Guamarama

2006-04-24T12:54:00.001+10:00

Sorry for not writing all week, I have been rushed off of my feet – which I am thinking is a good thing. I have been on a snake course run by the USGS for Customs and Quarantine officers on the surrounding islands. The course is basically to inform them about the Brown Treesnake and work on what to do if they get a sighting. Jim suggested I attend the course as it would be a good intro for me on handling, searching and trapping the snakes. As the critters are nocturnal this did mean a lot of night searching and so I was out until about midnight most evenings. What with the lectures during the day, the evening searching and general life crap I have hardly noticed that Danny has been gone, so I think it was very fortuitous for the course to have fallen on the first week. I have spoken to Danny nearly everyday as he is in Hawaii on his pre-mission training or whatever you call it. He has a phone in his room and is working more-or-less normal hours and so we have chatted more than we often would at home. I think things will start to get tough after the 28th when he goes to Laos as we can only communicate via third party emails from then.

But back to the snake course. I am not going to send you to sleep with all the nitty-gritty of the course and so I shall just give you some cool highlights. On Monday evening we all got together to do some snake handling (all, means me and 7 Pacific Island guys). It was fine and everyone got into playing with the snakes and picking them up from the ground using tongs or our hands. One guy was swinging his around a bit vigorously and I piped up with ‘don’t be mean to it’ and Jim (the instructor) just laughed at me and said ‘you are going to hate the next bit’. And I did hate it, because he then taught us how to kill the snake we had been playing with for the last ten minutes. I have actually got to quite like the snakes and although I know it is an essential part of the role the USGS have here, it never really occurred to me that I was going to have to actually and really kill one myself. I mean, you talk about these things in abstract and it seems okay, but when you get to the crunch and you have to do it, well I have to say I was not too happy about it. I was with 7 men and with my potential employer so there was no way I could chicken out from it, not if I wanted to a job and to be a good advert for womankind so I just grit my teeth and said a quiet apology to the snake. So there I was, on a Monday evening in Guam swinging a snake against a lamp-post and then ripping its head off - it’s the new black I’m telling you.

The other eventful part of the course was when the snakes got revenge for my murderous ways and I got bit on the finger. I would say that it is no worse physically than a mouse bite, but there is something freaky about having a snake attached to you that I have not experienced before. Also my guy would not let go - apparently the trick is to put your hand on the floor and they normally release you but mine did not want to drop; it was probably his wife I flung against the concrete post the other day or something but it took Jim and a pencil to lever him off of me. Shocking at the time, but now I just think it’s totally cool.

I have been getting on with a few of the USGS people really well and I even went to a gig with 3 of them yesterday. A reggae band from the mainland, called Slightly Stoopid, were visiting Guam and playing at one of the big hotels and so we popped along to see them. Apparently it is really rare to get anyone good from the mainland and so there were a zillion people there and I had a great time people watching and listening to the music. It was also great to hang out with some really nice folks.

2006-04-24T12:54:00.000+10:00

2006-04-16T05:25:00.000+10:00

I just dropped Danny off at the Airport and I am now starting to feel a long way away from everyone. I said to him that it’s not really good show to leave one’s woman on a tiny island in the pacific on her own and so he promised to come back, which I felt was only fair. It feels quite odd as he is going back to yesterday; it’s Easter morning here and when he lands it will be Saturday and Easter will be tomorrow. It’s like he’s not only left me on Guam but also in time. But enough of my 4am melodrama. Really I don’t feel so bad, it’s not like last time when he went to Iraq, he’s going to have a great time doing this and he’s only going for 8 weeks. It’s my 30th on the 8th of June and so SSgt D, who will be TSgt D by then as he puts on his stripes on the 1st of May, is going to ask and see if he can leave a couple of days early to get back for that. I think it may suck somewhat to celebrate the end of one’s 20s alone; I’m not at all superstitious but it does feel like a bad omen for the decade ahead to me.

We have had a bit of a crappy weekend rather than the romantic coupley thing that last weekends are supposed to be like as I have been sick with a stinking cold which I then gave to Danny. We were supposed to be diving on Thursday and doing a boat dive on Saturday but we had to cancel them both and ended up watching the terrible cable they have on Guam for 2 days in a row.

The cable network here is very ‘Guam’, we have quite a few channels but not many of them are very good; several of them are local to California and possibly Hawaii (we think) and they keep having commercials for lots of lovely restaurants that we want to go to and then we realise they don’t have them on Guam. The other funny thing is that it’s all run off video and it varies how old the video is. A couple of days ago we were watching TV and they were all going on about Valentine’s Day, which when you think about it was quite some time ago now. Also the times are all wrong, if you are watching Fox and they say ‘at 10 tonight watch Law and Order’, it’s not 10 at night here, nor is it 10 at night plus the time difference it’s some other time that I have never managed to work out. It would be good if my lap-top date and time setting had a button for ‘Guam Television Time (GTT)’, though I have the feeling it’s too much of a free spirit to tie it down to the shackles of a set rhythm of 60 minutes an hour, both forwards and backwards. It’s probably got something to do with the moon’s cycles and the mating pattern of the Gecko. The thing that makes me chuckle about cable here is that sometimes the video messes up and you can see them fast forwarding or rewinding the tape on the screen like you would with an old VHS machine. Neither of us are big TV watchers and so we have decided to see the funny side of it rather then get annoyed.

On Friday I had my written driving exam at the University of Guam. It was like doing my finals again, there were about 150 of us in an auditorium with examiners and everything. We got handed out a sheet, a booklet and pencil and even had the ‘You can turn over your papers now’ thing when you start and people walking around to check for cheating and stuff which made it all quite scary in the end. It was a multiple choice exam with 40 questions, you can get up to 8 wrong and hopefully I have passed though I don’t know yet as we don’t get the result until next week where they will be posted at the University. Some of the questions were really vaguely worded and so I am not going to fall over in shock if I did not pass; I seem to keep missing the point of forms and other official stuff here as my mind just seems to work differently. I was chatting to a guy before the exam and he said that lots of the drivers here do not have licences. His wife, who is Filipino, had to take the Driver’s Ed class when she got here to get a licence and only her and one other lady at the class did not drive themselves to the lessons.

2006-04-09T17:06:00.000+10:00

On Friday night I went out with the USGS people again. This time we went to a place called ClosePop which is a large area of jungle surrounded by a snake proof fence that they use for research projects. Inside ClosePop they have a known population of 120 snakes which are all micro-chipped. We took the dogs, Mason and Odie, to the site to do some searching work with them in the dark. The basic premise was that they were to look in certain measured areas to see if they could find anything in a more realistic setting that with hidden snakes in tube. When the dogs alerted us that they smelt a snake then we had to try and find it at catch it. The dogs sniffed out 6 snake scents but we only managed to find 2. It’s really hard to find a small snake in dense jungle as they are built to be hidden well in this type of environment. Jim said if you go in there looking for a snake you will never find one; you have to look for something that looks out of place or a vine that moves. I think it is going to take me a while to get the hang of it as even with a touch shone on the first snake found and people pointing to it and telling me where it was I was still having trouble seeing it. I also learnt to measure and weigh the snakes and I sort of learnt how to sex them, though it looks a bit tricky to me and I don’t think I could do it on my own yet. Measuring them is much harder then you think as you have to make sure you have stretched them out completely, bearing in mind they are constrictors, this is not there common posture and so you have to move quickly before they start curling up. All in all it was a good evening, the stuff we were doing was interesting and I got to chat with the people a bit more and they are all so nice and far more like me than most of the military lot. Nationality is not the big thing it’s what interests you and the way you think that’s more important. The other cool thing was seeing the dogs climb the ladders to get over the snake proof fence – mighty impressive I can tell you.

We went to a new dive spot today which was truly amazing and saw lots of new fish species. We only snorkelled there as the dive shop was all out of regulators but it was still really good as it gave us a chance to do some skin diving. Skin diving is basically diving with no air tanks, you just go down for as long as you can manage. I found that we could still get to about 20ft this way and obviously with practice this can only get better. The current getting to and from the spot was really strong though and we are both really knackered now. On the way back in it is 2 lengths forward and 1 length back and surf breaking over you and going in your snorkel all the way.

Danny is leaving for Hawaii next Sunday and so we are going to try and go diving on Wednesday and I’m making him take me out to dinner a couple of nights next week so we get some quality hanging out together time. Hopefully I will be starting at the Child Development Centre soon and the USGS stuff seems to be picking up, I am not to keen on having nothing to do when he is gone.

Right this minute Danny is trying to teach Twister to sit on command and stay until called; he says it’s a manly thing to have control over one’s animals. Needless to say his efforts are not going well and Twister is doing exactly what he wants to do irrespective of Danny’s manliness. It’s very sweet though.

2006-04-06T19:24:00.000+10:00

Today was a scorcher. By mid-afternoon you could see the road and the air shimmering and very few people were outside. Apparently we are moving into the dry season now where hot becomes hotter becomes hottest and fires are quite common. On the radio you hear people telling you to be vigilant and also to water your lawn to prevent fires near your house. I say bring on the fires and bring on the firemen.

Jess came out of her quarantine officially today. I took her to the vets again for a final check up and it looks like things can finally go back to normal for her now. She is quite famous at the vets but she seems to be quite indifferent to the attention. Twister had his first a visit to the vet today and now has the usual dislike of the trip that all cats seem to have. This was mainly induced by having a thermometer that was too big for him shoved where even the Guam sun does not mange to penetrate. In any other situation that kind of violation has to be illegal, I’m sure.

Danny and I are having our ‘period’; (you know that time of the month when couples seem to bicker about everything for no apparent reason) I am wondering if we are getting old hands at this marriage business as we just recognise that this happens and plod on all the same. I find all this normal stuff quite odd on Guam as it still feels like a holiday place. Sometimes I am driving to the commissary to get some Bounce sheets or a quart of milk and I suddenly find everything so odd, like who goes to buy Bounce sheets when it’s 30+ outside and there’s a beach round the corner and palm trees and tequila and stuff.

