A Week In November

Same random beauty on Saipan.


Here's a few pictures from the past week in Saipan. We begin with some shots of Heather and Jari's new apartment. Things were getting a little strained at the "girls apartment" on our compound. With six women living in one apartment, I suppose that's not terribly surprising, and Jari and Heather volunteered to move out. They found this lovely little place just around the corner from the elementary school campus. The photos above were also taken from the balcony outside the front door of their place.


The view from the front door of Jari and Heather's place.

When you turn around, this is what you see. The entrance to Jari and Heather's new nest, #303

The photo is a bit blurry, but this the inside of Jari and Heather's new apartment. Lest you get too jealous about that view, note this place is TINY! Immediately to your left would be the sink, stove, and fridge. To your right is the wall, and straight ahead is the door to their one bedroom. The door to the bathroom is not visible. Heather is on the couch.


I took these photos last Friday, November 10 and they capture (sort of) one of the most fascinating sights on Saipan--the shift changes of the garment factories. For a few mintues the street that runs from our house to the school fills with garment workers,mostly Chinese women, carrying brightly colored umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun, walking from their barracks to the factories and vice versa. These photos really don't do it justice. I was riding my bike from the house down to the school, and I stopped to get out my camera. But the women were walking so quickly that by the time I was able to get off a couple of shots many of them were already off the street. If I get a better photo later, I'll definitely post it.



This week's requisite Kimo Shot. Often Babs will invite Kimo to come and "just be." This is what she means.

Here's a couple photos from the last day of shooting for the pilot episode of my friend Dan's latest TV show. This is the one where I play a sort of "holy man", Elijah, a Christian missionary dressed in white, always carrying his battered Bible, who seems to know everyone and everything. If I'd been thinking I'd have had a picture of me in costume. Also there are no pictures of me on camera because it's hard enough to snap a few pictures between takes (You can't take pictures while the camera is rolling as the flash and the noise of the camera will ruin the take) and I felt bad to ask someone to try to sneak a picture of me in before Dan called action.

Our final scenes were shot at one of our principal locations, Hamiltons. Hamilton's is one of the oldest bars and restaurants on Saipan. It was originally founded by an American naval officer stationed in Saipan after World War II. He met a local girl, settled down, and opened Hamiltons. The bar and the adjoinging restaurant are built right on to the Hamilton family home, and it's not uncommon to see the original Mrs. Hamilton, now quite old, come wandering in to the bar and back into the homey kitchen just off the bar to help herself to some food and go about her business. It's a fascinating place full of WW II memorabilia and "life in Saipan" mementos. It's where the Hash House Harriers (our local chapter of the hash runners) meet. They've got quiz night every Sunday evening for all-comers. They're reputed to serve up the best burger to be found on Saipan. I've not been there much myself, but it does seem to be the sort of place "where everbody knows you're name", and it was the perfect setting for our fictional bar, the Stat e of Liberty.


Here's Dan behind the camera (with his cameraman, Xerxes and Dan's wife Jie Hua, standing by her man). . .


. . .and Dan in front of the camera, playing the role of Sergei, the Russian owner of the bar The Stat e of Liberty. (The "u" has fallen off the sign creating the play on words. This is also the title of the show, I believe).

Some of the cast of Stat e of Liberty at the end of our final day of shooting. From L to R: Tanya plays Amura, the bartender, Jie Hua, Dan's wife, plays a "Garpan Girl", Dan plays Sergei, Ben Salas plays a cage fighter named Arc, Me playing Elijah, Lili plays Lili, the beautiful and mysterious Chinese girl who is looking for America, Bo is one of the real-life bartenders at Hamilton but I'm not sure what he plays in the show, Jason (with his daughter who had a role as an extra), a cop and real life cage fighter, plays Jonas the abusive father of Arc and Lili, and last a lovely Japanese woman who plays a role that I'm not familiar with.


