23 Days...

I can not believe that it is May already. Boy has time flown and it amazes me that I only have 23 days left in Saipan. With being here for 2 years I have felt at times that my time here is infinite. Time in Saipan feels different compared to time in the states since the seasons do not change. It is always Summer in Saipan! For example my Easter and Thanksgiving pictures look exactly the same. So how am I feeling? Well, I have decided to enjoy my last month in Saipan and to life my life to the fullest. I have done everything I have wanted to do but am wanting to spend lots of time with my friends and at the beach. I do think about our future after Saipan but I am trusting God that He will fill in the pieces of the puzzle for us. We know that we are headed to grad school in the fall but we need jobs starting this summer. Grant and I have been applying to places to work in St. Paul MN. Grant has had one interview and have received rejection letters from some of the places we have applied. I am trying to stay focused on being in Saipan because otherwise I would be consumed with worry about what is ahead. All I know is that God brought us to Saipan and He has made it clear that we our next move will be in the states. The school has also hired all of the teachers for next year which is exciting for the school since last year they were hiring up until july. Knowing this makes it easier to leave knowing that people will come and fill our spots. I do love our school, saipan, and the life we have here but I am ready to move on. I have always been one of those people who lives fully where they are not looking ahead and waiting for whats next. I do look forward to a lot that comes with being back in the states: seeing my and Grant's family, seeing friends, eating at our favorite places, moving to a new city, starting a new life... but I am holding off on thinking too much about them because I want to enjoy my short time I have left on the island I love. So in the end it will be bittersweet to end and I will continue to do what I always do: be fully present right where I am.
Here is a picture of my friends and I at the spa from this weekend:

The Mandi Spa- my favorite place on Saipan, it truly feels like a piece of heaven!

23 days!

Sought,Savory, Sea Shells on Saipan

Dear Friends, Family, & by chance Readers,

Today, I thought I would share a blog about sea shells common to Saipan.  As I get ready to go home, I have a lot of shells to send back and I thought it would be good to learn some of their names.  These are not all of the shells I have found on Saipan (as I have already sent some back), but they are some of the types we have in Saipan.  I apologize for not researching all of their names, but for a beginning collector of shells on Saipan this would be a great place to start. I hope it helps some of you out there. I created a tongue twister of a title for you to try at home for more sea shell fun. Click on the pictures for a larger image.

Commercial Top Shell (Trochus Niloticus)

Serpent’s/Snake’s Head Cowrie (Cypraea Caputserpentis) Anothershell 
much bigger that we have on Saipan is the Tiger Cowrie. I have
never brought one back from the ocean, but Kara and I did buy some
artwork with one in the center of the design. 

Lynx Cowrie (Cypraea Lynx) This shell differs from 

the deer cowrie below in that it has a purplish orange

color to it.

Deer Cowrie (Cypraea Vitellus)

Money Cowry (Cypraea Moneta)

Tulip Cone (Conus Tulipa)  These are poisonous if the

creature is still inside.  This picture shows the coloring as

blue but it is more purplish in nature than blue.

F.Y.I.: No sea creatures were harmed in my collecting as they were all found on Saipan beaches.

Some more Common to Saipan but not included in my pictures are: Fairyland Snail Sea Shell (Achatina Achatina, these are often taken by large land hermit crabs),  Limpet Shells (these are the small guys that stick to the rocks near the beach, they belong to the Patellidae, Acmaeidae, Fissurellidae families of shells 35 species known worldwide), Murex Shells (big heavily spined shells, also sold at touristy places, the small ones are used by crabs on the bach), Spider Conch (We have lots of these in Saipan, but I don’t have the heart to kill one that is alive… These are the sharp spined shells that I call 5 finger shells they are part of the Strombidae family), we have various types of Turban Shells that show up on the beach too, but I don’t find them appealing to collect, we also have Vase Shells (which often have their discarded shells taken by hermit crabs).

Ciao!  Grant

Saipan Community School Art Show

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers,

     I don't mean to steal the show as my wife just blogged about her most recent endeavor of running, but I felt I should write about the annual Art Show & Young Writer's Workshop (YWW) our students put on at school.  Last year I had my students do poems for the YWW, but this year I felt I needed to challenge them a little more. This year I had my sixth graders write three page research papers and my 7th and 8th graders write 10 page short stories.  Even though this event took place on the 19th of April, I am still grading these papers because I want to do a good job in giving feedback etc... I will not write much about this event, but will rather let the pictures do the talking.   I hope you enjoy them.  Remember to click on the picture for a larger image.

A lamp made out of pop-sickle sticks one of my
eight grade girls created.  I would tell her to use
it, but I'm afraid it might be a fire hazard if left unattended.

Paper mache' dolls colored and made glossy using art glue.

