Going to the Ball!

The day after my hubby came home, we packed up and headed to the Pacific Island Club for the Navy Ball. It's the 233rd birthday of the Navy and Guam knew how to throw a pretty great party! Chris and I were able to dress up and party with some couples from his boat and we had so much fun drinking, dancing and partying like only the Navy can do.

Dancing with my hubby!

Seriously...

Senior Chief Stackhouse getting crazy

Mr.Kinman grooving to the music

Suzie and Alan

Me and my man

My sailor can drink with the rest of them... haha!

Keeping up with the sailors!

I love my sailor!

All dressed up!

Jess and John Kinman

Me, Jess and Jamie

Me and Suzie

My handsome sailor

What?! Where's the map!?!

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.

Random Ramblings

Just to update you all... I have officially become a beach bum. I think I'd prefer lying out in the sun to just about any other responsible activity I should be doing. I have been looking for a job, I just hope the job I find ends up being something that allows me to spend my days in the water or on the beach. I would be so happy.... No, I'm not delusional. I know nothing like that exists. At least nothing like that would ever look good on a resume, but a girl can dream. Can't she?

So to challenge my intellect, I've begun to read War and Peace by Tolstoy. If I'm gonna be beach bummin' around, I might as well keep my brain occupied. It seems the responsible thing to do.

I'm going out to look for ball gowns. The Navy ball is just around the corner!

I'm missing the harvest season!

I never thought I would spend so much time cleaning! I've always been obsessed with keeping things in their place but I find when there is absolutely nothing to do; my husband is out at sea, I'm unemployed and it's rained outside every single day that I've been here. Every. Single. Day.
So I've spent a lot of time stuck in the house watching dust settle. I certainly don't mean to sound that my life here has been boring, it really hasn't but when I actually have time to notice the dust acclimate, it's safe to say I have too much time on my hands.

I kid you not... In the middle of writing this blog, I just stopped and ran around the house with a dust-buster and a can of ant spray. Living with all tile floors, it's easy to see dust flying around and I'm beginning to think I'm loosing a lot of hair because it's all over this house. I just got on my hands and knees and vacuumed under the bed and around the bathroom, chasing ant trails with a can of poison. I've also discovered two little geckos have taken up residence on the bedside dresser, why reptiles choose my room as their place of residence is beyond me. They must sense my fear of them. Great, now I don't want to sleep in there...

I know the weather is cooling off back in Connecticut and colors are bursting everywhere yet here, it's the exact same temperature every day and with so few sunny days it's gray, muddy and rainy. I can't help but feel a bit nostalgic for what I've always taken for granted especially when the houses around me are hanging harvest pumpkins on their front door... there is nothing reminiscent of a harvest here. So to appease my senses, I went out and bought a pumpkin spice Yankee candle and have been burning it all night. Between that smell and the smell of the banana bread I just baked, I'd say this house is beginning to take on the aroma of the colder seasons. Now I just have to crank the A/C and put on a sweater.

The house is furnished!

It's done! (for now...) Here are the "after" pictures of the home. I'll do the outside later, once I actually plant some flowers.

The dining room

The Kitchen

Living Room

Another view of the living room

The bedroom

My first Monday alone

Today was Chris's first day back at work and it turned out he had "duty" today. For those of you who don't know what that means, it means he has to stay on the boat for 24 hours (this responsibility will repeat every 4 days for the duration of his enlistment) so faced with an entire day alone in my new home, I met up with a new navy wife friend and went out to see the island.
What I thought would be a relaxing trip around Guam turned out to be quite an adventure! The thing about this island is you stick out if you're not a local, so when off the base, you know who is military a mile away. The reason I say military is because this island is comprised of 3 groups: Chomorran (islanders), Japanese (tourists) and then Military (everyone else). There are two military bases on the island with a mix of people from all over the states so it's fun, when you see someone off base who is military, to hear their story and where they are from. It's kinda like a club - we all have the same thing in common. You can't help but wave when you pass a military while out around the island.
Anyway, back to the point of my story... while out and about, we noticed a rental car with an obvious member of our "military club" following our site stops. My new navy wife friend decided to invite him along to lunch and lunch turned into an entire day of adventures. This guy (his name eludes me) insisted on finding these caves listed on a tourist map. One thing he didn't understand, and something I should tell you, is that there are absolutely NO signs anywhere for many of these sites. So we spent the better part of the afternoon guessing the location of the caves. We did finally find it, accidentally, only for our new military friend to get a flat tire. So another 2 hours in the scorching heat fixing a rental car flat tire, then a trip to the air force base finally had us back on track. Right in time for dinner. So we had dinner back at the naval base where I listened to first hand stories of serving on the front line in Iraq. It turned out our military man worked for the Army and he had some interesting tales of his experience.
One thing I can say is that the people I've met here, so far, are from completely different worlds than what I have known. But it's all good. It'll keep things interesting.