On Tuesday, November 14, we had our school community service day. We decided to serve our community by cleaning it up. The classes each took a stretch of road or beach and spent the morning picking up trash. Here's one of our eighth graders, Nicole, trash bag in hand. This photo was taken on the road leading up to our house in front of the garment factories.

Some of the kids on my crew take a breather, hovering under what little shade is provided by a small store.


Here's the entire school with all our trash!

Thursday, November 16, 2006. At first glance, this looks like a quiet evening at home. Perhaps a couple of the teachers have come over to hang out, but nothing out of the ordinary right? Wrong! Don't let the mundane appearances of this photo fool you. In fact, disaster was very much iminent. WARNING: THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION MAY BE INAPPROPRIATE FOR WORRIED MOTHERS! Actually, this photo was taken at about 1:00 A.M. and the girls, Heather and Jari were at our house because they'd been evacuated from their new apartment because a tsunami was expected to strike Saipan within the hour. We don't live right on the beach like they do, and since we're on higher ground further from the coast they came to await the wave at our house. We found out about the wave when Jari called us on my cell phone at about 12:30 in the morning waking us from a sound sleep. To be honest I wasn't that worried. As far as I know there's no record of a tsunami ever hitting the Marianas--despite the fact that waves have hit other islands such as Hawaii in the past century. Plus, despite the 8.1 earthquake in the Russian Kuril Islands far to the north of us, the size of the tsunami that struck Japan was about 16 inches. Compared to the 80 to 100 foot waves recorded during the 2004 Asian tsunami, that's not even surfable. Still, there was a lot of fear and panic, I heard later. After they called off the warning around 1:30 and Barbara went to take the girls back to their apartment, she said the streets were full of Chinese garment workers running for higher ground.

We were very fortunate that the most damage done by this tsunami was to our sleep.

A shot of the tsunami warning announcement on the local weather channel. Channel 2 always has a weather satellite photo of the Pacific with ongoing weather bulletins 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We never watch it except when there is a typhoon headed our way, or in the case, a tsunami. The words are blurry because they were on a streaming banner but they basically read "Tsunami Warning. Tsunami expected to arrive in the CNMI at 1:31 A.M." There was also the usual bland, robotic sounding voice playing over static repeatedly warning us of the impending doom.

Here's some photos from REAL Christian Theater's second street market show. Thursday, November 16, 2006.


The climax of our show at the Street Market is our pantomime set to music portraying a VERY brief history of the world--the Creation, the Fall, and the Redemption. Here are a couple of highlights from the Creation. That's Adam and Eve (portrayed by REAL members "Photobug" and "the Gentleman"] lying on the ground in front of me awaiting the breath of life.




Here I portray, with the help of the Holy Spirit, the redemption of humankind.

Only in Saipan: Green Tea with Honey
A new feature of The Journal Online; I'll occasionally include a photo of something that is unique to Saipan, something that makes living in Saipan special. This week the item featured in Only in Saipan is the green tea with honey. Now I know you've got a virutal cornucopia of tea on the Mainland. I know you've got your Teavana and what not, but only in Saipan (and other regions nearby) can you find these cold teas bottled by various Asian labels: King Carr Lemon Tea, Assam Black Tea, and the current favorite of Barbara and I-the Chinese brand depicted above (I don't know the brand name as I can't read the characters). It's got a simple blend of water, jasmine green tea, sugar, and honey that goes down smooth with just the hint of honey, clean and refreshing.

Check out my latest Faith Journeys by clicking on the Faith Journeys link or visiting www.movingfaith.blogspot.com. In this latest entry I share my reflections on the recent TIME magazine cover article, "God vs. Science"!

The blog entries from the next few weeks should be pretty exciting. This week we have our annual Thanksgiving dinner with between 15 and 20 guests expected this year. And then on Friday, Grant and I are going to ride all the way around the island of Saipan. The ride should include some pretty adventerous jungle trails! Then the following week I'll be going to Japan for three days (many of U know why 2!!!!!)and I expect to have some wonderfully exotic photos of that trip.