A self-portrait of one of my seventh grade Chinese students.  I like
this picture because it shows her personality this year as opposed to
last year's personality as a 6th grader.  She may not think so, but that is
what I think.

Me standing in front of my table of essays and short stories.
Many thanks go out to my three helpers Kara Fifield, Ms. Oronia, and Nellie (sp?)
who helped in making my table awesome.  Funny thing is that when I was
labeling my desk I forgot the "i" in Junior due to not paying attention, being hungry, and
talking to students when I should have been concentrating.  We all laughed and they
proceeded to help me.  I still have a good chuckle every time I think about that.

These are multi-layered aluminum foil engravings.  Students
are graded based on how many layers of engraving they make upon the
foil.  It is hard to see the layers from this picture.  In the bottom example,
you can see at least three layers.  I like this picture because they are shining in the sun.

Kara having a good conversation with a parent.  The first grade made
stories and they had a lot of fun doing it.

A picture of the crowd just as the amount of people coming to view the show
was picking up.  I really think Mrs. Winkfield our art teacher does a great job
inspiring kids to create.  As far as I know, this is something unique that only our school
does.  I'm always amazed at how even artwork from kindergarten looks like
professional abstract art.

My New Hobby...

My new hobby is...... running!  If you know me pretty well you know that running has never been my forte. During my years of playing sports, the running aspect of the sports was my least favorite part. I have been working out at golds gym since the fall and was feeling as though I needed a goal to achieve. Starting in March I have been running both at the gym and outside. I have signed up for two 5ks in June.  At first I truly thought that it would be really difficult to start running but soon I realized that if you push yourself hard enough you can do anything. I am training for my 5ks because I want to work hard so I am ready to earn a good time.
My favorite part of running outside is I run along the beach path and the views are breathtaking. I feel so spoiled that I get to run next to a beautiful ocean full of green and blue hues. My route right now is from our apartment to the bank and back which is 3 miles. The hardest part for me is most of the time I will get a side-ache so I am working on drinking enough fluids and breathing the right way.
My friend and neighbor Anna is a marathon runner and I asked her if we could run together every sunday. She said yes and then said, "It will be good for me to slow down." So it is a great arrangement because she pushes me and I help her slow down.
I can definitely tell I have improved over time because at first I was not able to run that far without stopping and was not able to talk to anyone else. Now I can run farther without stopping and can hold a conversation:) Mentally I used to dread getting ready to go for a run and now I look forward to my time of running. It is my goal that before I leave Saipan  to be able to  run the 3 miles without stopping.
The first 5 k I am doing will be 2 days after I get back to the states and it will be in Duluth. It is called the Boulderdash 5k.

http://www.northlandrunner.com/run?page=Race&raceId=29

The second 5k is called Run 4 Trails and will be in Gretna, NE on June 16th.

http://gretnarunners.com/Running4TrailsGretnaRunners.aspx

I have realized throughout this experience so far is that you can do anything that you put your mind too and with working out having a goal is the best way to stay motivated.

I am planning on running throughout May to get ready for my 5ks and to start training this summer for a 10k.  :) 

I will keep you updated with my running experiences!

-Kara-

My new running shoes I bought in Guam!

Friends and Thai Food

Hi,
In April is two of my friends(Laura and Alison) birthdays in Saipan. Both parties ended up involving Thai food. Most of you who know me are probably surprised by this since I am a non-adventurous eater. I have really enjoyed Thai food since being in Saipan. As long as it is not super spicy I enjoy it! This is a good thing because I do want to go to Thailand someday. I will need to find a Thai restaurant in St. Paul, MN when we move there.
On April 14th we celebrated my friend Laura's birthday. I planned the party for her and since she does not like surprises I told her all the plans ahead of time. We first ate at Thai House which is a restaurant I had not been to yet. It is a small restaurant with beautiful decorations and great service. From there we went to Laura's apartment pool for some night swimming. I was thinking of the most fun I had ever had with friends while being in Saipan and night swimming was at the top of the list. We ate cupcakes by the pool and spent the night talking and hanging out in the pool. Everyone had a fun night and enjoyed being with friends.

On April 21st we headed to Spicy Thai for Alison's birthday dinner. We sat outside and ate Thai food. Grant ate a whole fish and I had to take a picture since it looked so cool. (I would never eat a whole fish though:) It was a fun time of getting to talk with friends and enjoy some wonderful food.

I am so thankful that Jesus has blessed me with so many great girl friends while I have been in Saipan. I have a million memories with all of them and countless conversations that I will never forget. The ocean and my friendships with them will be what I miss most from Saipan. (I truly am a fish:)

This coming Saturday night my friends and I are having a girls day and a sleepover at night. I can already tell it is going to be a fun night with all the things we have planned. Even though I am married and 24 it is awesome that I can still have sleepovers and feel like a kid!

Enjoy the pictures!

Rach and I at Laura's Birthday Dinner.