2006-04-05T11:51:00.000+10:00

I had the best Monday I have had in years this week. I spent the most fascinating day with the Geological Survey (USGS) people. The day started quite early at the seismic station which is just down the road from Andersen. There I met with Jim (the guy I have been liaising with about volunteering), Bjorn a post doc, the dog handlers Ginger and Christin, their respective dogs Mason and Odie (2 lovely black labs) and Christin’s brother who is a reporter. We set off in 2 trucks to the other side of the Island (it’s about an hour drive) to the agricultural station run by the University of Guam. They have given Jim free reign to train the dogs at the station as they are more than happy for the resident snakes there to be found and removed. The purpose of this mornings visit was to get the dogs ready for their certification exam. It’s a massive process getting them ready for this and they have been training with these 2 handlers for the past year or so to get to this point. Although they do not need to be certified to do the job, one of the hurdles the USGS people have found in trying to introduce dog search teams is that people are seemingly heard to convince that the dogs can do the job. Certification is obviously one way of getting the message across. Another way is by showing film footage of them finding snakes and that was my job for the morning. The use of filming the exercises is also used to help training by helping to see if there are areas than need improving or search areas missed.

2 large search areas were mapped out for each dog and then we set about hiding the snakes within them. We had brought 5 snakes in all, 4 in wire tubes and the fifth in a mesh bag. The snakes we hidden up trees, in the brush and on the ground to cover all possible situations they will encounter in a real world and test situation. The handlers come and have a quick scope of the area afterwards and then they bring the dogs in – the interesting thing is that the handlers are just as much tested as the dogs, they have no idea where the snakes are hidden nor how many of the they have to find. All they know is the specific search areas and that they have 1 hour (not including rests for the dogs) to cover the whole ground. This obviously means that they have to have a very thorough technique in ensuring they have covered the entire search area and they also have to take into account the weather and in particular the wind direction and strength as that can really affect the dog’s ability to smell a snake in the vicinity. Both dogs found all the snakes in their area, but Mason was not good at not leaving his find, the wire tubes looked a bit mauled which is not permitted; they have to alert the handler of a find, but not touch it. It’s so interesting to see the change in the dog when they get a scent and this is something the handler really needs to get to grips with in order to work well with their animal. There was a little panic when Mason picked up a Cane Toad, these are all over the island and are fatal to a dog if they ingest enough of the goo, but luckily he dropped it very quickly and seemed to be okay. Throughout all of this I was running around with a film camera trying to capture as much of the test as possible. I think I did okay, but it’s very hard to follow a dog with the smell of fresh snake in his nostrils.

This, as I am sure you can imagine, took up the whole morning. When we got back to the lab, they kindly invited me to join them in a lecture being held by the director of the brown tree snake project who was visiting from Fort Collins in Colorado. It was so interesting and useful for me as he took everything from base principles. Jim said they had quite a few new people and so they did not take any knowledge for granted as yet. Snakes are so interesting and amazingly versatile creatures. I think I will have no problem getting into this subject and maintaining an interest. The other good thing is that there are so many blank areas in our knowledge about them that there is research galore yet to be done. Moreover, there is money. When is there ever money in scientific research? (I’m not referring to you engineers out there). Hawaii are so worried about getting the snake and the impact that it could have on tourism that they are handing money over for research on the BTS; power authorities and the military also find them a big bind and so money comes from there too.

Now, it’s all very well being interested in the snake and willing to run around with a camera chasing dogs, but the real test of whether I can do this is of course handling the critters themselves. I am not going to deny that I was a little apprehensive about this and I can even admit to a few nightmares, but you know, it’s not so bad. I was being quite nonchalant and was trying to play it cool with the first one I held as I had read that as rear fanged they could not do an adult human much harm; Christine, who was instructing me at the time, just looked at me and said, ‘Yes they are rear fanged, meaning the venom is at the back, but they can still bite you’ my grip tightened and from then on I decided to have a healthy amount of fear and respect for them. All in all, I handled 4 snakes on Monday and I think that overall I did quite well. The only time I let myself down was when I was trying to get one out of the wire tube to put it back in its cage and it just shot out at lightening speed onto the floor. My ninja like reflexes seemed to be out at the store that day as rather than react in any practical like manner I just stood there and screamed. Jim did a very good job of not laughing, but I can honestly say the term ‘twinkle in his eye’ never had such a truer example as in that man right then.

2006-04-02T09:30:00.000+10:00

Although I strongly believe in never ruining the cheap pallet I cultivated in university, there is something very nice about sitting in the garden with a good red wine and reflecting on the week just gone. I have always though red wine is good with Christmas and chilly winter evenings, but sitting out here on a balmy evening with a glass of cabernet Sauvignon seems more fitting than my usual uber chilled white shite (the colder it is the worse it can be).

I am aching all over today, as I was yesterday and the day before, as I have newly discovered yoga – I know I am about 10 years out of date, but I can’t stress how good yoga is. I went on Thursday with my wonder neighbour Sondra and we had a blast bending and stretching all over the place and trying to be serene but really ending up in sweaty and ungainly lumps at the back of the class. The class also helped to maintain mine and Sondra’s healthy dislike of the military spouse (yes we recognise the hypocrisy here, but I am hoping you will have the grace to move on from this point with no more said about it). Yes, well the military spouse seemed to be on form in the yoga class; the irony of not being helped out by ladies doing the lotus position with their noses in the air is almost too ridiculous to write about. The thought of pushing one of these immaculate ladies over in the middle of a complicated balance took all the spirituality out of my yoga experience but instead brought in a hell of a lot of enjoyment – I guess it’s a choice every yogic, and young Skywalker, has to make at some point in time on their path to enlightenment.

Other than becoming a bitch this week, I have endured 2 more jabs for the Child Care job and I also had to give 3 vials of blood for testing. As they had to take blood, I will not be able to start the job for another couple of weeks and so I am still stuck doing not a lot. On Monday however, I will be spending the morning with the USGS people on the south of the island with the sniffer dogs. I am happy things are beginning to get going with them as that really is my long-term hope of survival on this island.

You might also be pleased to note that Fred and Twister are getting along very well. Fred is turning into a big brother figure (in the pre-Orwell and Channel 4 sense). They run around together and play fight which is very sweet and is also helping getting rid of Fred’s curtain belly. Jess still hates everyone but me, but I can no longer feel her ribs so that’s all good too.

2006-03-30T10:21:00.000+10:00

p.s. Men have made the machinery work again - My head is too full of kittens and cleaning products to do such technical work for myself. How silly of me to have even tried.

2006-03-30T10:15:00.000+10:00

I have a NAF job and when I start I will be paid with NAF money! Yes, I gave in and decided that something is better than nothing, especially as Danny is going away for 2 months very shortly. I am soon to become a ‘Child Development Program Assistant’ or Nursery Nurse in English. One of the ladies I run with in the evening is the assistant director there and she suggested that I take the job to tide me over and so I did. I went in for an interview last week and found out I had the job on Monday. Apparently they thought I was too arrogant though – I guess what they always called refreshing in England does not work so well over here; duly noted and amended Ma’am. The job will actually work out quite well with my Geological Survey (GS)plans as it is only an average of 20 hours a week and so I can fit in the GS stuff around that. I told the GS people about it and they said it should be fine as long as I keep them up-to-date with my schedule, which seems fair as I am free.

Getting a job in child care has opened a whole new chapter in my ‘Getting to Grips with Bureaucracy’ guide book. I have never filled in so many forms and signed away my rights to so many things in one go before. I had to have a medical yesterday and will also need to go and get an immunization health card; I have to have an FBI check and so much other stuff including signing a form that says I have been told what I am supposed to wear, that I am aware of the holiday entitlement and all this other stuff just to stop me from suing them and giving them an excuse for sacking me if I suck. Welcome to the Litigation Society – Home of the Paperwork Mountains and the Watch Your Back Falls. The irony is that as a military spouse they have to employ me anyway as I get special job preferences on base. So the interview and all the tedious and confusing forms are really just pointless procedure. Ho Hum.

A couple of days ago I also had a semi interview at the University of Guam. This was for a technician position with the biological control people there. The work looked kind of interesting - it was looking at using insects to control invasive plant species - the job meant lots of field work and looking after plants and bugs and possible travel to nearby islands. I was almost tempted to go for the job, but I think I want to hold out for the Geological Survey people; if they can give me a job in the end it will be far more interesting and there might even be a chance for a PhD, so it could lead to furthering myself too. However, Dr Fidler does sounds like a ‘Carry on’ name to me - “Dr Fidler, really” “Yeeeaaaas, Maaaatron”. I know it’s a risk going for a voluntary position, with the hope of being employed in the long run, over a secure paid one but Danny and I are not starving and I am not sure a chance like this will come up again.

What a choice though, snakes or bugs – my neighbors think I am crazy.

2006-03-28T06:55:00.000+10:00

I think I have broken both the lawnmower and the strimmer in a record breaking ten minutes. I thought I would do Danny a good deed, as I had absolutely nothing to do, by mowing the lawn for him. We have to do this every Monday or we can get a yard ticket for not keeping the place up well enough and Danny is all manly and says it’s his job not the little lady’s (Yay I say – boo says my feminist mum). Everyone moans about the ’Yard Nazis’, but when you see how fast the grass grows here, and how slobby some of the people are here then you can see it makes sense. Luckily our street is very nice and it’s more competitive gardening that’s the issue than being messy – I do not think I have told you about my golden coconuts yet (no comments Merv). I have never used a strimmer (I am not even sure if that’s what it’s called) and I have a vague memory of using a lawn mover as an early teen, so perhaps I should have waited for advice from the old Danny-Doodle first. Well on with my tale of woe, I was happily mowing away and the thing just stops. I have checked the oil and the gas and there is stuff in both containers; I did not see any rocks go flying so I can’t think what I did wrong, but I just can’t get it to start again. So I think, well at least I can do the edging for him and so I move onto the strimmer. The strimmer has a little plastic whip thing that edges the grass, and after about 5 minutes of my ineptly trying to cut the edges of my borders the whip just seemed to go missing. Now it makes all the right noises but nothing happens. Oh no.

