The Island Hopper to Micronesia
I'm on an exciting trip to places I've never been before! Although the mission of the trip is to understand the situation of visually impaired students in Micronesia, I absolutely get the benefits of visiting these islands and enjoying the scenery. Getting to these islands is not simple. The way to get to the main islands from the U.S. is to fly to Hawaii and then take the "island-hopper." I had a vision of this being a DC-3 or some such, but it's a modern 737 that is rated as "ETOPS" which means it's able to fly for three hours on one engine. Continental flies this route three times a week, going from Honolulu to Majuro Atoll, to Kwajelein Atoll, to Kosrae, to Pohnpei, to Chuuk and finally to Guam. Our first destination on this trip was Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). As a history buff, I didn't know the new names for some of these places. As in India, these communities have been renaming their islands back to their o...