Guam... a little piece of paradise!

Here we are in Guam!  I can hardly believe I live here now.  We've been here 9 days and it still feels like we are on vacation in many ways, but the reality is slowly setting in.  I am so thankful for skype and face time - without them this move would be much harder on us all.  Especially on the kids.  I love when we get up in the morning here and call our family and friends to hear about their adventures and share ours.  I only wish they could be experiencing the snorkeling, hiking, trying new restaurants, walking the beaches, and catching lizards with us!  We sure do miss our German daughter and our Texas friends...

However,  we are really enjoying being back in Guam.  It is just such a beautiful place!  I really think we'd have to work hard at being unhappy here!  We are 'living' at the Westin hotel until our house hold things arrive.  They are supposed to be here the first week of June... Hopefully before Jessica's birthday on the 10th.  It is going just fine staying at the hotel.  We have 2 rooms with a joining door, a small deck that looks out over the ocean and the beach and a couple swimming pools just a few steps away.  We all feel like it is more like a vacation that a reality that we actually live in Guam now.  I am enjoying not having to cook and clean, eating out and trying many different kinds of foods... But I will be ready to get into my kitchen and cook again when the time comes.  Although  I think I could get used to someone making my bed and refilling the coffee and putting out fresh towels as needed though.  LOL!!

This past week we have gone snorkeling about 6 times.  Each time has been great!  One place in particular was my favorite.  It's called Fish Eye.  It is a tourist trap where you walk out on a long pier and pay to ride an elevator down below the sea level to look out windows at all the tropical fish and coral.  That part of the ocean is a marine preserve and they feed the fish so there are many different shapes, colors, and sizes of fish.  We all snorkeled out from the beach to the fish instead of paying to look through a window.  Katlyn and I dove down in front of the window to wave at the Japanese tourists. They loved it!  The fish swam right next to us and even right in front of us.  Levi actually touched one and another brushed by Russ's ear.  :). We saw an snowflake eal that was about 1 foot long, a baby halibut fish, and a clam shell about  6 inches wide.  At Fish Eye it gets about 30 feet deep there so Russ and I want to get our scuba diving gear on and scuba there while the kids snorkel above us some time.  This will be a great place to take friends snorkelling!

 This picture was taken at Y'Pao beach.  Another GREAT place to snorkel.  You see so many different kinds of fish... schools of little fish since it only gets about 8 feet deep.  Katlyn stays really still and puts our her hands and they come up and nip at her fingers. :)  The beaches here have sugar white sand, palm tress for some shade and never seem to get crowded.

Most other places we snorkeled only got 6-8 feet deep so far.  I love how the coral is a bit different at each place.  We've seen blue, purple, yellow, and even pink coral in many different formations.

At Leo Palace where we are going to live Russ and the kids went dirt biking one morning last week with another pilot (Don) who lives out there.  There are hiking and biking trails nearly right outside our door, along with several swimming pools and ad 5 km walking trail.  I went hiking to Tarzan Falls with the pilots wife Trish.  There are 3 sets of falls and to see the last 2 you have to shimmy down the sides of the 2nd one to get to the 3rd.  They did have water running but were not very deep and the water was a bit green.  I hear the rainy season is coming so we'll have to go back when it's wetter and swim.  Then Trish showed me the trails around Leo Palace and a water fall just a 15 minute hike from our front door.  There was a 2 foot long eel in the creek running toward the falls!  I thought it was dead and tried to life it out of the stream with it wiggled around and attached the stick!  I wish the kids would have been with us - and all their TX friends too!  I videoed the eel with my phone and will post it on here once I figure out how to do it.

I'm learning that you don't hike without sunblock, bug spray, water of course, shoes and clothes that can get wet (swimsuit underneath preferably), and garden gloves to protect your hands from the coral.  Next week Trish is taking us on a family hike to Pagat Cave where we pack tea light candles in to light the last part of the hike since it's pitch black to get to the cave.  At the end of the cave is a big pool of cool water to swim in.  She's promised we can still stand up comfortably, which was a concern for me since I heard about another hike where you had to crawl on your belly for several minutes in the dark (unless you had a head lamp) to get to the other side.  I will NOT be doing THAT hike!  LOL!   Dark... and crawling in a tiny space... is a recipe for a disaster in my books! 

Someone told us that you couldn't get fresh local fruit here.  That's not been our experience.  Some local Chamorro fellows were setting up for a festival at Y'Pao beach last week and Russ helped them put up a tent while the kids and I snorkeled.  They gave him 4 local mangoes -picked straight off the tree - and said we could peel them like an orange and eat them.



They are my new favorite thing to eat!  I've SEEN them growing on the trees!  Along with bananas, papayas, and coconuts.  The only problem is getting them down... my children act like monkeys sometimes so I'm hoping they can climb like monkeys too!  When I went to Payless Foods to buy some I found them there too.  They were not as cheap as I'd like but at least they are fresh and local.

The restaurants are pretty good on the island.  Our favorite places so far have been Jamaican Grill (I love the Jamaican rice while the rest of the family loves the red rice), the salad bar at Ruby Tuesday (Russ took me there for Mother's Day this year :), the fresh 'lumpia' (aka: spring rolls) and Thai tea at the little road side Thai shack, Tu Rey Cafe for breakfast (sitting on the deck eating a bagel with lox, capers, and cream cheese), and the Italian food at Caprisiosa's (great pizza and the fettucine alfredo rivals Lori Voorheese's!).    DO I SOUND SPOILED YET???

Well,  I sure am!  We've just started eating breakfast in the hotel most mornings.  We can make a mean bowl of oatmeal here and knock out a box of Cherrios in no time!  :)  I will be ready to cook again when we get into our place in just about 2 more weeks.

Oh - and did I mention that Russ hasn't flown?   Nope!  Not once... and we've been here since May 11!  It's been a really nice family time.