So onto my golden coconuts... Gardening stuff on island is super expensive and so everyone edges their lawns with the free plastic edging bricks you can get from the Self Help Store on base. This store is wondrous; if you live on base housing you can go and get stuff for your house and yard from there for free. They have things like water and air conditioning filters, citronella candles (for the bugs) and grass seed and potting soil all this other useful stuff for the bored and socially conscious housewife. I hate the bricks as everyone has them and they do look pretty plasticy and so I have been looking for an alternative edging solution. Now one thing Guam is not short of is coconuts, and one out of their husky coats they are versatility itself. You can make birdhouses, bras, cups, headgear for a small Jew, a plethora of sound effects for the Archers, anything really. And so I have tapped into this resource and created a new kind of edging. All you have to do is drill through the three brown spots at the bottom to stop the nut from sprouting and they look pretty cool round the edge of my border. I have added to the effect by spray painting them gold which I think looks uber cool in this climate. Danny thinks it’s stupid, but I think he will change his mind when the plants bush out a bit and the gold fades with some weathering.

Me coconuts and the chicken head plant

2006-03-21T08:57:00.000+10:00

I just got a call from the vets about the bite report they were sent from the hospital. Apparently the Captain will be ringing me tomorrow and telling us to put Jess under house quarantine for 10 days because she bit someone and also as a rabies precaution. The irony is that Guam is rabies free, this is a mainland US rule that they will not adapt to its environment - beuraucracy. So, not only do they have up-to-date records on her rabies vaccines, notes in the report that the attack was completely provoked by me and that she is a house cat and is not allowed out anymore they will still have to tell me ‘officially’ that as a potentially dangerous animal we have to keep her indoors for 10 days or we could get into trouble. Despite her sociopathic tendencies Jess is doing well and is currently fast asleep in my wardrobe…..possibly dreaming of the taste of human flesh, though it’s more likely to be Twister flesh if the past couple of days are anything to go by.

2006-03-21T07:27:00.000+10:00

A wild orchid.

The swimming pool.

An orchid with a Praying Mantis (go sister!).

This is the waterfall we went to.

2006-03-20T21:29:00.000+10:00

On Sunday we did another hike. We decided to do an inland route up in in the hills as so far we have only done beach. Guam’s lack of street signs really bit us on this route as it took us about half an hour to find the starting point; for some reason our book of hikes uses street names that are not advertised very well at the source. The walk took us through some scrub land which seemed quite rough and bare apart from the wonderful fact that dotted across the land were tons of wild bamboo orchids, which were really beautiful to see; it was like Marks and Spencer in Cambridge had exploded over a wasteland. After a time of scrabbling over this grassland area we began to descend into a very lush green patch of palm trees and other jungly type plants which I have no idea what their names are – Linnaeus I am not. This route took us down to a stream that was the main pathway for our walk. The way down to the river was a 70 degree drop, you had to cling onto a rope and slide from tree to tree to get to the bottom. I did a rather dramatic bum skid down half of it of which Danny did a very good job of not laughing at (though I could see him very honourably biting it back). I had already cut my finger on some razor leaf (a bit like the saw sedge in the fens but more dramatic), which is a very suitably named plant dispersed all over the place. Therefore, I was beginning to feel like this was quite a hardcore hike. At the bottom of the drop we were in a completely different world, it looked like a scene from Jurassic park. The stream was strewn with large boulders which made a sort of stepping stone path down the river. I presume the boulders got there when the stream runs much faster and deeper during typhoons as it was merely a trickle right now. Small crayfish (or large shrimp, we were not sure) scuttled about in all the little cracks and deeper pools between the boulders. We followed the stream until it turned into a waterfall which made you look a bit dizzy when you looked over the edge. There was another steep scramble down the side of the waterfall with a rope to get to the bottom, but I managed to keep from burning my posterior this time. After the waterfall, we were supposed to follow the river down to a confluence with another and so we slipped and skidded across the rocks all the way along. Danny was determined to keep our feet dry, and as the bank was very steep this was rather difficult, but we persevered. At the joining point with the Lonfit river we got to a boulderless point and so tried to climb up the bank and go round to a bit where we could start stepping stone our way along again, the brush was very thick here and I got a razor leaf cut on my eyelid, which did not please me very much. At that point I got fed up with scrabbling and slipping everywhere to avoid getting wet and just stamped through the stream in my trainers. This method actually proved to be much easier and less slippy and so I just walked down the center of the river the rest of the way; I never got deeper than my thighs and I did not fall over quite so much. The climax of the walk was a swimming hole which was created by some surrounding rock that had not eroded as quickly around the stream, we were hot and sweaty and it was so nice to go for a swim there. We could here frogs croaking around the sides of the pool which really added to the atmosphere and as we were the only people in the area it was almost creepy, but rather exciting too. We then had the trek back, which was fine now we were better at travelling along the river. However, all those scrambles down were now scrambles up which were hard but very satisfying. I have to say that Danny faired much better than I did on this walk, I was falling everywhere and getting cut and feeling quite miserable in places. This hike was good for Danny as I am normally dragging him around on walks and telling him to hurry up; this time he was helping me up and holding me up most of the way. We have decided that I may be the speedy race car, but he’s definitely the sturdy off-road 4 by 4.

I took Jess to the vets this morning to get checked out. Apart from losing quite a bit of weight she’s fine which called for a big sigh all round. They tested her for leukaemia and feline AIDS; they also looked at her teeth and took her temperature (I bet she wished she was back in the jungle when she was sitting there with a thermometer up her bum) and checked her breathing and heart rate and all good.

I did not do so well at the human vets as the bite I received from her in the rescue mission has become infected and I now have to take penicillin to get over it. Cat bites are much worse than dog bites and puncture wounds (which is what I have) are worse than straight bites. I now have an elephant hand. It was so tedious as we had to go through all this bite procedure and the vets have to be notified to contact the owner and get the pet checked out even though I am the owner and the pet was checked out before me. They do assure me that I have not grassed my pet up and Jess is not going to get put down as an aggressive animal. They had better not or they will have to deal with an aggressive human.

2006-03-18T19:18:00.000+10:00

The most fabulous thing – Jess is back in the fold. She’s a bit worse for wear, but she’s home and that’s the most important thing. Let me tell you how it all happened…..

…Yesterday I got a call from a girl I knew saying that she thought she saw from her kitchen window Jess come out of the jungle, she ran out and tried to approach her but the cat ran off. We obviously pelted over there and searched about and called her name for a while, but to no avail. The area where this women lives is right on the edge of base housing, there is a newly built path and then a strip of pretty thick jungle after that. We know that with the mad attacking blackbirds and after being accidentally scared off by the lady that we might fare better coming back after dark. We went down at about 10pm and sat in the bed of the truck with flashlights and calling her name for about an hour, but nothing happened. This was not the first time we have had a sighting and gone out looking for her, so we were being pretty pragmatic about the whole affair and so we went home trying not to be too heavy of heart.

During the night I had a really vivid dream where she came home; it was one of those dreams that feels so true it takes you a while to believe it’s not when you wake up.

I went running this morning and I made my route go by the spot just on the off chance she popped her head out. On the way there, I saw nothing and did not really think much about it after then as it was nearly 90 degrees out there and I was dying in a very red and sweatily unattractive way. On the way back I saw an animal carrier sitting on the sidewalk a few houses up from yesterday’s caller’s abode with 2 boonie cats lurking around it. I skirted passed it but then thought better and doubled back to see what was going on – there was a family looking at me oddly and so I went up and asked them what was going on. They had seen a cat that was too pretty to be a boonie cat (that’s my baby) and with a collar caught around her leg; they had fed her a couple of times and were trying to catch her as they had seen a notice at the vets with her picture on it – top marks to Danny. It was Jess! I can’t articulate how I felt when they said that, I was excited, worried and bracing myself for let down and it was quite overwhelming. I sat by the path calling her name for a while but she did not come out, the boonie cats were all over me and the family said that they had sort of been looking after Jess which was pretty nice to hear as you don’t expect that from cats. After a while one of the cats walked into the jungle and I thought sod it – I’m far more likely to get her to come out on her own turf and in a bit of cover than onto a naked sidewalk – it’s a bit too much of a leap of faith for a scared kitty. So in I went. There were so many cobwebs and giant spiders and scurrying lizards; I was very careful to look out for snakes too. I found a little glade like area a little way in and sat down and started calling her name. After about 10 minutes Jess came out. She was very wary at first but she came within about 6 feet of me and then just sat down. After blubbing with relief for a bit I tried to edge closer but she was pretty apprehensive. Really slowly, inch by inch I crept closer until I was just within arms length. I had planned to go all slow and let her come to me, but she turned her head for a second and I just took the opportunity and grabbed her. She flipped out, but I did not let go; I picked her up, almost like a rugby ball, and legged it out of the jungle cobwebs in face and all.

She seems really happy to be home, she’s been purring around me and letting me brush her and pull twigs and other crap out of her fur. I can’t believe how skinny she is though, she seems bigger because her hair is all matted and fluffed out, but when you stroke her your hands bump along her spine and rib cage. I am trying to get her an emergency vet appointment to check her out, but I think she’s going to be okay with some TLC and high fat kitten food.

What a happy day, Danny and I are so skippy and smiley, even Fred seems pleased to see her, which is rare for that fussy old madam.

YAY!!

