bye, bye, bye.

When you hear those three words together, you picture an iconc boyband, fronted by JT in his ramen noodle hair days, strung up as marionettes, waving their hands around.

When I hear those three words together, it’s because three students are walking past me on campus, and instead of saying, “Hi, Ms. Ackels!” they’re saying goodbye.

This is something that my brain just cannot get used to. 

Here on Yap, it is customary to say “bye” when you walk past someone, the same way we’d say “hey” at home. As I drive past my neighbors or walk past my students, I still find myself surprised each time they shout, “bye!” instead of “hey, what’s up, hello,” though they definitely know who Fetty Wap is, even though my own brother doesn’t. 

I’m trying to think about things that have happened since the last time I wrote, but the days are all blending together. Here are some points of interest:

You know what’s the best? Having a bike. I love biking around the lagoon near our house and singing (screaming) the words to every song on the new Grouplove album and waving at all the people I pass. It’s seriously so much fun, and it’s the best way to clear my head. 

My bed is covered in ant carcasses. They’re literally (yeah, Jeff. Literally.) everywhere. On my computer, on my body, on my books, flying out of my fan. Everywhere. I just pinch them between my fingers and fling their dead ant bodies, not caring where they land. I’m a monster. A menace. I’ve become a total, heartless maniac. You all should’ve seen the grizzly scene on the kitchen counter last night. 

Picture this: a lone grain of rice, somehow overlooked near the stovetop for twenty minutes as we ate. Later, as we moved to do the dishes, we spotted them. Dozens of ants. Hundreds. Attacking this single piece of rice as if it were the last opportunity to feed for a million years. BOOM. Raid. All is quiet on the western front. The ants that once moved so rapidly and with such purpose immediately frozen for all eternity. One woman reigns supreme over them all. It was the exact same as that scene in “Antz” (don’t get me started on that movie…total rip off of “A Bug’s Life”) where the ants fight the termites and just get annihilated. 

Last weekend we drove north to Maap, where the good beaches are. We hadn’t been yet, mostly because the land is private so we weren’t totally sure we’d be allowed to stick around, but we decided to check it out anyway. 

Driving north to the beach in Maap.

Right as we pulled up to the ocean, we saw Sana, one of our Peace Corps friends that lives with a host family up north. She said her family owned beach front property, and we were welcome to hang on the beach on their land! We got so lucky. So we spent the day, the four of us volunteers and Mike, our Jesuit bud, at the beach. In that particular spot, the water is about knee deep for a couple hundred yards. We walked all the way out until it got a little deeper and sat on some big rocks near the reef. We saw some little fish and sponges and about a hundred thousand sea cucumbers which feel DISGUSTING when you step on them. Talk about soggy.

pretending I don't have lessons to plan.

Oh, also! We found this rope swing and it was SO DIFFICULT to climb onto it! Please enjoy this video of my successes and failures. I’m learning a lot about how to be humble, obviously… 

I’ve been out here for a full month now, which is absolutely wild. Can you even believe it? I don’t know how quickly time seems to be moving for you all, but it is FLYING here. The days are fast and the weeks even faster. I’m settling in just fine, and that feels good. It was rough for a while, but each day is better than the last.

I keep singing “Getting Better” by The Beatles. “I’ve got to admit it’s getting better, a little better all the time.” But really, it is. I know that the biggest reason I am enjoying life here now is because of my students and the general environment of the school. These people are so unbelievably wonderful. They are entirely lovely. I am having such a positive experience. I am learning how to love better, how to graciously acknowledge my faults, and how to be present. 

But that has been the most challenging thing for me - being present. 

but how could you have trouble being present in a place like this?

There are so many people back home that I miss greatly. I can’t honestly say I’ve experienced homesickness before coming here. In all of my other travels, including going to college, I never missed home or my family or anything else to the point of great sadness or any other intense feelings. Especially in traveling, I always knew these experiences were temporary. I would only have to be in these places for a short time, so there was no room for anything but excitement. 

Things are different here. Although this is still extremely temporary, I know that I am living here for a longer, more consistent period of time than I have ever lived anywhere other than Dallas, and because of that, I am experiencing real homesickness. 

I want to lay on the couch and watch “Friends” with my family. I want to jump in my black CR-V and go for a night drive and a trip to Sonic with Maggie to spill out all of my recent thoughts and feelings about the good and the bad and the exciting and the worrisome. I want to sleep through the night without ants and mosquitos using my back and arms as their personal playground. I want to remember what it is like to feel comfortable.

But I have not tried hard enough to feel comfortable here. I am too caught up in my own discomfort to try to adjust to it. I don’t spend time with my neighbors or other locals like I should. I spend hours trying to load emails and instagrams and Facebook posts and snapchat videos people are sending me so I can fight to stay relevant in your lives. I don’t want to be forgotten or left behind as you continue your lives without me. It’s a paralyzing fear, thinking that I might lose any of you because of this distance. It terrifies me in a way that it shouldn’t. But this fear is keeping me from being here. 

