concerte over this leaving a space small enough for a drainage pipe. She had to have water handy to make it "flush", but this worked for them. Have you ventured to Palau or elsewhere, Shari?
That is an amazing toilet design.
Hi everyone! Sorrry I haven't been here in a bit...life keeps interfering with my chatting! Yes, I have been to many of the other islands. Kosrae, Palau, Majuro, Pohnpei, even went to Kiribati for a few days. Tropicanna (cute name!) - its amazing what people can do when then set their mind to it isn't it? I didn't think I could ever live that "primatively", but when you are living it, it just doesn't seem primative. It's just living. And compared to the way life has become in the States....I'll take the islands any day of the week! I didn't notice it when I was living there because I think it just becomes a part of daily life - but the hustle and crime, and grime and traffic and NOISE! Not for me. We have stars, and sun and sand - even a marching band! Naturally we don't have to build toilets like that, but I would if I had to. I freak out if I'm in a crowd of more than a hundred people. To me the Pacific is just that - pacific....and beautiful....and healing. Wish you all could come!
It sounds terrific! We all want to come so be carefull what you wish for!
When you go to the other islands, do you go by ferry and where do you stay?
Just checked out your husband's pictures. What on earth are those hobbit huts?
I just saw the sign in the PO about bomb declarations. Are people mailing bombs?
I wasn't trying to let the cat out of the bag w/ Kosrae! That was definately a place where the pictures and the folklore had me wanting to move there. Chicken*** Island-Any place what honors chicken poo by naming a beautiful mountain island is alright by me.
Shari:
Thanks so much for starting this thread. I feel like I just had a geography lesson and I loved it! I spent some time in Guam and loved it - would love to go back someday. I also talked to a woman once who did a freighter cruise in the Marshall's. Wouldn't THAT be fun!
Chicken Poo Island? There is so much I can't guess out there including hobbit houses.
For the rest of you who haven't checked out Shari's husband's photos...I recommend it. Very interesting, quite a few things that fascinate guys, like misile and train, but also beautiful flower and beach photos.
The hobbit huts are "dome homes" - supposedly all the rage for this type of climate, except that the hobbits (what we call the people who live in them) don't like them much. they are quite roomy and all that, but are completely uninsulated so a little bit of rain sounds like pebbles falling on your house. Well, we average 100 inches a year out here, so they miss some sleep, can't hear many tv shows....sometimes can't even hear each other speaking! No thanks. I like my cinderblock house....it may be small, but its home. The bomb notice on the PO is because this is an army base.....and you know how the military can be. We kinda laugh about the sign, but we have had some unattended things; bags and such like, get blown up. The army takes this stuff seriously, so nobody leaves their laundry sitting outside the store while they shop.
As far as visiting other islands....those in our atoll - too small for you to find on maps, we visiti by boat....aamof....going to one tomorrow. But for all the others mentioned earlier we fly. The closest is about an hour away by plane.
Who and why would anyone blow up your laundry? It sounds like something out of a sitcom, but it couldn't be funny in real life. How bizzare.
Cinderblocks sound like they'd make a solid home for strong winds. I would think that they would be cooler too compared to tin can living.
Your visits to the other islands sound very interesting. Are the fabulous jungle-like flower pictures in your husband's photos from another island?
You should take some flower photos on your now-today trip and post them here.
I wish I could post y parents pics, they were taken befire digital cameras became the thing and we have no scanner--Absolutely beautiful, though!
You can take them to any Walmart or drug store with a film dept. and scan them onto a disc then show us them. It's not very expensive. I've even shot digital pictures of the pictures and depending on the light had fair results.
Shari, have you made it back alive from your boat trip? Are there sharks in tose parts?
Howdy everyone! Yep, we got back last night. Had a wonderful, wonderful day. Lots of sun - the guys went diving. I went snorkeling with my daughter and her husband. My husband took some more underwater pics, so when he gets them downloaded you will have more to look at. The island we went to doesn't really want visitors, so we stayed down by the point, did some shelling and then got back in the water. When we docked back home, our granddaughter was there to meet us, (she's three) with the family that was watching her for us. So while our gear was drying we took her over to look at all the nurse sharks that gather around the fish cleaning area. There were some turtles there too. And yes there are sharks all around out here, but they don't hurt anyone. We have black tip, white tip and gray reef as well as the nurse sharks. Some hammerheads. Those in the lagoon are cool with people, but we don't mess with the ones oceanside. Good way to lose body parts. How long can we keep this thread going if we're not talking about plants?