I bet she's the only cat to have been a stray on two continents

2006-03-17T11:07:00.000+10:00

It’s pretty rainy today. It’s like the rain you get in England in autumn where it’s just a constant grey drip all the time. I find it quite settling in an odd way and it’s making me less frustrated to have not very much to do. I always liked days like that back home as it meant that you had to stay in and it felt cosy and was a good time to eat crumpets or baked potatoes or other stodgy hot stuff. I remember days like this when I was a kid; I would be all bored and would not know what to do with myself and so I would end up delving into my imagination for some hope of salvation. They often ended up being the best days.

I have to take my driving test soon to get a Guam licence. Thank goodness I only have to do the multiple choice part of the test. How awful and embarrassing it would be to fail ones driving test after driving for 12 years. I don’t think anyone would let me live it down and so I am glad I don’t have to do the driving bit; I’ve not been able to parallel park since the first time I took my test. But I could still fail the multiple choice bit I guess. Oh NO!!!!! The driving licence people wanted to invalidate my UK licence by punching a whole into it but we have managed to talk them into just stamping it. It’s so typical of the US to have no concept of the outside world or that people might want to leave the US sometimes and go to another country. I am sure they don’t even have a legal right to take my UK licence away from me, but they did try. It’s the same with the job thing, most people have just said, ‘Well become a US citizen then’ as if it were the most obvious solution to the problem. There seems to be no understanding that I might be very proud to be British and that I want to stay that way. Moreover, I don’t think I could voluntarily opt to have President Bush as my leader, nor endorse (which is what I would be doing) a country that is trying to pass a law that stops even rape victims from having an abortion. Can you imagine if I were to change my citizenship and them come home? I would have no rights, in my country of birth; I would have to go through immigration at Heathrow with all the foreigners and have my passport stamped and I would have to get a visa to stay there. I might even start wearing tapered jeans.
p.s. Apparently there are some jobs I can get on base, you’re going to love this, they are called Non-Appropriated Funds jobs, or NAF for short – they are very rubbish minimum wage sort of things so it’s not really something I am considering. I just thought you might like to know that I can get a NAF job.

2006-03-15T09:43:00.000+10:00

Danny and I get the island paper delivered everyday. I pathetically enjoyed (is that a split infinitive?) getting it delivered for a while as we have it American style in a plastic wrap thrown on our lawn. Although we have not been on island for very long we are starting to get the idea of how the administration works over here. This is mainly through reading the paper and from our own experiences of trying to get anything official done. Although an American territory, it is sad to say that Guam is not run with the usual American efficiency and service with a smile. It’s a shame as I really think it lets the locals down and it’s not their fault, more a severe lack of management training and a more laid back temperament that has infiltrated the work place to a dangerous extent (what we would call Mediterranean). For example, there was a big news story a few days ago about the airport here. They had found hidden cameras and microphones in the customs area, some of them were transmitting and they did not know anything about them, nor where they were transmitting to. Bad stuff you think; all these rich Japanese tourists coming through having their baggage searched, the cameras could be checking out potential targets for theft. Or it could be that there are 3 military bases on Guam with many military personnel coming though the airport; are they there to pinpoint particular targets? Danny and I were exasperated by the initial report as they had the manager of the airport (or customs I can’t remember) saying how bad this was but he did not know how many cameras they had found, did not even for 5 mins close the customs hall, and said that contractors would come in to search the airport with a couple of weeks. A couple of weeks! Could you imagine if this happened at Heathrow? Thank goodness the FBI finally got involved. The funny thing was at the end of the whole fiasco they found that the airport itself had bought the cameras about 5 years ago.

In today’s paper there’s something that I don’t think could ever happen in the UK. It’s called the delinquency list. Basically it’s a pull out supplement with a list of people who are not paying their child support - It has their name, location and date of birth. On the front they have info for employers who see an employee’s name on the list and of course general contact information for people who now want to pay. This shit list comes out every quarter and apparently the next one will have the amounts they owe on there too. Also, along the same hard-line tack I saw that convicted drug manufactures on island have their assets sold (houses, cars, watches etc...) and the money is given back to the state as funding for the police and customs departments. It is a program called The Asset Forfeiture Program and yesterday the police received $122,721.27 and customs got $55,22.37. I am not about to make judgements on what I think is right or wrong about this, but coming from the UK this is a much tougher society to the one I am used to. If this is a Nanny State, she ain’t no Mary Poppins!

For more island stories go to: www.guampdn.com/

2006-03-13T17:53:00.000+10:00

Just picture that I am not sitting outside on my swing seat drinking a rum and coke and trying to hear the archers from my lap-top over the sound of B2 Bombers taking off. It’s not a beautiful evening and we are not about to fire up the grill and cook some chicken we have been marinating in something tropically for a few days. I have not spent the afternoon whiling away a March Monday down at the beach reading swashbuckling yarns from my Hornblower omnibus; and I did not buy the edition with sexy Ioan Grufford on the cover.

I did get caught outside though when the big speakers played the national anthem at 5pm. This happens on base every week day – it’s amazing that they have speakers that can cover the entire base. If you are outside you have to stand still, or stop your car, until it is over. I felt a bit of a twit standing so I respectfully stopped swinging the bench while the Star Spangled Banner rasped rather unmelodically over the speakers.

Talking of the trivialities of living here, we have found a postal DVD delivery service on Guam. And ‘yippee’ is the word to use about that. It’s an American one and they ship them from Hawaii pretty speedily considering the distance. We are very happy about this as the Shoppette on base (UK equivalent is your Indian corner shop) is rather limited. With a predominantly working class male population on base the DVD section is rather top-heavy with slap-stick sexual innuendo style movies. Not that my movie choices are much better I must mention. The best movie I saw of late was Babe - a little pig goes a long way - which my equally sugary sister bought for me. It was quite funny as I made Danny watch it with me at his work when he was on nights and a couple of the young cool Airmen came in while I was sitting on his lap watching a movie about a piglet learning to be a sheepdog. I am not sure it did him much good, street cred wise. The one thing with this movie rental place is they have lots of British detective stuff, which Danny and I can’t get enough of. Right now we are watching Cadfael, or CSI Shrewsbury (Cadfael Special Investigations – of course) as we prefer to call it.

On Wednesday I am going jogging with SSgt Ryan Van Hook’s wife Michelle and their friend Johnana. As Ryan went to school with Danny and he was also his sponsor over here we have got together with them a few times and had them over for a BBQ on Saturday. They are both really nice intelligent women and so I am hoping to cultivate a friendship here – hopefully they are not too nice or too intelligent though as I might have issues. Ryan and Michelle are going back to eerie Indiana in October, but still it could be good for a while.

Question of the day: Is Mundane and Monday related?

2006-03-11T17:41:00.000+10:00

Here's a picture of our house from the front. As you can see we fit into 'Guam style' very well as we have a nice shiny truck, it's just a bit on the small side for Guam.

Twister is fitting in very well. Here is a picture of him climbing the screen door - it's a practice I am trying to stop but I think I would have more chance getting everyone here to buy free range eggs (they don't exist) and to recycle .

We got a patio set that matches the swing today. I was going to post a picture of it, but I saw the weather report for England today and I thought you don't need to be seeing things like outdoor furniture for a while yet. (snigger)

2006-03-11T17:26:00.000+10:00

Everyone on Guam has a truck. They are all massive gas guzzling things. It's funny because lot of the houses here are very run down, but outside every shanty style dwelling you will find a brand new Toyota Tacoma. This is quite a nice Guam home, but it fits my needs closely enough.

Some people like to take it a step further and have thier truck lowered and they'll stick some fatty tires on to pimp it out a bit; others just take it one step to far.....

How does he get in it?

2006-03-11T09:15:00.000+10:00

I have worked out a solution to the boredom, run your arse off so you are exhausted all the time. I’ve been running just under 30 miles a week, which I know is not a lot for some of you nutters out there, but it’s enough to get me to sleep a good 10 hours a night. It’s also nice to have something I am good at out here. I am generally the best runner at the gym (apart from this 7ft black god that was there yesterday, but we shall forgive him just for his presence there). It's good because I have something that subtracts from the military spouse/homemaker title that keeps on intruding into my daily routine. It’s good at the gym because you can’t tell who’s military or not and as you don’t chat to many people, being foreign does not come into play. I just have these silent battles with the people on the treadmills close to me for pole position, I am not even sure they are competing with me half the time, but it does me good to think that they are. You may think this sounds melodramatic, but if I have to go somewhere on base that needs you to sign in or register for something I have to put down my name then Danny’s rank and squadron and work phone number. This even included when I went to get some employment advice from family support and registering the cats at the vets; I am wondering if I shoud be getting his advice to use the phone.

We did our taxes the other day which is really different from the way they get done in the UK. I am not sure if this is because Danny is military but you submit all your paperwork and you get money back – woo hoo. We even managed to claim some of the cats’ moving costs and so we ended up getting quite a bit back. This has turned out to be rather handy as Danny’s daughter is coming to live with us for a year in July and we had no idea where we would get the money for her ticket let alone furniture for her room. Jessica is 12 and I know the importance of having your room just right at that age; yes, right and pink. Ugggg.

