Good Week, All in All

The best news of the week was that our Honda 110 bike arrived from Tarawa! My "world" now feels a lot bigger! We also were able to get completely moved into the new Kitchen hut at base camp. Joy really appreciates having everything in one place now! The roof and walls are not complete yet, but it is so spacious and dry. There is even room to park the motorbike inside out of the weather. We have had so much rain lately making it very hard to get laundry to dry! I put my down pillow out in the sun to air it out and went to the school to check the internet and a big rainstorm hit and did not let up for about 6 hours. My pillow was soaked and I don't know if I can get dried out before it mildews!

We have not yet obtained a work permit an so much leave Kiribati before four months go by. We have looked at so many options. Fiji, New Zealand,  Australia, Solomon Islands, Hawaii, mainland USA--all VERY expensive to get to from Kiribati. So we have decided to go to the Marshall Islands, only 90 min flight (and $650/person round trip!) away from Tarawa. There is one flight every two weeks. So we will be officially on vacation for the holidays from December 17th to the 31st. If we miss our flight back to Kiribati then we have the option of flying to Honolulu, then Fiji and back to Tarawa or extend our time away by two weeks. It is more cost effective to stay two more weeks. We are hoping to get to Tarawa on the Sugar Blues--our first voyage.