Cultural Experience!!!

I have lived on the islands long enough to experience most of the crazy cultural experiences/food, but last night I experienced a new one.   I attended  the graduation of Erika Diones. (For those of you who are the Naz folks, Erika is on the global NYI council.  It was quite exciting last general assembly when she was elected!)  Erika attends an elite private school that is also a boarding school serving the FSM, Palau, and Marshalls.  Students have to take three days of rigorous exams to be admitted in the school. Since Erika lives with her parents, she catches the bus at 6am to ride almost 2 hours on the most atrocious roads and gets home at 7pm.

Anyway, the 3 hour ceremony (for only 33 students) had the world's longest processional.  Students, be glad we weren't playing Pop and Circus Pants on this one.  The students took one step every 4 beats and the song (Canon in D...which I hate) was at about 60 beats/minute.  I did, however, thoroughly enjoy the speaker who was an alumnus of the school, resides in Hawaii, and is an author.

Island culture states that "whenever something exciting happens, huge fiesta follows."  This was an amazing party. (For the couple of you who might be reading this and will understand, think Rota in October.)   They had the typical giant fish, roasted pig, and.......SEA TURTLE.  I had never seen this before. (Mostly because it is illegal in all countries except the FSM.) And no, it doesn't taste like chicken. It taste's like turkey--the dark meat. (Perry didn't approve. He thought of they'd kill sea turtles, they might kill a platypus.)