Saipan Life @ Random

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers:

     Since my wife wrote for Valentines Day and is making dinner, I thought I would write about some random things that have happened in the past week etc.  First, I wanted to share that on Valentines Day my wife bought me a protein shaker from 24 hr Fitness.  Inside the shaker is a wire like steel ball that is flexible and helps mix the protein with the water and milk.  I thought it was kinda cool how the ball is made out of  "surgical steel" so that it will probably never rust.  Thus I say to my wife of almost three years, Thank you. 
     This past weekend was the last NJFL competition for my students.  With the energy costs from the Commonwealth Utilities Corp. being so high, the competition almost didn't happen because no school wanted to open their doors to any use of energy especially the air conditioning units called "air con" by locals. The fact of the matter is that the Public School System in Saipan has been thousands of dollars in debt to the government for various reasons and one way to cut costs when the energy is going up and to pay back what is owed is by cutting off what is not absolutely needed.  Our public school teaching friends have been annoyed by this as you can imagine, but hopefully this measure will help the schools get back on track.  At Saipan Community School our energy costs have gone up too and we are doing our best to incorporate energy saving into our building.  I feel a little bit like an AC snob because I am allowed to run my AC during the day at school because I am in the middle room and I only have one window in the front with no window in the back to create a draft in my room.  I do my best though by sometimes teaching with the middle set of lights completely off and by turning off all lights and AC when no students are in the room or when I can handle some heat.  At the NJFL competition, no one used the AC, but we knew this would happen in advance all the judges brought water and some even brought fans.
     I have been busy packing up stuff for our trip home and have eight boxes ready to go... the majority of things we need to send home we won't get rid of until the very end.  I'm surprised how little we accumulated while in Saipan...or at the very least how little we are planning on taking back with us. In the time that I am not packing I am sometimes creating artwork, and I thought I would show one of my most recent creations having found shells over a long period of time.  It is just one way to decorate our apartment and give it some life. An exploration/WWII blog will be coming later as I still have to clean some glass bottles and do research for some of the pictures I want to post.  I hope to get that up in a week if I have time... this weekend looks like a weekend of exploring and grading papers.    I hope you enjoy the pictures, remember to click on them to see them enlarged.

Me and the girls at NJFL competition! Totally Awesome!

The school that was willing to let us use its facilities was Cha Cha Oceanview school in Kagman Village.  This created a little bit of discomfort among locals as Kagman Village is in the middle of nowhere and takes a little while to drive too, but hey most people should be glad there even was a competition.  In the above picture of the girls, perhaps they weren't smiling for the camera but were laughing at this picture of the Chamorro farmer or "Lancheru" as someone has disrespectfully placed a piece of gum on his left nipple.  I find this picture/mural fascinating in that the farmer has a sword and haircut like that of the warrior class of ancient Chamorro... not sure why this is but it is interesting. 

This is my art creation full of Cowry Shells that have been broken.  The large bottom shell I found while at Forbidden Island (the island itself).  Everything about this piece was found on the beach except for the white nylon string used to tie the shells together.  The driftwood piece I found while at Bird Island Beach, which has a lot of driftwood.

 Saipan Time is also Guam Time: