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Showing posts from April, 2022

Guam Day 77 - Starts w/ the guys

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 4/30/2022 - The entrance to starts golf course is really in bloom this weekend. Lots of Red, Yellow and plenty of that lush green. Enjoyed getting out with these guys again. Great day to be out and about enjoying the island. 

Guam Day 76 - Return to Ritidian Beach

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4/29/2022 - Lots of photos today, I revisited Rititdian beach while Joan was at work. I brought my book, a cold water and just sat out listening to the waves. The signage stands out, rip currents can be strong here if you venture out far, very calm today though. The view is truly as amazing as the photos, and that water is pure blue.   

Guam Day 75 - The Compound Gate

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 4/28/2022 - There is something about this gate here at our place that I really enjoy. Gated houses are very common on Guam, but very few have a gate that is this well cared for, or this colorful. The aqua blue paint is a great choice color wise, it seems to blend in well with all these colorful plants in the backyard. Also the craftsmanship of these gates is really interesting, a ton of work was put into bending the shaped pieces on the doors, and welding all the steel pipe. There must be some place here on the island that specializes in just this. 

Guam Day 74 - Banana-grams night

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 4/27/2022 - As promised, Banana - grams Wednesday night. These three are quite the players, maybe its that law training. My learning for the night, Easy is spelled with an "s" and not "z", this game really gets that creativity going. 

Guam Day 73 - Puppy a G.A.I.N?

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4/26/2022 - Puppies again? Yes, after caring for Lucky a few weeks back, my heart strings were really pulled, I felt that it was time to find a way to give back to the dog community here on Guam. G.A.I.N or Guam Animals In Need, is the local shelter about 10 mins away from us, located in the town of Yigo (pronounced Gee-go). Today was day one of volunteering. It turns out that volunteer opportunities are a bit hard to come by on the island due to continued covid concerns. Up until this weekend we were wearing masks at outdoor gatherings, as well as continued use in all indoor settings. Many local charities and services were closed to added human contact of volunteers coming in and out of a place. Luckily, GAIN was offering opportunities twice a day with helping to socialize the animals that come in, a fully outdoor activity.  The job to be done is one that is quite simple, it consists of taking the adoptable dogs from their cages and moving them to the larger play area. Here they are a

Guam Day 72 - Hair Check In - Island Style

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4/25/2022 - Short post for Monday, the hair is getting really long and part of this trip documentation needs to capture this. Who knows, I may not have hair this long again, baldness does hit my moms side of the family. Getting a full length measurement is quite hard, what I can share is if I pull my hair down on my face its passed my nose in length, never been this long. In this humidity though it rarely falls that far, the curl is so strong.  We will see how much longer I keep this up, the commodity prices on shampoo are on the rise, and its now double as Joan has introduced me to this thing called conditioner. Lol  

Guam Day 71 - Blues By the Bay

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4/24/2022 - Sunday night the crew went to Blues by the Bay, a music event held out at the Guam Yacht club. I know this sounds very high brow, and pinky up as you sip your water or beverage, yes at the yacht club. In reality it was a nice, open to the public, event featuring local blues musicians, good food and a spectacular view. The club is situated on the other side of the harbor from the Navy base, and due to access its very difficult to get some of these views of the southern part of the island. Really gorgeous and I can totally see why the Navy decided, yep, this is the place we want to be. This was the first event that we have been to where masks were not required even for an outdoor gathering. Quite the milestone for the island as well as for all of us during these past few years. Fingers crossed for numbers to stay low. A little piece of what we once called "normal".  

Guam Day 70 - An Early Bike Ride, Southside Repeat

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4/23/2022 - Saturday was a fantastic day for a ride, we were on the bikes by 7am this time to avoid the heat. Our exercise and riding is paying off, the hills were much easier this time, at least until the that last 10 mile for me. Still some walking of the bike, but I didn't get pulled over this time. Lol! Some difrrent views of that south Side this time, one of my favorite are these signs at each town, image 3. Very on point design that reflects the architecture and style of Guam.   

Guam Day 69 - Coffee by the Pacific

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 4/22/2022 - I have had some computer trouble post weekend catch up. About 5 posts behind, but plenty has happened be reassured. I started Friday morning, post dropping Joan off, with a coffee by the the pacific. Great morning look out on the those warm waves. It was about 85 degrees, and really setup the weekend well. Yes I am using a stemless insulated wine glass for my coffee, it keeps my morning Joe just the right temp. Hope all our readers had a great weekend. 

Guam Day 68 - Which Came First, the Chicken, or the Egg?

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 4/21/2022 - I wanted to revisit this question of which came first here on Guam, a pickup from day 5 post. We picked up these high quality eggs to make some fried rice here at home. Joan has built herself quite the fusion of a recipe that feels like Chamorro meets yellow Indian Rice. This means it does have Spam, Garlic Spam, Joan was elated to find this in the supermarket, in the ingredient list along with Turmeric, Cumin and some secret additives. The Fried Rice was surprisingly good for one of her many creative one stove cooking endeavors.  Ok, so dinner was good, you get the idea, back to the eggs. Did any of you see the coded numbers and letters on the side of this egg carton? Any idea what that means? DOP stands for Date of Package, then followed by the date. Yes, you read correctly these eggs were packaged, not laid, on March 28th, almost a month ago. Joan and I were excited to find these, generally the eggs you find here on Guam are dated with a packaged on date of 2 or 3 month

Guam Day 67 - Tsubaki at Night

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4/20/2022 - Joan, Winifred, Wilbur and I, had dessert at the Tsubaki Hotel on Wednesday night. Upon walking into the hotel we came upon this Japanese Orb lawn display in the night. It was something that really hit my design eye, the orbs look good even in a lesser clean state. Organic meets modern.   

Guam Day 66 - Spring Flowers from April Showers

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4/19/2022 - The backyard is in full bloom again with some of the rain we have had. I have talked about this before, the flowers here seem to have multiple bloom seasons per year, Guam seems to always have something blossoming. Our host family also does a great job keeping up with all the plants around here. Vilma has been selling plants on and off as a side hustle. Great chance to work on some of my photography composition skills.  I have not been able to find what the first two types of flowers are, I need to ask Vilma again. The bottom picture I have been told is a rare orchid. A future updated post as we learn more.   

Guam Day 65 - Bananagrams in the Tiny House

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4/18/2022 - Does anyone else love the game of banana grams? I know the name is perfect for Guam, its like the game was grown here from the backyard trees. We decided tonight to shake things up a bit and instead of watching our usual PBS Newshour (a routine made possible by the Campau "811" Clan), we broke out the game instead. Joan beat me of course, I mean this was a logical guess right, Lawyer vs Engineer? With two players, we found out it takes quite a few words to be made before the game comes to an end. We are going to add Winifred and Wilbur into the mix on Wednesday to shake things up even more.   

Guam Day 64 - A Chamorro Easter Breakfast

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 4/17/2022 - Happy Easter to all our readers. Joan and I celebrated by going to Eggs in Things down in Tumon bay. This is a quintessential American diner with a Hawaiian / Guam twist. Eggs + Things looks to have multiple locations, spread out among the great American islands of the pacific. Joan decided she wanted the crab cake eggs beny this morning, this is a big day as she doesn't like medium poached eggs. She got them hard for today, done perfectly. I went the more Chamorro standard something called a Loco Moco. The dish starts with a bend of rice, next comes a hamburger patty, then a white Chamorro sausage (spicy) gravy, and to finish it off two eggs on top. Quite the easter feast. Joan also got a side of pancakes, and the specialty is to have whipped cream piled high from their automatic machine. The Hawaiian versos comes with whipped cream + macadamia nuts. Just to pile some more calories on. :) 

Guam Day 63 - Golf at Talofofo + Pool Time

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  4/16/2022 - Joan and I always make the most of the weekends here on Guam, its great to maximize the time that she has off and explore the island in new ways. This Saturday was no different, I got an early start to meet up to play some golf at Onward Talofofo. Joan graciously helped me get ready and made some great breakfast, eggs and toast. Off I went and headed south to the course, from the pictures you can see just how different this side of the island is in hills and greenery. The course is setup in these mountains, and with this comes some steep hill changes and narrow fairways that present a tough course. We played 9 holes this morning, I really enjoy hanging out with these guys. Wilber connected me with his 3 some that needed a 4th about a month back. This was outing number 2, and I hope more to come.  After a great morning hanging with the guys, I headed back home to see what Joan was up to. Winifred came over and the two were enjoying some time together. This is perfect, a ni

Guam Day 62 - Good Friday - Mass at the Cathedral

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4/15/2022 - I spoke a bit already around some of the events happening today in the puppy post. In addition to that we had a full day between Good Friday Mass at the Cathedral in Hagatna, and a bike ride closer towards evening on our routine ride to Ritidian. Joan was able to move her schedule around to start early in the day and end work close to 3pm. Good Friday Mass is held earlier here on Guam from what I am used to, 3:30pm.  The cathedral in Hagatna is the home church to the archdiocese of Guam, the diocese also covers surrounding islands including Saipan, Tinian, and CNMI (Marianas Islands). What this means is there is one Bishop that overseas all the Catholic Churches in these areas. Quite the distance to cover! 

Guam Day 61 - Savage Sandwiches

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 4/14/2022 - Savage Sandwiches is located down in Tumon by our favorite poke place Onigiri 7. Each time we have been to Onigiri we have said, what about that sandwich place, it looks good. But deep in Poke cravings, its hard to change course and go for a sandwich. Tonight this was not the case, we set ourselves up for sandwiches.  We got a good review of this place from Wilbur and Winifred last weekend, so this idea had been simmering for a good 5 days. They passed along that we must try the Frys, and the sandwiches are huge so plan to split. I am going to link the site below so you can look at some of these fun sandwiches and fry types. We went for the Klucker (to my family members and friends, no I didnt curse publicly on the web), a Karrage Chicken, which is a thinly fried chicken breast, golden curry aioli, apple salad, truffle oil on a Brioche Bun. Yum! We got the fairy dust fries which were garlic based with a little bit of sugar and dipped in a garlic aioli. I haven't had fr

Guam Day 59/60/61/62 - Puppy Trouble

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This post spans the last four days - 4/12/2022 - 4/15/2022 Lets see, where do we begin on the story of Lucky... 🍀  Our host family has two of their kids that live at home part time, in addition there are two grand kids that come to visit on occasion from one of their other children that lives on the island. My understanding is Arsenio and Vilma have 4 children. Anyways, the grandkids like to come over and play in the backyard, they each of a kids bike so it is common for them to ride up and down the driveway and on occasion someone will take them out on the road for a longer evening stroll. This was the case Tuesday night, one of the daughters came home after work and took her niece and nephew on a ride up and down the street. I have talked in past posts about the dog problem on Guam, with this comes the common problem of needing to protect yourself on a bike, or at least be on the lookout for dogs and be prepared. On the lookout they were, the granddaughter spotted a little shivering