Blogs from Guam, Oceania

On our last day in Guam, we spent the day with Shelby’s friend Amanda. We were lucky enough to have her take us to the Guam Museum. Amanda has served in the Guam government to various capacities since she returned and is passionate about the decolonizataion of Guam. She has spoken as the Guam representative to the United Nations and was recently defeated in a run for the United States House of Representative. A new museum building was finished in 2014 and it is magnificent. It is very interactive in digital display and has many cabinets filled of treasures for kids and adults to discover. The two periods of Guam’s history that intrigued me most was prior to colonization of the Spaniards. During this time the Chamorros sailed on boats and built canoes to explore the ... read more

The purpose of the trip to Guam arrived today with the celebration of a wedding. Today in front of family and friends, Jules and Zach celebrated their wedding. They had a beautiful service at the Cathedral. It was a very traditional Catholic wedding with a beautiful choir. My favorite was the singing of the Our Father in Chamorro which filled the church. The reception was quite the affair with a feast of various foods equivalent to Nobena. One plate was not enough to try everything, but too much to have room to go back for seconds. The one regret of the evening was not having enough room in my stomach. During the speeches, Jules’ mom brought out their German tradition which has been passed down since her grandparents. The story goes that her grandparents wanted to ... read more

Things were pretty chill today so I took the opportunity to get in a run and go to a new beach. Beach Bar is known for having sand volleyball and a little deeper ocean area with waves. My biggest disappointment of the island is the reef that surrounds the majority of it. The reef protects the island from typhoons and tsunamis but also prevents waves from getting close to shore and most areas are relatively shallow. Getting out past the reef is possible but if you get taken by a wave you get tossed into the reef which I am going to guess is painful. Here there is a channel that leads out past the reef and it is deep enough to take you over the top of the reef if you get taken. So much ... read more

Today we were able to get a hike in thanks to Jules’ friend Ko. Shelby and I just did not understand why everyone was so adament that we did not hike alone until we got out there. We did Waterfall Valley which was an easy 30 minute hike down and 30 back. We added a little additional extra trek down the river to see if there was another fall nearby, but the mosquitos quickly put an end to this trek, but not before we came to a bambo patch growing over the river in arches. There were 3 waterfalls. The first was extremely tall but not much water power. The second reminded me of Havasu because of the wide rock structure and many tiers of water coming down. There was a pool that you could swim ... read more

We made our way to the family ranch located on Anderson Military Base. Getting people on base is a process: First, immediate family members need to become sponsors by: 1.) being a land owner, 2.) proving heritage to the family. Each sponsor can bring up to 7 people onto the base. Every sponsoree has to bring 2 forms of ID to get on base. However, it’s not uncommon for the rules to change especially when new commanders come in every 4 years. After 9-11, they refused to let landowners in for 6 months and all the livestock and horses on the land died from starvation. Today was a fairly quick process. Jules’ dad took us and told us how this land had been in his family for generations. However, after the US came into the country ... read more