2006-03-09T09:32:00.000+10:00

I went down and met with the Geological Survey people yesterday and I have to say that it could have not gone any better. They work on the Brown Tree Snake as it has caused a lot of damage to Guam since it was accidentally introduced during WWII. As there is such an abundance of food for them they have just exploded and have also managed to wipe out a native bird species and are doing quite a good job on just messing up the ecosystem here period. I will start with them as a volunteer in the next couple of weeks and will be helping to exercise the sniffer dogs in the morning by running with them (amazing, I know). They have lots of research going on there and they also have a rapid response group in place to deal with any sightings on other islands. I might be able to join this group and that would mean travel to the surrounding islands. I will of course be learning how to handle snakes and all this other cool stuff you see on discovery channel. Now for the cool bit; the last three volunteers are now employed there and there is `a possibility of doing some proper research with them, so I do have a chance of making this into a job. Now for the super cool bit; they way the employment works is that they use a contractor rather than through the USGS directly, so if I were to get offered a position in the end IT WOULD NOT BE FEDERAL SO THEY CAN EMPLOY NON-US CI7TIZENS! Woo Hoo. I am going on a Brown Tree Snake (BTS) course in April that they hold for local customs people so I get to know all about them and of course how to trap them. What I have already discovered I that it is a bit of a jack of all trades, it’s mildly venomous and has constrictor abilities. The fangs are at the rear of the mouth though and so an adult human has nothing to worry about; it really has to get a good chew going to do any harm. The snakes normally live on the top of palm trees but they do like built up areas and locals can often find them in their homes. One of our neighbours had one a while ago, but they killed it.

This is a picture of dogs searching for the BTS.

Twister is settling in really well. He has really taken to me and spent last night sleeping on my neck; which was a bit weird. I left him there as before he slept by my tummy and tried to suckle which was beyond disturbing. Fred I most upset, and just growl at him, but I know he’ll come round. Males do not like their territory disturbed and so it takes a while. I know both my Dad and Danny (and you Mr Griffiths) have the same issue.

2006-03-05T16:04:00.000+10:00

Danny and I have been rather lazy today. I know I have already done a post but I thought I would add a couple of pictures of Twister (not Killer or Brian) as we went to see him today. Danny is being so sweet; he keeps on saying things about him or coming up with ideas on looking after him. I asked him if he was excited about having a kitten and he went all funny and got embarrassed as I guess he thinks it's not very manly to be excited about a kitten. But he picked him out and named the little guy, so there has got to be something there methinks. Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet ickle Danny boo bops.

I also forgot to say that we got the coolest bit of yard furniture yesterday. It's one of those porch swing things. It's so nice just sitting outside rocking away I have wanted to get one since we got here. It even folds down to be a bed like thing - I had a little sleep out there today but then it rained and woke me up.

2006-03-05T07:44:00.000+10:00

Fred has not been a happy cat of late. He and Jess always fought but I think he misses her as he’s been very demanding since she’s been gone. With that in mind, we have decided to get him another buddy. We are allowed three pets in base housing and so if we find Jess we shall just have three cats. As professional mad cat people Danny and I have no problem with that, though we are getting a short hair! I refuse to start coughing up hair balls. Fred is enough hair for any family or small nation. We are getting a kitten called Brian (I know) he’s a silver tabby and we are picking him up from the shelter on Tuesday after his man bits have been removed. Danny wants to change his name to Twister, I am thinking Killer. Twister will probably win.

The shelter is an amazing place, it’s called G.A.I.N. – Guam Animals in Need – and they take in any animal. The local population, and I am sad to say many of the military, are not very good to their animals and don’t seem to understand the need to spay and neuter and so there are lots of strays on the island. As I have mentioned before, they are called Boonie cats and dogs. It’s a wonder Guam has managed to stay rabies free. Every year G.A.I.N. and the kennels on base organize a 3-6 day neutering session where they ship over a ton of vets from the States and people can bring their animals in and get them done for free or very cheaply. The shelter people told me that they had lots of trouble from the local vets and the government tried to make it that the vets had to be registered on Guam which is a fee of $250 per person. This sort of thing is very typical on the island and it can be very frustrating. G.A.I.N. is now working at changing the legislation to prevent this, which is really impressive. I am going to sign up as a volunteer there until I can get a job as I think what they are doing is amazing and it will stop me from going stir-crazy at home. It should be good.

We went to a 21st Birthday party last night at out neighbour’s house across the street. Everyone is so young here; Danny and I are quite ancient. However, I did do my bit for respecting the elderly by downing a beer faster than everyone else. Danny said he was so proud; he said that with more conviction than I have heard him over any of my work or academic achievements.

2006-03-02T13:12:00.000+10:00

This morning I was a team player. Woo Hoo! Go Girl. I went to this spouses welcome thingy at the family help centre. When I woke up this morning I was very close to just not going as I thought it would probably be a waste of time. I am glad I did go now though as they actually talked about some good stuff and made me think a bit. Much of the morning was based around getting to grips with a new culture and also about being lonely and the time it takes to get settled somewhere new and foreign. A lot of it was acclimatizing Americans with the Guam culture, but it worked for me as a Brit trying to acclimatize with the American way of life. They also had a mini fair at coffee break with people from a lot of the services giving a bit of a run down on what they do. I had a chat with the education lady and the social services woman and they answered a couple of questions I had. What was really interesting was that I saw that the other women were feeling very like me over much of this stuff. They talked about how you would feel initially and then about when you get a low when you start trying to settle down to living (you know my issues with that) and then just about making it all work for you and making the best of Guam. One thing I walked away with this morning is a resolve to stop being so cynical about everything; I have taken to automatically assuming something is bad. When absolutely everything in your life is new, you start closing in on yourself a bit and you can make things turn a bit sour. I have seen that with some of the wives on our street who are getting a bit catty with one another for no reason other than their own personal frustrations. So, no more cynicism! Tough for a Brit, but I’ll give it a go.

They ended the morning with a lesson from a local guy on husking a coconut, getting the milk out, the traditional way of grating it and making your own coconut oil. It was kind of a sweet way to end the morning. I have o admit that I am starting to come around to Danny’s machete idea now I can make a beauty product from it.

Did you know, local fishermen in the past used to use coconut oil to help fishing in choppy water? Basically, you fill your mouth with oil (yuk) and then spit it out onto the water when you are all ready with your spear; the oil makes the water clear for a while so you can see the fish and get them.

This afternoon they had a Chomorro cookery class. I decided to skip that as that was a little too mousey spousey for me. But not a bad start Mrs Danny Fidler methinks (Don’t worry Mum, that was sarcasm).

p.s. A lady asked if I was Australian at the class this morning.

2006-02-28T21:26:00.000+10:00

The last couple of days have been slightly frustrating as I have been trying to settle down to actually ‘living’ on Guam and Guam won’t let me. We finally got the social security number business sorted out and I should be picking it up from the office on Friday; perhaps I am counting chickens here (a lesson I learned not to do when we actually had chickens – water butt drowning incident), but hopefully part of the Emilie getting a job saga will finally be sorted. Now for stage 2. What job can I do? I went to the Family Support place on base to chat to them about jobs and found out that as a Non-US Citizen I can not work for the Air-Force or Navy as a civilian (I can’t even work on the library on base), nor can I work in any other federal position. This includes the United States Geological Survey (USGS) and NOAA (the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration); the two really interesting things going on here. With regards to the teaching situation, working on a base school is a federal position so I can’t even substitute, nor can I go there as a student teacher to do my required hours for my course because I am an alien. I can go to a Guam school, but Danny and I are both of the mind that this might not be of much use to us when we go to the States as they are very poorly funded and not very like a standard US school. Moreover, without the substitute angle I am not sure I can pay for the course. So, what to do? I am still holding out some hope for the university and as I have had a positive email from the local person with the USGS I have arranged a meeting with my local immigration officer and am considering talking to the legal people on base to see if there is a way around this non-US Citizen federal job crap. Rant, rant, rant. I was nearly in tears when I went to see the employment guy on base, he just kept on pointing me towards hospitality and other summer job level stuff. A dependent is a second class citizen; an English dependent is sitting on the roof of the train using their degree certificate to keep the sun of their head. On the flip side, I have wonderful tan and my bougainvillea seems to have taken root.

2006-02-26T12:04:00.000+10:00

Fossilized Coral

A view of the beach on our walk

The freshwater pond

2006-02-26T11:47:00.000+10:00

Yesterday we went on another trek. This one was called Hilaan and started at a beach on the North West of the island. There were lots of local people with their families having BBQs which was nice to see. We have either gone to the tourist areas or on one of the military bases and so we had not as yet seen where the locals hang out. The walk took us to the end of the beach which had an outcrop of limestone which made it difficult to get around. You could either go around in the water or climb over; we decided to climb. It was well worth the effort as once over there was another long stretch of beach with turquoise water and palm trees and all the other things you see on people’s computer desktops. Furthermore, like the pictures, there were no people. We went snorkelling for a while and then just sat on the beach to dry off. The sand is not the normal sand you come across, it’s basically ground down coral and so it can be quite rough, though it has a nice pink hue to it in some places. Due to the changeable weather here, the beach is also littered with quite large pieces of coral and they look quite strange out of the water. The walk then took us round to another deserted beach, this one strewn with coconuts and then into the jungle. A small overgrown path winded around huge lumps of jagged limestone, over fallen trees and by huge spiders in their monstrous webs until we broke onto a large freshwater pool. Apparently this pool is fed by the aquifer which is very high in this area and so it’s fresh and fine to swim in. We sat there all peacefully for a while watching the bright red dragon flies; it’s funny how noisy the boonie is though, all the hermit crabs were crunching through the leaf litter, lizards were scrambling around and something was making quite a noise on the other side of the pond (There are monitor lizards around here apparently). The noises we were actually expecting were not here though. You would think in a jungle like environment to get lots of squawking and other bird noises from above, but there was nothing. Guam just does not seem to have many birds (apart from the evil swooping blackbirds in my yard of course).

A couple of nights ago I went and sat with Danny at work as he was on his own and nothing was going on. We got quite bored and went and had a look around his office (shop). And we came across a Segway. Have you ever had a go on one? They are these human transporters things and you go forwards and backwards by shifting your center of gravity. Well, we were happily occupied for the next 40 mins playing with this. I set up an obstacle course in the bay; we had to manoeuvre round wheelie bins and cones for a maximum of 10 points. What fun!

