Christmas Parade

The next group of pictures includes the Christmas Parade and our hike between islands when the tide was out.  Christmas Parade:  We were actually driving over to the end of Majuro island where we would start our walk when we noticed many, many children with their parents lined along the road.  Each child had some sort of plastic bag.  Trudy remembered hearing about a parade that was to take place that day.  Rounding the bend we saw what we thought was an accident, with one police car with it's lights flashing.  We pulled over to the side of the road and then realized it was the parade.  The parade consisted of the police car, two golf carts decorated with palm leaves, a truck with boxes of candy and men to throw it out, and a large, flat bed truck decorated as a float. That was it. So we then continued on our way.

We walked across the newly exposed coral ground to the next island, named Edjit (sp), and visited the only two member families there.  While walking across there were hundreds of small pools filled with very small fish and a lot of starfish.  Edjit was quite remote as the people usually only commuted to Majuro by boat.  We visited the one bed hospital there.  As remote as it was there was a fairly nice basketball court there, the people like their basketball in the Marshall Islands, even though most are not very tall.  We continued on to the next island and then started back instead of going to the next island, because we had spent a lot of time on Edjit.  A very interesting day, as each island looked like the stereotypical deserted island we see in the movies, with lush undergrowth and lots of banana, palm, and coconut trees.