Taste of the Marianas 2011

Taste of the Marianas is an annual event that happens every Saturday during the month of May at American Memorial Park in the village of Garapan. This event is different than the every Thursday “Street Market” that occurs in Garapan all year round. The neat thing about Taste of the Marianas is that it includes local music, dance, and food. It truly is a taste of the island as many hotels bring their kitchen staff to the event and cater to the public with somewhat cheaper prices than they do in their restaurants during the week. For those readers from my home town of Duluth, MN this event is similar to the Bayfront Blues Festival, but with less people. Like the Blues Festival, people buy tokens for the various vendors at the event. Tokens are one dollar each but there are blue tokens that represent two yellow coins ($2) if you decide to purchase a lot of tokens. The local craft vendors at the event also require tokens. This can add up if you wish to purchase a story board. A story board is a wooden carving tells the history of a given island peoples. These can be very costly depending on how elaborate and how important the story. For example, one that tells the story of the Spanish coming to the island years ago would fetch more than one about a lesser event, which may take less carving detail to explain a story. Each board comes with a print out of what it represents. Before Kara and I leave Saipan we may purchase one with spare tutoring money as a memory of the time we have spent here. I hope you enjoy the pictures I have put up about the event the descriptions of the photos are below. If you want to see some of the dancing whether traditional or from the youth of the island you can easily watch various videos from the event that have been posted on YouTube. Just type in Taste of the Marianas into Google and you can see dance groups some being “non-traditional” as you will find out.

Sincerely,

Grant

Pictures:

-Kara and I under one of the many tents that were set up.
-Female Dancers
-Kara and Amy&Matt G. with Dave Bucher on his own side.
-Picture of my meal (2 chicken kabobs, 2 pork kabobs, and two shrimp (didn't eat the shrimp b/c it tasted funny, but the kabobs were really, really good and a bigger helping than I normally receive at street market on Thursdays).
-Pig being served at the same stand I got my dinner from.
-A somewhat comedic male dance group who danced over fire and sat on it. The rain started one of the two nights we were there and these guys being caught in the rain decided to be funny and point to the sky as if they were doing a rain dance haha.