Beautiful Sunsets

Until moving here I never really noticed the sunsets... perhaps because back in CT, sunsets are hidden behind a haze of smog and drowned out by city lights but here, where almost every horizon is when the endless ocean meets the sky, the colors of the sunset are hard to miss.
Every time Chris and I stop somewhere to take pictures of the sunset, I've been struck by the beauty of such a simple event. Check out the pictures...

The beginning of a Guam-tastic new life!

Me in the master bedroom

So it's been a long and very stressful two weeks here on this little island. When I was a child and my family would take summer vacations to a warm climate beach resort-type area, I would have these fantastical dreams of living in such a place. I thought how care-free and footloose I would be waking up near the sandy shore, collecting sea shells at my leisure, hanging with the super cool laid back and over tanned locals. Life would be idyllic... right?
Now that my life long childhood fantasy has come to fruition, I've realized growing up in Connecticut, the fast paced, everyone-is-in-a-rush-to-get-things-done-now mentality, has completely spoiled me. Why, you ask? Because to walk into a world where the island and everyone on it moves at a slow leisurely pace is no where a New Englander should be. That's not to say the people here are lax in their responsibilities, it's just they don't have that sense of urgency that is so notorious for those of us from the northern east coast. Perhaps it's the fact it's 100 degrees here every day and to move quickly would surly cause an increased number of death from exhaustion. Nevertheless, this slow mentality has caused for a few headaches these past few weeks.
My first few days here were full of excitement and happiness as I was finally reunited with my husband whom I haven't seen in almost 9 months. We spent a day or so in isolation before venturing out on the island to begin our move-in process. You see, in the previous months, Chris and I scrambled to gather all pertinent information and have all required forms filled out so by the time I arrived in Guam, moving in would be an easy and fluid effort. Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case. Before I even left for the island Chris was telling me how his boat, the yeoman to be precise, had forgotten to give Chris a form to fill out prior to his previous underway. This one missing form was now going to cause us a whole week delay before we'd be able to get a house. So, we hunkered down in a hotel and began furniture shopping because we had absolutely nothing to furnish a house.
Since the island is small, we were able to canvas it's entire collection of furniture stores. We found one store in particular to be very reasonably priced with a wide range of selections. The sales woman was friendly and not overbearing as so many furniture salespeople are in the states and the owner approached me on the first day we walked in and offered me a job solely based on the fact she thought I was attractive and apparently, she wants to stock her store with attractive female sales representatives. Flattered but surprised by the blatant admittance of her discriminatory hiring process, I declined. However, with each of our subsequent visits, (and there were many in the following days) the owner repeatedly approached me about a job. I have yet to begin my job search...
By the fifth day on the island we finally had a meeting with the Navy housing department. This whole office is sub-contracted to a private service and is run by local civilians. Going back to what I said earlier, locals run on island time and island time does not translate well in an office setting. At least not in my opinion. Coming from an office managing position, I know that it's possible to move people at a quick pace to get things done in a timely manner. These people didn't seem to know anything about fast paced and even less about customer service. We were given keys to a house that was deemed ready to "move in" and yet when we checked it out, the place reeked of stale smoke and had a horribly leaky toilet. After declining the home, we were told no other homes were available until the end of the week. We only had the hotel until the end of the week so had no other option but to accept the home without being able to see it. Of course we were told our move in day was contingent on approval of the final inspection scheduled the day before we were to move in. Our housing representative said she would contact us the day before and let us know if the house was approved for move in.
So, we went ahead and scheduled furniture deliveries for our designated move in day. At this point, the whole process was becoming an unbelievable pain-in-the-ass. There was no follow-up... by Thursday evening (the day before our move in) we hadn't heard from our rep and were worried we would have furniture delivered to a house we couldn't get in to. After many calls and attempted follow-ups on our part, we were told on Friday morning everything was good to go. Of course, it had to rain all day and the agent who was to meet us to hand over the keys was a half an hour late while the furniture delivery men were on time and were made to wait, we finally had our house!
I'm going to end this entry here, I don't want to delve more into the frustrations of the move in process as now I am quite pleased with where I am living and how it's all coming together. I hope to make entries on a more daily basis where I can reflect on the day rather than the week but to give this brief summary of the beginning process is important to the rest of my experience here in Guam.
On the bright side, throughout all of these headaches and hurdles, Chris and I have been able to laugh at the series of events... too many more that I have not mentioned here but may touch on in the future, and each day has brought us closer together. I miss everyone back in CT and appreciate now more than ever the efficiency of that society but I know my place right now is here, with my husband.
So, here are the first pictures of my new humble abode. We took these shots when we first saw the place, I'll post updated pictures of the furnished rooms once we are done unpacking and decorating.

My New Kitchen!

Chris and I in the dining room

The front door and living room

Skip Day!!

That's right, it was a fun day full of horrible food service and pains in the ass... literally! This picture captures a moment of tranquility in an otherwise crazy day.

We are the coolest there ever was... this picture proves it.