Taking it all in....

I am back for another Saipan update. Tomorrow school starts and I am not ready for it. The other teachers have had two weeks, but I believe if I had that extra week I would be more prepared. On a good note one of my two planning periods happens to be 1st hour out of the 9 that exist in our day. Here at Saipan Community School (SCS) there are 9 periods instead of the usual 7 that exist in the states. So much has happened in the past two days I do not know where to begin. I will start with Saturday 8/7. On Saturday the first thing we did was work in our classrooms a little and then we were invited to join 3 other teachers for lunch at a look seaside b&g that serves dollar hard shell tacos on Saturdays (this may become a new tradition for all of us). After lunch, Jake (6-8 Science/Math teacher) and his wife Jackie took us on a tour of four beaches on the island they like to go to. One of the beaches was title Ladder Beach, I am not sure why. The scenes are beautiful and when I have time to upload facebook pictures you will see their beauty. When I say “us” I mean all the new teachers at SCS. The trip was very bumpy as guys were in the back of the truck for the trip (I am still nursing my tailbone) and girls were in the cab. I collected a few pretty shells for a later art project and maybe a necklace later. I also happened to find a spent shell from WWII that belonged to some small caliber rifle. I found the shell at an overlook we visited that was very pretty and hard to get to by vehicle. There was rusted shrapnel from spent shells that had hit the shore and a bunker or two with large Japanese guns in them. When we were done with our running around, we returned to find a barbecue being prepared for us by the school maintenance guy Rommel (pronounced Row-Mel). He and his wife, who live at the school, made some grilled chicken wings, pork ribs, shrimp, ice tea (with pineapple juice added to it) etc… It was a lovely dinner. Well on to Sunday, which I will let Kara write about.
On Sunday it started out with church in the morning. The school is run by Saipan Community Church and the services are held in the school’s chapel. The church is what they called a church that has its doors open The reason behind this is two- fold, first there are no actual doors since it is held outside, and second of all there is community there. During the service we held hands and sang the song the Family of God. It was a great service and a guest pastor talked about Daniel and the Lion’s Den and how we should live our lives significantly and not successfully. It was also a dedication service where they prayed for us as teachers. We are excited to be a part of this community. After the service there was a lunch at the Vietnamese restaurant in town. All of the teachers and staff went and it was great talking and getting to know the other teachers more. I, being a picky eater, tried everything that was meatless and Grant enjoyed eating minced duck in a salad wrap. I can not say that I will eat Vietnamese food again, but at least I tried it.
Rommel and his wife asked us if we wanted to tour the island and of course we said yes. He took us and two other teachers all around the island in his truck. We saw a few spots that are significant from World War II such as Suicide Cliff. We also saw Bird Island which is a wildlife sanctuary and it is a gorgeous view. My favorite part was Grotto which there is a water pool in the middle of a cave. We jumped right in and had a wonderful time. There were some cliff divers there that were fun to watch, but we did not want to risk ourselves The last stop of the day was the highest point on the island which is called Mount Tapochau. From there you can see the entire island, boy was it pretty. We were very tired after a long day, and school starts tomorrow.

Grant and Kara