2006-02-25T20:39:00.000+10:00

Well I am afraid that Jess is still missing; I have not been blogging because I hate to talk about her not being here. Therefore, I have decided that I will just not mention it anymore, if I have any news about her, I’ll tell you, but other than that, let’s leave it here.

2006-02-23T18:13:00.000+10:00

2006-02-23T18:09:00.002+10:00

Well Jess has been missing for 2 days now and Danny and I are very sad. Yesterday we posted notices al around the neighbourhood and mailed flyers to the houses nearby. We know the chances of finder her are not high – the vet said that the boonie dogs (they are the wild dogs around here) hunt in packs and cats do not stand much chance against them (I kind of wish Danny had not relayed this piece of information to me). We have a patch of jungle that starts about 5 mins from our house and so I am not holding out much hope now. Once again, we are very sad. Fred is acting odd too, I thought he would not care that much, being a cat and all, but he seems really wary of Danny and I and does not appear to know what to do with himself. That’s sad too, even if I am anthropomorphising.

We got a really nice phone call today from a lady we met on the plane over here. She saw the notice and rang to offer her sympathies. She likes to go on long walks in the morning so I told her to stop by our house and I’ll come with her. You need to keep in touch with nice people like that I think.

Let’s try for a brighter note. We have done some more gardening and the place is beginning to look a bit more our own. We dug up some of the lawn (well weedy front bit) and put in some bedding plants and I have this funky idea of decorating the edging with painted coconuts. There are so many palm tree around here that we have quite a ready supply and if we can work out a way of stopping them from sprouting then it should be quite funky. We also planted some more flowering shrubs/trees out the back around the patio. As all the gardens just merge into each other, no fences, Danny wants to use the shrubs as a territorial marking thing; he is such a grumpy old man waiting to happen.

I got three identical letters from the immigration people today and none of them containing my Social Security Number. It’s getting slightly annoying as Danny can’t do his taxes until I get it and we could do with the money; especially now I am a full-time homemaker (you can take that as tongue and cheek if you have not already). We also want to buy Danny’s daughter’s plane ticket over here, and we can’t do that until the taxes are done either. I have an alien number though! Apparently my alien number is very important; I bet you all want one. Do you think ET had one? ‘In Guam, no one can hear you scream’ which is kind of true I you are inside as everything is built out of concrete. Apparently a fight broke out under our bedroom window (Navy, what can I say) and Danny and I did not even wake up.

2006-02-21T20:27:00.000+10:00

Get this, I am at a copy shop sending a fax to the UK, I hope you got that, to the UK, and the lady behind the desk asks if I am from Australia. What is it with the Australian thing?

Today I went to Big Navy and got some plants for the yard. I don’t know the names of most of them, but the big expensive purchase was a bougainvillea. The soil in the yard is so full of lumps of limestone it took me ages to dig the holes for the plants but I finally got them in. I was worried that the plants will not take in such rocky soil, but my neighbour reassures me that most things seem to grow here. We shall have to wait and see. I know it sounds pathetic but I was quite chuffed with my escapade to the other side of the island; it was the first time I have driven on my own off base and it all went quite well. In fact, I have not felt the urge to drive on the left yet. Surprisingly enough, Danny started randomly driving on the left today, which I found rather amusing.

I am beginning to get a bit worried that we have lost Jessicat. We decided to let the cats out in the evening as they keep getting attacked by the birds during the day (I even got dive bombed this afternoon!). Fred was cool and just sat on the patio and ran in when a plane flew overhead, but Jess is just gone. We walked around the area calling her name and she’s not back yet. Oops. I hope we have not lost her.

2006-02-20T14:14:00.000+10:00

This is a picture of our dive yesterday. Danny is on the left, James (who did the course with us) is in the middle and I am on the right. You can see from this picture that we are descending as James and I am pinching our noses. You have to make your ears go pop regularly on the way down to equalize the pressure in your ears with the increasing pressure in the surrounding water. The volume of air shrinks as you go deeper due to the pressure exerted on it and so you have to counter this by making your ears go pop as you do when you fly. This pressure effect also works on the way back up, as the surrounding pressure reduces the air volume increases, and so any air trapped in your ear and sinuses will expand so you have to be careful to rise slowly so as not to burst your eardrum or even worse, if you are holding your breath, your lungs (that one's for you Mum). That is why you have to breathe continuously when you are diving.

As Danny is working most days now (or night sometimes) I have to admit that I am starting to get bored. We only have 1 car at the moment and Danny will not let me go snorkeling alone so I am kind of housebound. I am looking at carrying on my Masters in Education and I have also contacted the University of Guam to see if there is any technician or research work in their environmental science department. I spoke to a nice Dr man today who gave me some contact names. He seemed quite positive that there could be some work for me there as I guess they don't get many pre-trained people asking for tech jobs here on the island. So fingers crossed, hopefully I will be wearing a white coat before I'm taken away by people wearing them. Nothing can happen until I get my Social Security number though and so there will be a bit of sitting and waiting methinks. Oh well, I just rented season 1 of Desperate Housewives, perhaps I'll be able to empathize, or rather sympathize, with one of them.

P.s. Note my use of the letter Z (Zee) I am afraid my spelling has gone to over to the dark side. It’s no great loss though, It kind of had a will of its own from the start anyway.

2006-02-19T17:16:00.000+10:00

Being 60 ft underwater is one of the most peaceful times I can think of. It’s unsafe to dive alone so it’s not the being by yourself that creates the solitude, as you will always have at least one other person with you, it’s the inability to communicate or be communicated to. All you can hear is your regulator as you take a breath and the bubbles rushing past your face as you release. It’s like your are turning in on yourself and all the focus is on the thing that’s most essential to our lives yet we never normally pay any attention to it…breathing. They say diving is the closest feeling to being in space; when you achieve neutral buoyancy in the water you can just float, no bottom, no top, no sides. They say space, but I wonder if it is more womb like, more foetal. A baby’s ears are not fully developed when in the womb and sound travels strangely through water; I wonder if the bubbling noises and vague blurry sounds are similar to what a baby would hear.

I like to watch the bubbles rise from the other divers; they look like silvery jelly fish with tentacles of smaller bubbles following behind them as they dash to the surface. When you look at the surface of the water you feel disorientated as it seems the wrong way up; you can see too clearly and it seems too high, too far away, too light compared to where you are. The fish are undisturbed by our presence which looks so lumbering and awkward compared to their smooth, darting movement. When I first went diving I was taken aback by the amount of colour there was underwater, blue star fish and bright pink and green fish with parrot like beaks, tiny little electric blue fish that just look like flecks of light at the bottom. Now I am over the initial glitz and glamour, I now spend much more of my time hunting for the camouflaged beasties. It is amazing how well they hide themselves and you only get to spot them with a very sharp eye or if they make a slight movement. It’s a bit like those 3D pictures you used to look at as a kid where you have to make your eyes go out of focus and then the picture would appear. You get a lot of satisfaction in finding one of those fish. I also like they way they have confidence in their concealment skills even when you spot one it knows better than to move, all you need to do is look away for a second and it’s a nightmare it find again and they know that.

Excuse the Sunday evening prose - I was feeling expressive

2006-02-18T20:44:00.000+10:00

We felt an earth tremor today! It wasn't a massive one, but it was definitely a tremor. It reminded me of when the potato lorry used to go past the flat in Littleport and everything used to shake. COOL!!!!!!

Jessicat got dive-bombed today by the blackbird that lives in the palm tree in our yard. It really was bad timing as it was the first time she really ventured outside and did not hug to the wall. As soon as she stepped out she there was this massive squawk and a black blur had her pinned to the floor. She gave me such a look, you know how cats can, and walked haughtily back in doors. Her food bowl is by the door and she would not go over there this evening until I pulled to mosquito door shut - I can't really say I blame her.

We went diving today and went down as deep as 70ft. It was really beautiful and peaceful underwater (when we did not have to do all the tasks to pass the course); the coral looked like a city in a science fiction movie. It was funny at the beginning as I really needed to pee and you know swimming in water just makes it feel worse. I kept on thinking 'I should just go' but someone always put their mask underwater or did something that made me think NO I CAN'T. I got so close, but then I kept on picturing one of them saying 'are you peeing?' and it being the most embarrassing day ever (sorry to sound like a teen diary, but it's how I felt). When we got out of the water after our first dive it was really getting quite bad; we were all sitting down and filling in our dive logs and I was scanning the area to see if their was a potty but with no success. I then admitted to Danny and the other two guys that I was dying for a pee and they all looked up and one of them said 'Why did you not go in the water?' I exclaimed that I couldn't, not with them there and then Danny said 'I went as soon as we got in the water' and then the instructor admitted he did too and then the other guy, James, said he went twice! Well sausages to decorum, I then ran off went for a quick swim, if you know what I mean.

We finish the dive course tomorrow and then we will be qualified (the term is certified, but to me that sounds like we're going into a mental home) Open Water Divers. Yay I can wee at 60 ft without an instructor!

2006-02-16T23:14:00.000+10:00

I never thought I would be cold on Guam, but tonight I even went from my normal sweaty English red rose to a nice frosty blue. We were doing the confined water dive sections for our scuba course (i.e. the bits in the swimming pool) from 6pm to 9:30 pm tonight. The sun goes down somewhere between 6:30 and 7 and boy did the water get cold. The diving was good even though we had to cover a lot of stuff. It’s not just swimming about and sitting at the bottom, you have to complete tons of tasks to actually get your certificate and some of them were quite hard. For example, you have to be able to show that you can cope with certain common problem situations e.g. your mask loses its suction and starts filling with water, you get cramp, or you have a problem with your air supply; it's not like you can just shoot up to the surface. We had to be able to show that we could take our mask off and put it back on underwater, once we had that task sorted we then had to take our mask off and breathe for 1 minute. You may think that that sounds easy, but remember that your nose is exposed and you have to make sure that you don’t breathe in through it as all you'll get is water – trust me it’s hard because the water starts tickling your nostrils. Another thing they had us doing over and over again was taking the respirator out of our mouths underwater and then putting it back in again, you have to make sure then when you put it back in your that you manage to get rid of the water in your mouth otherwise you will swallow it when you try and breath in. It was a bit sad because one lady who was doing the course with us just could not get the hang of breathing through the respirator and she ended up leaving. It’s tough because she had done all the class work and the swimming and floating test and only when we finally get the kit on did she realise that she just could not do it. There were so many times when we were doing the tasks underwater when I thought that I could get myself into a tizzy and start panicking, but you just have to remember that as long as you breathe you will be fine; that can be tough at times though.

