You all my find this very interesting... Guam does not have any kind of road map. Go ahead and Google it, or better yet, try doing a mapquest search. There is nothing. It doesn't exist.
So, I had my first job interview yesterday which was exciting since I feel I'm exhausting the job hunting avenues. I got an email on Thursday night requesting I come in for a 10:00am interview the following day. When I looked the office up, it gave me an address but with no indication of where the building actually is. I know that sounds strange to all of you who are probably used to addresses actually leading you to the right location but in Guam, there is only one map... a tourist map that indicates like 4 main roads. Not helpful.
I guess it's assumed that if you are a local you just know the island. So, when I asked the woman who contacted me to give directions, this is what she told me:
"We are located in Agana across the Cathedral and Academy of Our Lady of Guam high school. We are on the same block as Carmen's (Mexican restaurant)."
WTF?!?! I had to do some exploratory driving around the island the night before to find this place. I did find it but when I arrived for the interview the following day, I told the lady (her name was Edna) how difficult it is to navigate the island if it's unfamiliar territory to which she replied, "That's how it is here, many roads don't even have names. We all just find places by landmarks."
In retrospect, Christopher and I were looking for a hiking trail about a month ago and the only directions we were given to find this place was as follows:
"The path is a dirt road off of Route 4 at the top of the hill next to a concrete telephone poll" Did you know Route 4 runs across the entire island and that there are about 100 concrete telephone polls and dirt roads? We found it though, after driving past it 3 times and then having to stop and ask directions.
I never realized how precious a road map could be... until I moved to uncharted territory.