The birthday girl(Laura) and her husband (Josiah).

Anna, Becky, and Lynette at Thai House.

Brian and Grant getting ready excited about Thai food.

My meal.

The entire group.

The girls in the pool!

Me with the birthday girl.

Laura with the cupcakes I made for her(the funny part was  that it was so dark she could not see the  color of the frosting).

Grant and Josiah, the first people in the pool.

Grants dinner at Spicy Thai.

The birthday girl (Alison) and her husband (Nate).

Becky, Rach, and Anna at Alison's birthday dinner.

Laura, Amy, and I at dinner.

Day 5 of our Guam Vacation

Dear Friends, Family, and Readers:

      It is now time to end my updates about Guam...Kara will probably write one blog of her own talking about the whole trip at a later time.  I really don't have a lot to say about this day and I will be uploading all the 400+ photos of our Guam trip for people to view on Facebook.  I wanted to blog and share a few pictures before I posted them on Facebook.
   Since we had to leave our hotel by noon, Kara and I got up early and drove to the Tumon Bay touristy area and stopped to swim at Governor Flores Beach.  I felt I owed it to her since we really didn't swim a whole lot while in Guam.  While we were there, Kara was bitten by a fish or cut by the fins.  The fish left three lines on her calf bleeding.  It was honestly more like a scratch, but being a prepared kind of guy I took out my little first aid kit and gave her scratch a cleaning and a band-aid.  She didn't really want to go in the water much after that...but went in one last time after some prodding. When it was my turn (had to watch our stuff), I saw a lot of fish where some tourists were feeding them bread.  Most of them I recognized from Saipan except for the spotted one, which I don't remember seeing in Saipan.  I hope you enjoy the underwater pictures.  This particular beach is fairly deep and is not full of super sharp coral like in Saipan.
     After swimming, we went back to the hotel to change, pack up, and check out.  That took a relatively short amount of time.  We then went shopping for some last minute things that Kara wanted to shop for like new running shoes since she has decided to run two 5k races in June, one Duluth, MN and one in Omaha, NE.  If you are a relative or friend and want to support her the race in Duluth is called the "Boulder Dash" and the one in Omaha is called "Run for Trails" and will take place in Gretna.  I also bought some on sale running shoes for the gym since I haven't bought new running shoes since I graduated college (no joke). That was about our priciest purchase but was still relatively inexpensive considering everything we bought was on sale.  We went to some other stores too, but had to hurry to eat before our plane took off from the airport.        
     We decided to rush and eat at McDonalds.  Unfortunately, when we got to the airport we learned that our tickets had been given to other people (we were still there early by 30+minutes)!  Kara was livid, but I was trying to be as calm as possible.  When I asked the luggage checker why this happened, he told me that when you have an "international flight" a person needs to be at the gate an hour before boarding the plane!  I couldn't believe it, the itinerary says, "Please be there an hour early" not "You must arrive an hour early or we will sell your ticket to earn more money for the airline."   In the end the airlines did right by us and put us on the next flight back to Saipan (four hours later).  I think the thing that frustrated me most was getting through the security check point and hearing the intercom say, "Now boarding for Saipan" and we could have been on our plane... In the end, we arrived in Saipan safe and sound albeit later than expected.
     I hope you enjoy the pictures!  Remember to click them for a larger image.

Kara happy to get the chance to swim at another
beach before leaving Guam.

A panoramic view of Governor Flores Beach as it pointing the
camera to the north. 

A picture I thought would look funnier than it is...the joke is
supposed to be that we are two lovers pointing toward Two
Lover's Point haha

Some cool fish that I've seen before in Saipan.  The skinny/pointy
nosed fish are Needle Nose Fish.  They are not dangerous but
do have a habit of encircling swimmers making them feel uneasy.

The strange spotted fish I had never seen in Saipan.

Guam Vacation Day 4

Dear Friends, Family, & Readers:

     Since I am done grading and tutoring students for the day, I thought I would update our blog and talk about our Thursday in Guam.  One of the first things we did on our Thursday after sleeping in late and watching cable T.V. at our hotel was to go to the Ramada hotel down the road to swim.  The Days Inn, Guam has a deal with the Ramada that allows guests to swim at their pool.  The pool isn't anything special, but it was fun to relax in the sun and swim in water that was not salty.  We had fun just being together and reading the complementary paper that comes with being a guest at our hotel.  