I have found a super TV station, I am sure you have heard of it, it’s PBS (Public Broadcasting Station). I just watched Inspector Morse and they have all those other British TV murder programs that we all love. Furthermore, the PBS radio station even has some World service on it. Yay, Brit fix!

We went to the library this morning and got out a book on Guam’s natural history. What was really cool was virtually as soon as we got home we got to use it. What we have been calling Geckos here are actually American Chameleons. I started to realise my error when I saw one sitting on our wall change colour. Isn't he sweet - he changed to brown about 5 mins after I took this picture.

Oh and I thought you might want to see the laundry room. I love it.

2006-02-14T22:44:00.000+10:00

Danny and I have now completed the academic portion of our dive certificate. It was not too hard, but there was quite a bit to remember and of course we had a healthy amount of spouse competitiveness between Danny and me. Luckily we got exactly the same score. Danny was threatening to phone up my parents and say they had wasted their money on my education if he were to beat me and so I was pretty pleased to break even with him.

On Thursday we start the diving. At first we just do stuff in the pool on base to check that we have mastered certain skills; then at the weekend we will move onto the open water diving and hopefully by Sunday we will be qualified divers. There is a lot that you have to think about when diving and you have to be careful of things like decompression sickness, nitrogen narcosis and lung over expansion (yikes). Essentially though, if you follow the rules you learn on this course you will not have anything bad happen to you; it’s all about knowing your limits – or so we hope.

You know the main difficulty I have been having here as a foreigner is ordering food. It even brought me to tears today (in the car on the way home though I hasten to add). As I am sure you are all aware, the American fast food ordering system is all about choice. You can’t just go up to a sandwich place and say in your best voice ‘Hello, I’d love a grilled chicken sandwich please’. No, no, no!!!! You have to say ‘I would like the chicken sandwich combo meal, on wheat with tomato, lettuce, black olives, peppers, no fat ranch dressing with extra mayo’. This system is great when you know what you want and you understand all the ordering options. Furthermore, the stress of not being 100% sure of what you want, which is my common problem, can also be intensified by the fact that you don’t understand the Chomorro half Asian half American accent and they don’t understand the good old Queen’s English. ‘You want tomato?’, ‘Yes, I’d like tomato’, ‘Tomato?’, ‘Yes, tomato’, ‘Huh?’ With Danny as interpreter I managed to buy a sandwich, but by the time we hit the car I was in tears with frustration. Looking back it’s one of the most bonkers things in the world to end up blubbing over buying some bread and a bit of filling, but really you reach a point and you just want to shoot yourself. They don’t even look at you with any sympathy, it’s more like ‘you can’t order a sandwich, that’s embarrassing’ So, I am either taking Danny with me as my personal helper or I am going to the shoppette and buying a Snickers or a zero carb, max energy blueberry frosted power bar.

Wow, 22:30 (you like my military speak?) and we’ve got B1 bombers flying overhead right now (it happens on most days – which is kind of obvious when you think about where I live). It’s really loud though and Fred and Jess always look at each other and make for their under-bed retreat post-haste. I am not sure my sister’s sensory deprivation theory with getting babes to sleep would work over here.

Talking of my sister, she emailed me this morning asking how anyone can drive for 45 mins (my KFC emergency run you may remember) on an island so small. You can drive for HOURS here. The max speed limit on the majority of the island is 35 and most of the people middle-aged and above, women and people with ‘pimping rides’ like to drive slower than this. Moreover, if there is an accident the police seem to like closing the whole road, both lanes, to investigate the crash. There is one main highway/freeway (not sure of the difference) across the island and it’s called Marine Corps Drive. It always makes me laugh when we listen to the radio as they actually have traffic news at rush hour; but it’s always just Marine Corps Drive. ‘Yes it’s 6pm here and we have slow traffic on Marine Corps Dive by the Yigo turning and more traffic on Marine Corps Drive by the Tumon turning and some more traffic on Marine Corps Drive on the ITC building turning….. ‘Okay we get it, there’s traffic on Marine Corps Drive’ J. I will tell you more about the way the island navigates and it’s vehicles on another post as I think I’ve bored you all enough now and I need to get some pictures to aid this most crazy part of island life.

Keep it real.

2006-02-12T09:50:00.000+10:00

When I got up this morning I found a coconut sitting in the middle of our patio. Apparently they are good to eat but they are quite hard to get into. The coconuts do not look like the ones you see in the shops back home as they have a green smooth skin and I think all the brown fibrous stuff is inside that. Danny keeps telling me that he wants to get a machete to break them open; we have a mad Navy neighbour who told him that he breaks his open with a chainsaw and I think he’s set Danny off on his madcap scheme. Talking of our neighbours, we went over to some people across the road on Friday night for a BBQ. They were all Navy people and goodness do they know how to party! – I think it’ that 6 months of the year at sea business. I was so hung over on Saturday morning that Danny and I drove for 45 mins just to get a KFC. I think that the curative properties of the Colonels Zinger burger should be recognised medically as the ultimate hangover treatment. Our street is very sociable (a bit too sociable for Emilie the hermit crab), but they all seem to be nice people. Most of the wives do not seem to work, I have been told it’s quite hard to get a job off-base unless you speak Chomorran or Japanese. I think I still have to wait for my social security number though to get a job anywhere though.

Danny starts work tomorrow and as most of his shop are in the Philippines, he will be doing 12 hour shifts – 12 noon to midnight. It’s partly because they are so short staffed with many of them away and also so they can act as support to the mission. As he stayed up until 2:30 am playing Xbox last night, he’s confident that’s he’s already in the right sleeping patternJ.

Today we are going to the wonder gym and then going back to the cove I told you about in an earlier blog (the one with the steps going down to the sea for the Spanish chaps to bring up water). We are going to take our snorkels and fins with us this time and most definitely the mosquito spray. Last time my bites went all huge and freakish and only getting sunburnt seemed to clear them up. I am sure that’s not the healthiest way to deal with them though.

2006-02-10T09:28:00.000+10:00

I took this picture on our first morning in Guam. It's the view from our hotel at 7am. The Sun rises at about 6:30 am and goes down at about the same time in the evening. I find that quite odd as I am used to having long evenings when the weather is good.

I have put this picture in as it shows the typhoon shutters that we have on our windows and the patio doors. Apparently when a typhoon hits you have to just sort of shut your house down. They recommend that you fill your bath with water and turn your fridge and freezer to their lowest settings. On base power will not go down for more than 2 weeks, but the rest of the island can be out for months. A lot of people have said that after a typhoon hits it turns into party time here as everyone has to eat their food before it goes bad. BBQ central!

2006-02-09T17:27:00.000+10:00

Today had the best start a person could wish for. We woke up this morning and sauntered over to the base gym for a light work-out. This gym is better than any of the fancy ones in London that I have ever been to. Every cardio machine has its own monitor and so you can chose what you want to watch while you work out. I tried to be a good girl and watched CNN for the first 30 mins of my run, but than gave into weakness and ended up on VH1. After that we drove down to the beach on base (it’s called Telafofo I think) and went snorkelling to cool down – as one does. Although not as rich with flora and fauna as Egypt’s Red Sea diving, Guam is surrounded by coral reef and so there is a lot to see underwater. We saw some amazing fish out there and they did not seem too bothered to have us gawking at them up close either. I am not up on the names of the fishes as yet, but when Danny goes back to work I am going to go to the library a bit more and I shall try and learn all the names and wow you with my Linnaean dexterity. The really nice thing about going to a semi private beach is that every time we have been there it’s been near empty; this morning there were only 2 other people as far as we could see. My mask was giving me loads of trouble this morning though as I have such a narrow peanut head. I can’t get the suction to work for very long and soon water starts dripping in; it’s most annoying. With much humour in his heart, and unfortunately also in his speech, Danny went and got me a child’s mask this afternoon. Apart from coping with the shame, I should be able to stay underwater a bit longer.

This is the view from our yard. All the houses look like this and are made of concrete to withstand the typoons.

This afternoon has not been as great as the morning as I have been trying to deal with UK customer service people. You know I think we need to rise up in mass protest against the inefficiency, lack of customer focus and general unhelpfulness of the companies we give our money to. I can’t believe how hard it is to do anything other than give a company your money (well even Sainsbury’s Bank managed to make that near impossible). I have money with HSBC UK that I need to transfer to HSBC Overseas and they don’t have an easy way of doing it. How can that be? Rant, rant, rant, blather, blather…….

But all is not lost today as we went over to Big Navy and bought the grill (cheers and applause). SSgt. D has gone to pick up a propane tank and then he’s going to make me a big American cheeseburger. You can’t be sad when you’ve got that now can you.

2006-02-07T19:59:00.000+10:00

Wow - what a busy day!!!! We moved in to base housing today. Danny had to go off to an orientation meeting which we thought would only be for an hour or so but it ended up lasting until 2:30 so I had to deal with all the delivery stuff myself. We had internet and phone connected and our household goods came along too. The phone lady gave me her home number saying 'if you ever get bored give me a ring for a chat; I love your accent so much' - odd, but funny at the same time. Everyone thought I was Australian, and I suppose given the relative proximity of Australia as opposed to the UK that was a good enough guess; I sound more Australian than I do American or Chomorran.

