Weekend at Xavier

Recently, I spent a peaceful weekend up at Xavier High School and enjoyed the luxuries of the nicest school in our island nation. In past blog posts, I have already described the campus and its prestige, so I wont spend much time talking about the details of the school. It is a former Japanese communication headquarters that was converted into a beautiful private Catholic school. It sits on peninsula at the far eastern edge of Weno.

            Our main reason for visiting the school this weekend was to hang out with our fellow volunteer community, which includes Peace Corps and Jesuit volunteers. We are all young Americans in this foreign land and we lean on each other for support. I love being on my home island of Fefan, but sometimes its necessary to get away from it all and just act like an American. Its also nice to get to speak English for a couple days. It helps maintain my sanity.

            We squeezed onto an overcrowded school bus and hitched a ride towards the remote campus. The bus bumped over rocks and rolled through puddles for about an hour before it reached the roads end. We hopped off and walked up a muddy pathway the rest of the way. Reaching the Xavier campus is a refreshing change from the slums below. We stepped off the dirt road and saw a giant green lawn. People were running around freely on this flat piece of grass and playing softball. It was a site I had never seen in Chuuk!

            The atmosphere at Xavier is the closest to an American school of anywhere in Micronesia. The students have places to play sports, fully adorned classrooms, cafeterias, and all the amenities that a fledgling young academician should have. The boys all live in dorms on the campus and the girls are forced to live with host families all around the island. The population comes from all over the Pacific, so English is the common language. There are actually only a few Chuukese in the whole school.

            It was great to see the legitimate nature of the school and experience the comfortable lifestyle that the volunteers live in, however it also made me appreciate my situation. Although I have a broken down school, very limited household resources, and a poor diet; there are many things that I have and they don’t. I am integrated into a community. I speak a new language and have become a member of a new culture. I live like an islander. There are hardships that come along with my lifestyle, but I think I prefer it to private Weno school volunteers’.

            We spent the next two days dining on nicely prepared meals, relaxing on couches and playing sports. We ran around on the soccer field, played basketball and a little bit of dodgeball. Games were played, drinks were drank, and good times were had by all.

            One of the days, we took a trek to the famous Japanese lighthouse. Just a 45-minute walk through the jungle brought us to a towering concrete structure that jutted out on the tip of the peninsula. We climbed to the top of the war monument and propped ourselves up to see the fantastic view. From this vantage point, we had a 360-degree perspective of the lagoon. I have seen many spectacular mountain vistas during my time here, but this one was unique because of its breadth and scope. There were no immediate barriers blocking our view. We could see all around the entire lagoon. The multicolored blues of the ocean and the endless stretch of swirling clouds encapsulated us all and sucked us into its majestic aura. We sat for more than an hour marveling at the natural beauty of our island paradise.

As the sun began to drop behind the distant peak, we began our descent and walked back towards the high school. On our way back, we decided there was just enough time for a swim. I tore off my shirt and sprinted off the end of an old dock into the warm waters of the Pacific. I lay on my back and floated in the calm ocean as I stared up towards the orange and purple sunset that was unfolding before us. It was another one of those moments that made me feel truly blessed for living in such an amazing place. The serenity and beauty of this island environment sometimes seems unreal to me.

That night, we ate another wonderful meal and enjoyed good company as the night wore on. I ended up sleeping on the roof under the starlight. Fortunately, there was no rain that night. And even more fortunately, there were a ridiculous amount of shooting stars. During the night, I saw at least 30 meteors rip through the earths atmosphere and erupt in small bursts of light. Meteor Shower or a few too many drinks? I’m not sure.

The following morning, I ate a giant plate of bacon and satisfied all my foodly desires. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful weekend.