Really listening to music

So on the second half of my year on Utrik, I decided to start an exercise regiment.  And by exercise regiment, I mean running at the air port.  I would dawn on my sneakers, socks, running shorts, and a rather large, unattractive guam dress, grab my water bottle and ipod, and start running.  I have found that it is best to run in the evening, because its not so hot.  (just to be clear, it is ALWAYS hot, but not as hot when the sun starts to go down, and plus, the sky looks amazing!!)

See, I told ya so!!

So while I am running, I would listen to music that would have a great beat.  Examples include Backstreet Boys, Insync, Ashley Tisdale, etc...  So usually when a song has a good running beat, the lyrics are a piece of shit.  This will be important later on in this post.
So after many laps of running, sweating, walking, running, sweating, drinking water, running, walking sweating even more, I head home to take a shower, cause lets face it, I smell.  Okay, so that it is the end of that story.  (Although I did stop running for about a month, because the island had no food, and I realized that the amount of calories I was consuming was way under than what I was losing.  It was dangerous, so I quit running for a little bit.  But then the food ship came, as well as edible calories, so the exercise started back up again.


So to go back to the music, every Saturday, I would do laundry.  For several hours, I would sit there and scrub and scrub.  And I would watch the muscles in my right arm get significantly stronger than the ones in my left arm.  Lets just say that flexing looked awkward.  

So as the year went on, I decided that listening to music would be a good idea while I was scrubbing my never ending pile of unclean clothes.  So thinking that this would be a good idea, I decided to listen to the music that helped me so much when I was exercising.  Have you ever really listened to the lyrics of pop songs from the 90s?  Well, I know I haven't, until that day.  Holy cow - I was filling my ears with lyrical trash every since I was in the 4th grade and I had no idea whatsoever!!  Man, that ruined my whole childhood right there!  So disgusted with my taste of music as an elementary school student who had no choice of radio stations while on the bus.  And this moment also ruined country music me as well.  So let's just say that when I got home, I had a huge music make over.

Haha, my laundry all done!!!  So beautiful!

Unconnected, and it feels so good.

Have you ever been unconnected from the world?  So remote that you can literally focus on what is in front of you without any distractions or updates from the real world?  I was literally wire-less and had no hope of being connected - and I honestly have to say that it felt very good.  But then again, when I got back to the reality I was familiar with, I had no idea of anything.

So Utrik did have internet, we just couldn't use it.  The building was right across from the school, and it had the computer, the internet, but again, we couldn't use it.  Why?  Because we needed to have the opening ceremony.  Now to have the opening ceremony, many of the important people needed to actually be on Utrik for this to happen.  Now what consists of the important people?  The important people for the important opening ceremony are - the mayor, the head of the Department of Health (because she is from Utrik), and other important people from government head offices.  So lets recap - in order to use the internet, we need to have the important opening ceremony, and inorder to have the opening ceremony, we need to have the important people of Utrik actually come to Utrik (they live on Majuro) and then have the ceremony.  So to put this in perspective, the internet was actually ready to go around October or November.  The opening ceremony happened in May.  So it just sat there, collecting dust- for months.

So while this seems really bad, it actually was a good thing.  How many times do you check your phone?  Do you ever feel incomplete if your phone is not in your pocket?  Do you need to be connected all the time?  (Random side note to illustrate this point - when I came back from the Marshall Islands, I worked at the summer camp where I worked for the past 5 summers as their maintenance staff.  One night, some of us went out to dinner.  The whole time we were at this restaurant, everyone with a smart phone (since I'm so behind, I don't have one) was on it.  There was no conversation, no talking, everyone was connected, and the human connection was not there.  It was tragic to see that the human connection cannot occur, but I digress)

So I have to say, it felt very nice to be unconnected to literally be wire-less.  There was this huge weight that was lifted off and I could finally breathe.  And because of this, I had the rare opportunity to communicate with my family and friends the old fashion way - writing letters.

Haha, what fun!  And because of the irregularity of the planes, I had no idea when to actually write the letters.  Once I wrote a 12 page letter to my parents, sealed the envelope and everything, thinking that the plane was coming the next day.  Alas, I was wrong, and I had that envelope sitting on my desk for 3 months.  I felt that I couldn't write a new letter to them because what would happen if the new letter reached them before the old one.  The time sequence would be all wrong!  Chaos and unintended ignorance would enter their lives, and ruin their lives FOREVER!!  (okay, not really, I was just lazy because I knew the plane was down and not going to be fixed for months, and I didn't feel like writing. I know, I'm a poor excuse as a human being.  I fail.)  One time, the plane was down for about 3 months, and I already started a letter to my friend, Holly.  So I turned her letter into a diary.  Her letter, originally about 6 pages, turned into 30 pages.  And six of those pages were me talking/writing about open faced sandwiches (remember, this was the time of no food and I was dreaming about all the possibilities of combinations of open faced sandwiches.  I know, I know, I'm pathetic.)  So to my dear friend Holly, I'm so sorry.  You received a novel of a letter, full of random shit.

And because I had to write letters, many of my friends actually had to write letters back to me.  Some of my friends were very good pen pals, like my friend Holly, and my very good friend Susan.  Twice, Susan made me cookies.  I was unable to eat the first batch, because a mouse at the post office wanted to have them first.  And the second batch, I ate some, shared with my family, and then someone went into my room and ate them.  It like the universe was trying to send me a message, you shall not enjoy Susan's very delicious, enno, extremely yummy cookies.  YOU SHALL NOT!!  Oh, and my parents started writing their letters in bullet points.  And one time, my mother wrote me a letter while at a cardio heart conference nurse thing.  I'm glad you chose me over that!  And to my friends who wrote me, I honestly read and reread the letters so many times.

And because of this pen pal system, I found out who really wanted to connect with me.  I have to say that it really hurts when I write letter after letter to some of my friends, and I don't get a response back.  And I would like to thank my friends who took the time to actually write to me.  And I would like to thank all the people who mailed me care packages - Ginka and Aunt Kris, my parents, Susan, Aunt Kathy and Uncle Reggie, and to all those people who I can't remember.

The only down side to this mode of communication is receiving world news.  Our field directors would more or less update us (Sometimes we actually got news, and other times we got celebrity news.  Apparently both are very important).  And this mode of communication is very slow, and add the fact that the plane was broken down about 80% of the time, I really never knew anything.  For example, the Penn State Sandusky thing happened around November.  I didn't find out about it until February.  That was when I was able to read all the newspapers my parents sent me.

So more or less, it was a great experience, re-establishing the human connection, and to truly be wire-less.