After two months on Kwaj, we’re finally beginning to feel like our living situation is to our liking. After about a month, we were able to acquire a second dorm style room down the hall from Michelle’s
The new room has become our bedroom and main bath area. This room has two smaller closets that we use for our clothes and a smaller bathroom where we get ready each morning. Two recliners are used for reading and lounging and are next to a dresser. Save for our bed, all furniture is government issued property and can be requested from a small warehouse on the island. While the selection is quite limited, some of the options are actually pretty nice.
There are a number of bachelor quarter (BQ) buildings similar to ours nearby with an adult recreation center (ARC) a short walk away. Here you can play pool, ping pong, shuffleboard or watch tv at your leisure. Most importantly, it is one of only two places on the island with public use wifi, and the only one without kids running around. We frequent the ARC for our personal internet use regularly and post for this blog from there as well.
Our specific BQ is located one block from the Pacific as you travel east but is not the easiest trip by bike. There is a reasonable incline for an island with an elevation of 20 feet but it’s the wind that will make you consider hoping off your bike and walking. The combination has earned it the name “Little Big Hill” – coined by Jason. Going west, you will pass by a few blocks of family housing before hitting the dock on the lagoon side of the island. This is where the fairy can take you to Ebeye a few miles north for no charge and where many Marshallese workers commute into. Bike racks sit outside of each building, but bikes have been known to walk off at times (this happened to Michelle’s bike last week). Luckily, we’d been informed that most of those bikes are ‘borrowed’ by Marshallese running late for the fairy and end up at the dock. Thanks to that tip, our search only lasted about 3 minutes.