His names 'Mental'? You can't be serious...

Mentil (left) and Ijikar the WAM Trainers

Jessica,  was waiting for us at the airport and took us round to the pick up truck...oh my god they have a pick up truck how cool-please tell me at some point I can ride in the back! and introduced me to one of the WAM trainers who had given up part of his Saturday to pick us up. I shook his hand and tried to get a grasp on his name, after the third attempt of trying Jessica told me: Mental. What? Surely not? Mental? To this day I'm convinced you don't actually pronounce his name like that. It's spelt Mentil, and JJ Jay (my favourite of all the Marshallese names I heard) one of the WAM trainees laughed at me once and declared 'his name's not Mental' and made the international sign for a bit crazy, 'it's Men-dil its a bird!' I apologised to Mentil but he claimed I was saying it right all along...so that's what I called him. He always smiled at me though, the kind of smile you would give to a child who was trying their best but was still making a mess of everything.

They drove us to the Marshall Islands Resort, a hotel we were staying at until Jessica left and gave us her apartment, and I was super excited just to take off the hoodie. She offered to drive us round Maj to show us the sights but my mind was only on getting my jumper off and getting a shower. We explored the 'resort' for about an hour, grabbed some food and promptly fell asleep. Damn jet lag.