Well find out how long we can keep the thread going without mentioning plants!
Sooo, the sharks are friendly. How charming!
Is your daughter and family visiting or have they gotten work on the island too?
Why doesn't the island want visitors?
I was curious which island it was, too?
Yes, my son-in-law recently got a job out here, which he had been trying to do for a number of years. I guess when JB (my dearly beloved), started passing around Chris's resume, the powers that be realized that having family already here was a really good start. A short time later he was hired. This saved both of our families a fortune in long distance bills cause my daughter and I are really close and we talked nearly every day. She grew up out here so was ecstatic about being able to raise her daugher here. Safest place in the world these days!
The island we went to is Bigej (or beegee as the Kwajii's call it). They don't mind visitors, but you have to go through a formal request process, and since we weren't interested in going into the village we just didn't bother. Not much there and they go out of there way to make visitors feel welcome so end up giving more than they can afford to give, so unless we really want to visit someone in particular or have a reason to go into the village we don't. It is very small, though not as small as Kwaj, and mostly jungle at one end - village and some buildings on the other end.
This isn't fair - I write novels and you guys write greeting cards! Tell me more about you!
Shari:
We are all living vicariously through you. I think I'm not alone in saying I'd love to be living in some far away, exotic location. Personally, I feel like I'm getting a great geography lesson and it's making me wish the next couple of years were behind me and we could travel more. We had planned to retire by now, but it's hard when you own your own business. Keep up the great stories and pictures.
Ginger
Ginger, sure hope you and the other DG Floridians weren't damaged too much by last weeks weather monsters. Did you fare okay?
Shari,
I too am living vicariously through your adventure. Just the thought of all that blue water and sea air makes me smile. It is so wonderful that you can share this time with your daughter. And even more amazing that your grandchildren can grow up there.
How interesting that the community on the adjacent island wants you to notify them before you arrive. It makes me think of my own preference to know ahead so I can clean the fur off every surface before company arrives! I wonder if the whole village engages in cleaning and cooking in preparation for visitors.
It is icy bitter cold here, making your islands with strange names more alluring. Like many on the Dave's site, I am eagerly awaiting spring.
Last fall I lost my mind and ordered about 1000 bulbs mostly from Brent and Becky's. I immediately injured my foot and so had a difficult time planting in this terribly rocky soil. I was planting through November and got them all in thanks to a delay of winter which was strangely late this year. I worked cleaning up my gardens till mid January when the weather suddenly became winter. I never got all the mulching done and I am longing for a break in the weather so I can continue. Before it got really cold, I stockpiled several yards of mulch in the basement in various containers. So I have warmish mulch waiting for a bearable day to be placed. There is an inch or so of snow on the ground which doesn't seem scheduled to melt soon...it's too cold. So I have to wait for it to evaporate "sublimate" to figure out where to mulch.
So I keep wondering if the lateness of winter will mean lateness of spring. It is exciting to think about all my bulbs and worrying that the tips of so many that were emerging in January after days in the 60's will have been damaged.
This seems so un-fun to talk about when you are in shorts. I fear that reading about it will give you a chill. Where is the US did you live before the Marshall Islands? Did you have a perennial garden and bulbs?
Lillyo
Lillyo,
I lived in Denver, CO - which right now is in the midst of record setting cold days and lots of snow...much more than usual. My oldest daughter and her family still live in that area, so we get lots of reports. Its actually a good thing that I'm not there now, cuz I go a little nutzo with too much cold. I start pacing my sun porch - staring outside and waiting for my bulbs to burst through. When they do, my family starts laughing at me, cuz I always go out and start talking to them, welcoming them back, etc. I loved all my bulbs; daffodils, tulips, windflowers, iris, etc and all the so called "annuals" that came back year after year like precious friends...snapdragons, portulaca, mexican primrose....I didn't have nearly the trouble with them that I have with all these tropicals and this wet or windy weather.
We know that we are some of the luckiest people on earth. Some people just don't get it out here. They complain about the price of things, about the slowness of the mail, about the lack of TV reception. I just say it must suck to be them....can't even enjoy nature's bounty when its smacking you in the face! Who needs TV when we have all this beauty, bathtub warm water to swim in, friends, family.....yup, I'm indeed blessed.
Sure hope things warm up for you soon. I will do my own vicarious "spring-fling" hearing about all your beautiful bulbs - 1000 !!!! Say "hi" to them all from me!