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The first quarter of the school year is now behind us, and I'm on the fast track toward winter break. It's amazing how quickly time seems to fly by here, as I'm just five weeks away from the holiday. It seems like just yesterday I was getting off the plane to start the school year.
This past weekend was Veteran's Day, and so we had an extra day off. This afforded me the opportunity to join a group of my colleagues on a bit of a tour around the island (they rented a golf cart). So we checked out some of the WWII sites and hit some of the island "attractions" as well. We drove by the golf course first, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it was a decent size, 9-hole course. It's not in the best of condition, but not bad considering our location. I used to play golf as a kid, so I'm looking forward to giving it another try out here... hopefully when very, very few people are around. It's been awhile. Hah.
We then hit two different glass beaches, where pieces of old glass long ago tossed into the ocean have washed ashore - many of them smooth and eroded down over years and years in the water. Some are really quite neat, with colorful and smooth chunks of glass sitting among the sand. It sounds a bit trashy, and much of it is indeed the result of ocean trash - but it's a fun little scavenger hunt experience.
After the glass excursions, we drove around the island a bit more and hit a few unique locations that I hadn't seen before. The Japanese cemetery that commemorates those Japanese soldiers who lost their lives during the Battle of Kwajalein was a particularly neat sight, as I had no idea such a spot was on the island. Apparently, each year a group of Japanese come to Kwajalein to pay their respects at the cemetery as well.
Our little tour continued for a bit after the cemetery stop as well, but this post is getting rather lengthy, so I'll wrap up here for now. Basically, it was a nice weekend to explore Kwajalein a bit more and break out of my typical work routine that prevented me from really getting out and about as much as I should have. And one of these days, I'm actually going to do the real WWII site tour that wraps around the island. I keep hitting various stops on the tour by accident, but never the whole thing. One day...
