what a crazy life...

Oceania » Micronesia
July 25th 2007

Published: August 5th 2007

morning 😊 it's 5:10 am here and i can't sleep in any longer. here's a recap of my life the past few days:

i cried all the way to msp airport. all the people thought i was a crazy... once we got to msp, there was another plane in our landing dock, so we couldnt land for 45 minutes...my plane to tokyo started boarding at 2:10 and we were not able to get off the bji plane until 2:36 (according to anne hogland's watch). i raced out and ran to the shuttle, which of course took a few minutes, and this whole time i was just staring at the clock because my flight left at 3:05 and you have to be there a half hour before your flight! once i got to the right building, i just started running. i had to run on the escalators and the moving sidewalks and again, everyone thought i was a crazy. it seemed to take forever! once i rounded the corner for concourse g, they were closing the doors but saw me and actually asked if i was sally. phew. it was definitely a close one, but i got on the plane! as i was trying to find my seat, this guy asked if he was taking my seat, which he was, and he went and sat back in his assigned one. when i sat down, the guy next to me asked if i happened to be going to saipan. come to find out, they sat us all next to eachother on the plane. the girl next to him had already taught here for 2 years, and ws more than willing to fill us in on what is was like. it was awesome. the guy that was taking my seat at first was also going and they were talking about housing. we also met 2 more in the tokyo airport who were on our flight as well, but we didn't know they were going to saipan to teach. they are all super nice and we hit it off right away.

once we got to the tokyo airport, we had to find the northwest counter to get us a shuttle to our hotel for the night. even after looking at our iteneraries that the travel agent gave us, he got mad because there was another flight to saipan that night, and they don't pay for hotel rooms if there is another flight the same night. we explained to him that we didn't schedule anything, and noone will be there to pick us up if we flew out tongiht. it all turned out alright, but japan is a bit mad at us...

the radisson was beautiful. me and the boys had planned to meet for dinner in an hour downstairs, but i fell asleep and slept right though dinner until they called me wondering where i was. i decided to just sleep instead of go out with them, and im sure glad i did because they had some crazy stories the next morning!

in the morning, they had a buffet for breakfast where i skipped the japanese looking foods and stuck with boring scrambled eggs, sausage, french toast, oj, and coffee.

after breakfast, i went for a walk with eric, one of the saipan teachers, and we kinda lost track of time. by the time we got back to the hotel, we only had 10 minutes to get back upstairs, pack up all our stuff, check out, and catch the shuttle back to the airport for our next flight. in this time, i must have forgotten my glasses in my room beccause i cannot find them anywhere, so i'm trying to figure out how to call japan, although it's not working very well. ugh.

the flight to saipan was beautiful, with a lot a lot of water! i kept truckin on my harry potter book and finally we had arrived! it was absolutely gorgeous and sooo hot! immediately we were all sticky. all of our luggage showed up, and we were greeted by the school principals who had homemade flower tiaras for us-they are so pretty! i'll put up a picture once i get all my camera stuff unpacked. kim (my principal) said they take hours to make one because all the flowers are individually picked, rolled and sewn into the leaf base it is on.

after we had gotten to our hotel and washed up a bit (century hotel) we went to the olei (sp?) bar and watched the sunset during dinner and drinks. here, we met 2 more new teachers who have been here for about a week. they all seem super nice.

so, the two other hopwood guys and i had decided that we were going to get a house and we had been asking around because the newspaper apparently is no good to anyone. it's all word of mouth around here...who you know. this lady came up to us and started going off about this mansion that a guy needs people to look after for him while he is in afghanistan, and we can stay as long as we want. the price was really cheap compared to the little dives we could have gotten instead, and we said count us in! we went and saw it yesterday and relative to the housing in the us, it is about the size of my house, but here, it is the 6th nicest house on the island. it has the most amazing view over the ocean you can dream of (if you can even dream it) and i can't wait to eat breakfast and drink coffee on his huge wrap-around balcony every morning and watch the sun come up over the ocean! after seeing the house, we went back to a bar to discuss details with his real estate guy, and we got it all figured out. we are each paying $500/month for a room, the use of his whole house, and utilities which is the best deal we cold have ever found here, even if we were looking at tiny houses. it's amazing. we got so lucky! the 3 of us are going to split a car too, so we can carpool to school since we are all working there.

anyway, today we are going to get the offical island tour, sign a bunch of papers, get back accounts, and run lots of errands. it will be a long day, but good to get some stuff figured out. i also get to see my classroom today! yay!!

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