The main thing of the day was having the household goods arrive and get unpacked. They basically turn up how they left our flat in England - in the same massive crates that were sealed in front of us on that snowy day back in December. Everything came out undamaged and still had that annoying sheen of cat hair that it always has. I think I might suggest to these military types here that they need to investigate the curious strength of the attachment of cat hair to people and objects, I bet it could have some use in the defense of the nation or more probably in the attacking of other nations. I am not sure that the moving men were used to dealing with a British geek though as they were amazed at the amount of books and bookcases that they had to unload. When we were nearing the end there was this big package (everything was wrapped in paper - you should have seen the piano!!) and they asked me what it was, for a while I could not think and then I remembered that it was my big corner bookcase and they just wet themselves laughing.

I have to say I am loving the convenience of the American home. We have so much storage space. I do not have to find ingenious ways of storing and hiding things anymore; they have cupboards that they can go in. I also have a laundry room (I know) with a massive washing machine and equally huge tumble dryer. I washed the duvet cover, all our towels (including tea towels) and all our hot wash whites in one load with room to spare. I know it's all environmentally evil, but I love it.

We moved the cats in last night so they could have the place to themselves to get acquainted. By the morning when we turned up Jessicat was quite willing to explore with me. I opened the patio doors, with the mosquito net door still closed so she could not escape, and she just sauntered over to have a look out and a sniff and went into shock (she literally jumped back). I bet every sight and smell was different. It's really hot and humid and we have 2 palm trees in our garden, a zillion geckos and some odd and noisy birds. She ran away and then kept on peaking round to corner looking intently at the door all day like it was going to bite her, it was so cute.

2006-02-06T08:51:00.000+10:00

WE are beginning to get settled in now and we are finding our way around. I have even driven which turned out to be less scary than I thought it would. Right now Danny is off with some guys from his shop watching the Super Bowl; it's like the world cup here and so the streets are dead. Guam schools even have to day off because of it (though not the ones on base - unlucky)!

We have been adventuring a lot more an have found that the navy base is far better for shopping than Andersen. We were beginning to get a bit worried that we would not be able to get everything that we wanted but the NEX (Navy Exchange) seems to have most things. I am still having trouble on the clothing front though as I am neither American nor Japanese and that's all the styles that there are here. If I have to choose I think I prefer the Japanese stuff, but I am about 50 lb too big for most of it.

2 days ago we bought a book of trails on Guam and we tried out one of the shorter ones. It was amazing. The walk started just past a beach with the lovely name of Gab Gab which was located on the navy base. Hundreds of years ago the Spanish built some steps down the cliff face for lugging water up from the sea. The steps are still remaining today and although a little rough in places it was not too hard to descend - I fel sorry for the guys who had to bring water up from there though. Once at the bottom we were in a band of thick jungle; the floor was littered with Hermit Crabs and all kinds of lizards. The Hermit Crabs were especially great as they often jumped into their rented shells when they heard you coming and then proceeded to fall of the branch they were traversing or roll down a slope they wer climbing. We saw two beautiful lizards with startlingly electric blue tails. The jungle was also strewn with fossilised coral which seemed incongruous in a this forest environment. The coral patterns were very well preserved and you could make out many of the different species quiet clearly. The air here was humid and thick and we soon became quite hot and sweaty. We consequently got bitten very badly by the local mosquito population which seems to be far more efficient at extracting blood from our skin than their European cousins. As we went on though the air became much less close and we started to hear the sea; after a short while we emerged onto a tiny beach at the edge of a little cove. We met with a Navy family snorkeling there and they told us that they had just seen a small shark and some amazing fish. Our snorkeling gear is coming in with our household goods on Tuesday and so we have already planned to go back on Sunday.

Everyone finds my excitement of all the things to do here quite amusing. I find it amazing though that so many Americans do not really leave base and take advantage of this wonderful island. I was talking to a lady yesterday who said that she knew someone who had not left Andersen for 2 months! However this is not the case with everyone, so please don't think I am slmming the military people. Many people have taken advantage of Guam's situation and have visited lots of Asia, the Marshall Islands and many other places. It is possible to get to Australia on a direct flight from here, which is something I am sure I will take advantage of.

Danny is very happy here; although he moans about America he is now remembering all the things he loves about the U.S. His new colleagues are very friendly and I think he is enjoying making friends with them (hence the super bowl thing today). I am also doing better with the military dependents than I did in England. Maybe it's me being the minority that helps, or that we have just met with a very friendly group of people, but so far everyone has been lovely.

Today we are going to K mart to get things we need for the house e.g. Cat litter, Kitchen bin, shower curtain and food. Although we shipped an awful lot of our stuff there still seems to be lots that we need to buy. We have been hunting for grills (BBQs) and you would be amazed at the kinds of BBQs you can buy here; they are better than most ovens. Danny has got very excited about this and as I know he's wanted a good grill for ages I am not curbing his enthusiasm too much. However, I did draw the line at a generator; many people get them over here because of the typhoons, but as Danny's argument was that it would save food being wasted in the event of a power cut for a few days, I am yet to be convinced that we will every have over $500 of food in our house to be wasted (that's the cost of a generator if I was not clear).

We will have a telephone, internet and a proper postal address from tomorrow. YAY! It will be nice to have our house sorted.

2006-02-03T11:46:00.000+10:00

We spent the day yesterday with one of Danny’s colleagues going round the base and getting acclimated to Guam. The day was fascinating, tiring and slightly mind boggling as everything was so new to me. It’s not just the fact that we are now living aboard it’s also that I am English and also that I am now a military dependent. Andersen Air force base is really attractive; it’s on the top of the island and takes up about a ¼ of the whole of Guam. It’s all spread out and there’s big sweeps of grass and palm trees everywhere. Ryan (Danny’s colleague) took us to the beach, which is for military only, and it really was the type of thing you see on postcards from places you can never afford to go to. The beach was completely empty with perfect white sand and a turquoise sea stretching out to the horizon. All the verges on the way down to the beach are thick with lush vegetation, much of it flowering shrubs. We also went to meet Danny’s shop (office) and they all seemed like cool people. I had quite a funny minute there where I felt like I was completely out of my depth. We were standing out the back of the shop and Danny was talking about some piece of equipment he would be working on while he’s over here and I realized that I had no point of reference in my head for this situation I was on a tropical island with a bunch of military people talking about things I have no idea about and to top it off I was not even from the same country as them. It was almost like my brain stopped processing for a minute as I did not know what to process.
We have decided to opt for on base housing as I want to try and make friends quickly and I think I will have the best chance with other military people (well other dependents really though I hate to say it). We got given two places to look at and I have to say we are really happy with the house we have chosen. They all look naff on the outside as they are built to withstand typhoons (I think we all prefer ugly houses to flattened houses) but inside it’s really nice. We got a place that has just been refurbished and so everything in there is brand new. Being American housing we have so much storage space; one of our cupboards would be a spare room in England. But as you know my main priority was a dishwasher and I am sure you will be happy to know we have one. It’s even got the instruction a label still inside it’s so new. We move in on Tuesday and as out furniture from England has already arrived we do not have to get loaner stuff to tide us over. I am so happy about that – I’m not that fussed about living away from England, but having a home and my stuff around me is very important. A lady at the post office just gave us some tips about checking vents and stuff before we move in. If you do not have wire mesh covers on all your external vents it is highly likely that we will get rats and snakes coming into the house. She also said to treat the floors with bleach regularly as frogs will come in. Apparently they exude some kind of green goo which is poisonous to touch but the bleach burns their skin so they just hop back outside when they come in contact with it. There are also these big red wasps flying around everywhere, if they sting you it’s pretty bad, so you have to be very diligent about wiping out all their nests. We saw a nest at our new house in the sliding door and so Danny’s on the case sorting that out. We were also told that we are responsible for keeping the coconut trees by our house free of dead leaves and stuff and you have to be careful with those as the wasps like building their nests on the underside. It’s a bit more extreme than the summer ants in England methinks.
We went to see Fred and Jess at the kennels yesterday too. Hmmm, not sure what to say about their state; pissed off might be a good turn of phrase but I’m not sure that’s strong enough. Fred has already scratched two of the ladies who work there and did not seem to soften his rage too much when he saw me - though he did let me pet him which was something. I can’t imagine what their little kitty minds went through on take-off and landing (twice) on the trip over and to be honest we are trying not to think about it too much. We will be able to move them in with us on Tuesday and so hopefully they will recover quickly. We are already talking about getting a puppy, as we are allowed 3 pets, but I think we will wait until the cats are less psychopathic before we introduce that chaos into the house.

2006-02-02T08:16:00.000+10:00

Well we have finally made it - I think that Danny and I can both say that that was the longest trip either of us has done and we were in no hurry to repeat it. By the time we got to Guam we were both tired and stinky. We got met at the airport by two for Danny's colleagues who took us to our hotel. We are staying at the Marriott right on the beach, which is really cool. Guam is everything you expect it to be; palm trees, humidity and a beautiful sea/surf all along the coastline. It has also got its seedier elements, as you would expect with 3 military bases, but as far as I can see it's no worse than Soho. We saved 2 of the sleeping tablets for when we got to the hotel; we are both a bit bleary but not as bad as you might think with a ten hour time difference.

Today we are going to go on base with Danny's colleague and old school chum and get introduced to the people Danny needs to meet and the stuff we need to see. I am also hoping to go and visit Fred and Jess to try and minimize the hate they probably feel for us right now.

I am sorry that this entry is a bit basic - we really don't know what to make of it yet as we are sleepy and it's so hard to imagine that we will be living here. It's a holiday resort that's full of Japanese and US military people, tres alien. But then according to my visa I am an alien :-)

We are missing everyone already, but are also excited about what lies ahead. I hope you are all well and not too cold ;-)

Lots of love

Ems & Danny xxxx