Our first week in Yap.

Last Sunday was our first day in Yap. Suffering from jet lag and hunger, we woke up at 4 a.m., and with no stores or restaurants yet open, made use of our time by unpacking and looking around our new home. We headed up to a local restaurant for breakfast a few hours later. All was quiet on the patio where we ate – in fact, the only other visitor at breakfast was a rat that must have been a foot long from tip to tail. In

all fairness, it was an outdoor restaurant and the rat didn’t really bother us, but it was another sign that things will be different here. Here’s another, spotted on a recent hike:

We followed up breakfast with a driving tour around most of Ya

p, provided by Matt’s co-worker and his girlfriend. The island is

beautiful, and we’re looking forward to exploring it more.

We also started our jobs on Monday – the work looks like it will be interesting, although it may be difficult for us to adjust to the pace here. The other expats tell us that it just takes a little while to slow down. We’ll work on it, and have a good feeling that the pace will catch up with us sooner rather than later.

We’ve had a couple of requests to explain better where we are, so here goes. Yap is the westernmost of the four Federated States of Micronesia. Our island borders the Philippine Sea on the west and is 9 degrees north of the equator. The entire FSM, along with a number of other Pacific Islands were part of the UN Trust Territory of the Pacific following WWII, and then U.S. Territories until 1986. The four states of the FSM voted for independence that year; other islands, including Guam, the Northern Marianas, and the Marshalls, remain U.S. Territories to this day. Although it is an independent nation, the FSM maintains a close connection to the United States. Through the U.S. Compact of Free Association, the U.S. provides substantial monetary aid (KC and Matt would like to thank you, the American taxpayer, for continuing to pay their salaries) in exchange for military and naval rights. The depth of the relationship between the U.S. and FSM is hard to figure out. Mail service is administered by the USPS (here’s a picture of Matt in front of the FSM Postal Service Building, impersonating the plane that will hopefully bring our packages someday):

but you need to get a passport to here. Work permits and visas aren’t necessary for U.S. citizens. Strangely, as Matt recently learned, the FSM is still considered a United States possession under the U.S. tax code. International e-filing isn’t allowed, and is even prohibited from some U.S. Territories (including Guam and American Samoa), but is permissible from the FSM. Two years here will probably shed additional light on the relationship between the two countries, but at this point much of it is a mystery to us.

Aside from work, we spent the rest of our week hunting down edible groceries, starting to look for a car, and making devastatingly fruitless trips to the post office. The mail from off-island only comes three times a week here. With this in mind we mailed ourselves care packages with what we thought was plenty of time to spare. As it turns out, we probably should have considered sending them sometime last July. The hardest thing to go without has been running shoes, but we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll have better luck this week. After a run-in with airport security in Denver, our toothpaste

situation has also been dire:

On Sunday, we had finally squeezed every molecule out of the tiny tube we’d gotten in Hawaii, and had to break down and buy more.

Our hunt for a car has been interesting. American driving laws apply in Yap, but most vehicles here are from Japan, with steering wheels on the right and all sorts of other oddities. We’ll try to snap some pictures of some of the more interesting automobiles in future weeks.

On Saturday, we attended a bbq that ended up in karaoke. The karaoke machine is from the Philippines, and its makers didn’t break the bank on accuracy in translation. Our favorite song of the evening was John Denver’s classic hit, “Libyan on a Jet Plane.” Matt wanted to write additional lyrics based on the title, but KC, in a spasm of political correctness, has vetoed the idea.

Kammagar.