     After the pool, we decided to drive around and in the process we stopped at Ritidian Beach at the northernmost point in Guam.  We went there because the friends we had met (Glenn & Sandy) told us that it was one of the beaches they were most impressed with.  In order to get to Ritidian Beach you have to drive on the incredibly bumpy and hazardous road that goes around Northwest Field (which used to land B-29 Bombers during WWII) and when the road abruptly ends there is a road that goes to the left and is nicely paved.  This road leads to Ritidian Point and snakes its way down to the end where the beach is located.  Ritidian was the location of a large Chamorro settlement 600 years before the Spanish arrived in 1521.  To the Chamorro it was called "Litekjan."  From 1668-1690 (22years), the Chamorro population on Guam dropped from 12,000 to only 2,000 due to the Spanish Chamorro War and European influenza.  By the 1680's, the Chamorro had abandoned their village at Ritidian.  Today, this beach is a beautiful white sand beach with virtually no litter on it.  While we were there swimming/snorkeling and just enjoying the sun there was a Korean orchestral group there having a lot of fun and being really loud as kids are.  Besides that minor annoyance of people having a good time, the only other thing is that the beach is relatively shallow.  My suggestion to anyone who goes there in the future is to bring some sort of shade as there is virtually no shade on the beach and unlike Saipan the beach is wide and if being in sun directly is not your cup of tea... bring something.  Luckily I brought an umbrella that made our time there a little more bearable.  It would make a great picnic area.  Oh, and one last thing I forgot to mention is that because this place was made a wildlife refuge in 1993 it is only open from 7:30am-4pm.

     After deciding to leave the Ritidian Beach area, we drove to a lookout point that the rangers at the War in the Pacific Museum told us would be beautiful and informative.  The first place we stopped was the Asan Bay Overlook Unit (so named on the map).  This overlook was where Japanese were positioned to shoot at Americans arriving at the terribly exposed Asan Beach where the Americans landed.  At the memorial is a list of military personnel that died in the battle and there are depictions in metal plating that show the forced labor of the Chamorro under the Japanese and the emancipation of them by the U.S. forces.  I was also touched by the marble monument dedicated to the local islanders who died at Pearl Harbor, of which there were twelve.  Having visited Pearl Harbor, I feel that their particular sacrifice was extremely sad and worthy of remembrance it it jump started a nation into a mode of industry and defense not often seen in history. We then drove further and found another overlook from which we could see Tumon Bay.  The picture is of the Tumon Bay area (if you visit Guam this overlook is not named to my knowledge so you just have to find it).

     After viewing such beauty, we got back in the car and Kara let me stop at a museum that only cost 3 dollars to enter.  I cannot remember the name of the museum but it was pretty cool.  They had all sorts of donated WWII automobiles and fully restored military vehicles used during the war in the Pacific.  I chose to share some of the historical pictures of people and things rather than the vehicles for the blog as I believe the people are more important.  Since Kara wanted to wait in the car and read, I promised that we would next try and find the Latte Stone Memorial Park in Guam.  Luckily, it wasn't too far from the museum we visited but was a bit tricky to find.  

     The last part of our day was meeting up with Glenn and Sandy and two of their three kids at the California Pizza Kitchen in the Tumon Bay tourist area.   I hope you enjoy our pictures. Remember to click on the pictures to view a larger image.

     

This is the view of Ritidian Beach from the beginning of the
road that snakes its way down toward the gate and entrance
to the beach.

A view of the gloriously clean and awesome beach of Ritidian.

Who else but Kara and I at Ritidian Beach, Guam (no idea why
our hair is so frizzy...)

A picture of the sign at the Asan Bay Overlook Unit showing
tourists what they see in the distance.  This is the same view
the Japanese gunners would have had of our troops landing
along the beach exposed.  You can see the peninsula and harbor
in our picture below. 

Kara and I at the Asan Bay Overlook Unit.

This is one of the metal memorial depictions at the Asan Bay
Overlook Unit.  It shows the Japanese rounding up the
Chamorros from church and farmland and forcing them to work.
The last section shows the American liberation of the island.

View of Tumon Bay from the un-named overlook area.

Picture I found striking at the $3 museum.
And stay they did.

This is Japanese General Takashi Takashina.
He was the commander of all the Imperial
Japanese on Guam.  He died in battle on July 28,
1944 during the battle of Fonte Plateau. 

This is a picture of Sgt. Yokoi  I mentioned in the
previous blog post. This was taken the day after his
capture 26 1/2 years after the wars end in April 1972.

The kid in me couldn't help but post a picture of the American
Bazooka rounds on display.

Picture of Kara standing in front of the latte stones at the
Latte Stone Memorial Park.  For some traditional locals these
stones may be a sore spot in their memory.  These stones are
original and were moved from their ancestral resting places
after the war because construction of the military bases
needed to occur. These particular stones are probably about
8ft tall.  They were taken from Mepo Village in the Fena Valley
and placed in this location in 1955 & 1956.  Latte Stone construction
occurred from 1100-1700 A.D.

Kara and I have seen this in Saipan, but if you didn't know what
a Chamorro house looked like this is how the latte stones
were used. 

Kara and I with two large hot fudge ice cream desserts from
California Pizza Kitchen (One was actually Sandy and Glenn's
but they wanted us to pretend haha)