FSM Congressman Urusemal’s State of Our Union and Beyond Tour!

Happy Saturday everyone. Hope this post reaches you and yours in good health and awesome spirit. For those of you that have not heard from the home front, according to our congressman, his excellency, Mr. Joe Urusemal, the islands are still there, the flag of our beautiful Island of Ifalik is still kicking and mighty awake, and people on Yap are still trading the largest stone money with each other.

Not to delay it further, I must take this opportunity to thank our Congressman and his secretary, Mr. Sarongelfeg for taking a long ride, at times on prop-plane to reach their constituents out here on the state side. It made a lot of sense to reach everyone! I am sure everyone appreciated you and your time.

Despite the logistics challenges, I would say this visit is a success! Many of us were a little frustrated for not having enough time to plan and to spend with the delegation, but the most important thing is that this visit had started something we should look forward to every year. This is the first for some of us, so we fully understood.

I was late to the meeting in Portland, Oregon but if memory serves me well, the topics covered were Teacher’s pay, Hapilmogol, the Nominating Process of the new Administration, and the Airport on Woleai. During breakfast with the congressman, I was fortunate enough to dig in on some other topics such as Dual Citizenship, the state of Education in the OI (Outer Islands) and Preps for Global Warming. I will go into detail on each of the three topics as they were the ones that we were able to cover during our 30 minutes breakfast at Sharis on Airport Way, Portland, Oregon.

Again, thank you very much Congressman Joe Urusemal and Mr. Secretary Sarongelfeg for taking the time out to visit us in the states. We wish you the very best and hope to see you again soon.

I will do my best to write about those three topics soon. Please check back for more….