After doing the housework and wash, we took a ride to the end of the island on the Laura side. The trip took us a couple of hours because it is about thirty miles and we had to drive slowly. The Laura side of the island is the beautiful wooded side; the coconut trees and foliage there are amazing. The ocean was on our right and the lagoon was on the other side of the road.   The population is sparse there, because it is isolated from the stores and shops.  The people that live there mostly live off the land with fishing and gathering coconuts.  We stopped to talk to a man husking coconuts and he gave us a couple of them after he opened them for us, so we could drink the “ni”.  We paid him for them and thanked him.  It was interesting because the coconut inside is very soft and wet, not hard like coconuts that I had eaten in the States.

There are two LDS church building on that side of the island, One in Agiltake and one in Laura. There is also a building in Majuro very close to our apartment.  The nice church buildings are a sharp contrast to the poor huts that many of the people live in.

The women all wear the same type of dress.  The prints are all different and all very bright colors, but the dress pattern is all exactly the same; they are made of Stretch Jersey so they never wrinkle. We stopped at a little shop where the dresses(mu mu ) were hanging outside on the wall because I wanted to buy a couple of them.  I was surprised at how cheap they were!  Two dresses for ten dollars.  It was a shock because food and other things are very expensive here.  I guess the dresses are cheap because they are for the local people and not tourists. The women don’t wear pants here, so I bought the dresses to wear around the house.