I know it’s been a long time but we have had some travelings of our own among other things such as Middle School and Homes Not Borders, but we are here now.

We chose Kiribati (Keer-i-bas) because it is a random Pacific country that I had no idea what it was all about. And of course with me loving random countries, this was the perfect one to do for K.

Though climate change is very prominent in this country and it may not last much longer, it still has lots to enjoy. Tropical beaches, coconut palms, coral atolls, some delicious food, and lots of underwater wildlife. To find out more on Kiribati click here: Kiribati Slides.

Interesting Facts:

• You pronounce Kiribati that way because the Gilbertese language has no “ti” sound so they substitute it with an s
• Kiribati is the farthest country ahead of Greenwich Mean Time at GMT+14 making it the first country to celebrate new years
• The Exclusive economic zone (Fishing rights, oil drilling rights, etc.) of Kiribati is so large compared to the country making it about 4,000 times larger

Food

The 3 main ingredients in Kiribati-an cuisine is fish/seafood, coconut and taro. The food is very good and has influences from India and east Asia but mainly the food is traditional. Most of this food however can be found all around Polynesia though.

Breakfast

Fresh Coconut

Fried Mushed Up Taro Root (from the night before)

Coconut Syrup – Boil coconut sugar. 2:1 ratio, sugar to water

Kiribati Pumpkin Recipe – This is pumpkin with syrup and coconut milk, I personally liked the taste but not the texture

Dinner

Palusami Recipe – This is basically onion, coconut milk, and curry powder baked and wrapped in leaves. It was delicious though what it sounded like to us.

Mashed taro root

Kiribati Lobster – This did not go as planned because the lobster seemed to have gone bad so we used fish instead and it was amazing, especially the curry dipping sauce

Culture

The Kiribati-ans use whatever resources they can to make objects and handicrafts. An example of this is using banana leaves to make baskets. We were originally going to do this but we already made baskets for previous countries so we decided to make necklaces and jewelry out of what is on the beaches of the coral atolls of Kiribati. Seashells! These necklaces are commonly sold to tourists, and tourism makes up a large percent of the local economy

We have a large seashell collection but you can use whatever seashells you have.

Use elastic and with a hot glue gun, glue the seashells to the necklace. It was pretty fun and they look cool. I made a pendant thingy but you can attach whatever seashells you want. We also made several bracelets. For more imformation go here: Kiribati Seashell Imformation (Under the Arts and Literature section)

….For L we are going to be traveling west to Southeast Asia.(We are going to really, really try to get back to our schedule of 2 weeks!!)

– Isaac