I’m pushing myself to be more focused on life here. I spent last Saturday afternoon with my next-door neighbor, Angie, and her mother. They are originally from one of the outer islands. They taught us how to make coconut oil and then they made us some local food for dinner. They made taro, which is a staple food here, and cooked it in this kind of sauce they made from copra, which is dried coconut meat. IT WAS SO DANG GOOD. I really loved it. And all throughout that afternoon, I found myself feeling happy, like legitimately happy, for the first time since arriving here. 

I am realizing that it is in people that I find love - not in experiences, not in things, not in social media - but in relationships with people who are capable of giving me love, no matter what form it comes in. It’s been really beautiful to realize that. To realize how much I just love people. I love being with them, learning from them, laughing with them, crying with them, loving them, being loved by them. What gifts. 

Side note about coconuts (because this post is getting too serious) I LOVE THEM. And also, I am highly dependent on them. I’m pretty confident they have healing powers. For real. Every time I feel a little sick or something, I’ll either use the machete we found in our house to cut open a coconut or I’ll ask Dafrad to help me, our 10-year-old neighbor who is a total BEAST. He comes home from school, changes into his thuw (traditional dress for a male islander, essentially a loin cloth), and just dominates. It doesn’t even matter if he’s working or playing, he’s a total boss in everything he does. I want to be Dafrad when I grow up. 

I’m trying to think of things that I can tell y’all about school. 

Ugh, I just love my students. In my Sacred Scriptures class on Friday, I took half of the class period to just have a life talk with the seniors. They’re knee-deep in the college application process and they asked me why I chose to go to Spring Hill. I began to tell them the story of my decision, and they kept firing off questions.

What did you study? Why did you choose that?

(Looking back, they were probably totally playing me…the way you do a substitute teacher, you know? “Oh, if we ask her questions she’ll just keep answering them and we won’t do things for class” …………………………)

I took the opportunity to teach them about choosing happiness. The difference between bailing on things that are hard versus pursuing something you love and dealing with the horrors that may come with it. The way they don’t need to be afraid to change their minds or take risks. You know - the things you learn in college.

I didn’t always choose happiness. I chose fear, more often than I’d like to admit. I’ve chosen the simple, the comfortable, the unimposing. I’ve made decisions out of foolishness, naivety, and cowardice. 

I looked into the faces of my sixteen students and started to tear up. They are precious. Not the way we talk about puppies or gemstones. I felt this sudden innate need to protect these students. From what? I don’t fully know. The pressures of the world outside of this island, people and situations and choices that can (and will) hurt them. It breaks me to think that some of them might struggle with choosing happiness. My friend Zach told me once that we can choose to be anything we want to be, and that includes happy. I fully believe that.

I know that I am choosing happiness here. I made a decision to come here - I answered a very real calling. I don’t always love being away, but I love where I’m headed. I love where this is going. I am already so in love with the person I know that I will be when I am on the other side of this. 

I won’t bail as this thing continues to challenge me. I will pursue that happiness, that knowledge that I’ve done well. But in order to know that I’ve done well, I have to actually do. I have to put in the hours, do the work, make the effort. Be present.

A whole month in. Gosh, it’s just too wild. It’s crazy to look back and see how far I’ve already come since arriving here.

So anyway, today we checked out another beach spot. The swimming was way better, and we met the pastor, his wife, and one of their volunteers from a Christian elementary school in the area. They shared their snorkel masks with us and we saw some cool corals and fish. It was a great afternoon! 

how beautiful is this?!

We were anticipating the arrival of Devi, the fifth and final volunteer to join our crew. She was here last year and went home for the summer, so we’d heard lots of good things about her. We spent all day talking about how excited we were to finally meet her.

And then, the worst thing happened.

We missed her arrival.

That’s right. We thought her flight got in at 10:30 but it really landed at 10:00. So we got to the airport and one of our students was there and she notified us that the Jesuits had just left with Devi. I immediately yelled, “YOU’RE LYING” at her and she was definitely surprised (it was only after this happened that I realized how rude this was of me …) but she actually wasn’t lying. We had missed her completely.

So we jumped back in the car and raced home to find Devi settling back into the room she lived in last year. We were so embarrassed - what a horrible first impression, right? We’ll have to do a lot to make that up to her. But she’s super cool so hopefully we’ll be able to move past it pretty quickly, haha

Anyway, this is beyond long enough for now. Next week I’ll be funnier (and hopefully more concise), promise!

Much love to all my people back home. I love you and miss you dearly. Don’t forget about me while I’m out here :)