I have been on Yap for 26 days. It seems like a long time, and yet, it also feels like I just got here.

It takes time to adjust to a new place, and I am now feeling a sort of separation anxiety in that I will soon be wrenched from a place that has accepted me, inserted into a metal flying tube with rarified air and no legroom, and 10 hours later, will be deposited back on O'ahu.

What do I have to show for all of this work?

Wonderful conversations - illuminating ones, descriptive ones. And, I have remembered many of them, as they each provided a new perspective, a view of how others view the world.

I came as an observer - an impartial observer, one would hope. I have tried to report things as I have observed them. I feel fortunate in that I do not have to provide a detailed report of the culture here, as an anthropologist would have to do - s/he tries to capture a melange of cultural snapshots, interviews, and through them attempts to provide as comprehensive as possible desecription of whatr s/he sees. And anyone who has read Margaret Mead, and later, her detractors, cultural anthropology, especially today with widening Western influence, is something I would not want to do anywhere, especially here.

I have collected words, sentences, and stories, and through them I hope to distill a work that will be of use to both the academic world and the Satawalese people themselves.

I have made friends with people here - one may ask, where does the observation part stop and the friendship begin? When does  a person put the pen down, turn off the tape recorder, and just listen? There are times here when I should have recorded some things, when I shouldn't have recorded others [everyone always knew when my recorder was playing - but there were times that the record was not useful] and those times when the recording worked out just fine.

Sometimes I would worry when I heard a story and I wasn't recording it or writing it down (my handwriting has gotten so bad over the past few years!) that I wouldn't remember it, but to my surprise, I have.

Sometimes names of people came up, and as an ethical person, I blanked out the name, or tossed that part of the story away.