We just returned from a Thanksgiving Eve service at our church. By the time I got home, I was so filled with thankfulness that I decided I would try to get a quick blog posted before preparing my turkey for roasting. I feel so blessed to be a part of the beautiful cultures around me. Experiencing these cultures reveals a side of God and of humanity I had not heretofore been blessed with knowing and experiencing.
It's difficult explaining to people that although our college is on Guam, almost all of our students are from remote islands surrounding Guam. These islands represent very distinct cultures, cultures very different from Guam's culture; although, there are definitely some cultural similarities. Our church is primarily a Chamorro church, the indigenous people of Guam. It has been such a joy to be a part of this church family. Tonight at church, one of the ladies gave me a Tahitian Ginger Torch (see pictures on this post). It was an amazing flower that has no odor and looks com
pletely fake! It even felt like plastic! I marveled at another treasure that someone was kind enough to share. Throughout the night, I laughed thinking of the days I used to be awe-struck when hearing about someone entertaining twenty people for Thanksgiving. Here on Guam, twenty people is a puny, unheard of gathering. There will be at LEAST that many at a family gathering and often closer to or exceeding a hundred. The event is NEVER held IN someone's house because no one's home is big enough to house that many people. There will be HUGE heavy-duty canopies set up and everyone will eat outside in the 86+ degree weather accompanied with high humidity. And there will always be more than enough food. But, the food, even on Thanksgiving, will be more "fiesta" type food than traditional Thanksgiving fare. Afterall, how can you have a Chamorro gathering without red rice and ribs? And, how can you celebrate Thanksgiving with Micronesians without fish? And so, tomorrow at noon, we, the staff at PIBC will bring the fixings and will gather with our students for a Thanksgiving meal. Then, at 5:00 p.m. our immediate family will head to a friend's house to share a Chamorro Thanksgiving dinner. I can hardly wait to see what cultural gems I will encounter tomorrow. And I can only inadequately express the thankfulness I feel to be working here.
Scheduling a time just to hang out seems rather odd, but busyness is a reality here just as it is elsewhere. Before we moved here, we used to say, "If you don't put it on the calendar, it won't happen!" Well, we say the same thing here. Thus, even though all of our staff wants to spend quality time with the students, it doesn't seem to happen unless we're intentional. From this realization came our formally organized fellowship groups; several students "assigned" to a few teachers and/or staff to build relationships. So, as formal as it felt, we literally sat down with our "assigned" students and scheduled times just to hang out.
It is such a great learning experience just to hang out. When we hang out, the students are themselves, not pupils fixated on taking notes. And, I'm sure, they see us as real people, not just teachers fixated on lecturing till their hands get cramped. But hanging out also has a way of revealing our differences. The other night we had four of our group members over to play
a game and watch a movie. After playing spoons, which was met with screams and laughter, we watched the newer version of "Freaky Friday." Karyn and I both agree that the students were way more entertaining than the movie. It's difficult to explain, but when westerners watch movies, we are somewhat removed from what's going on on the screen. We are so used to movies, that we watch them critically, if not a little analytically (we're all movie critics). Sure, we laugh, and we are moved, but with some reservation. Not so these students! The movie was punctuated with ooo's and ahh's, laughter, and delight. Even physically they reacted. Hiding their faces in embarassment, eyes opened wide in wonder, hands over their mouths in shock, they felt every bit of the movie. It was actually quite refreshing. Here were these (young) adults fully opening themselves to the gamat of emotions elicitted by the movie , and they loved it. And we loved it.
So we learned something: even if it requires being intentional, it's worth hanging out. Who's on your calendar?
For years our girls have asked to be flapper girls for Halloween. Because of the very cold California nights in October, we always told them this was an impractical costume as they would spend the evening freezing AND no one would end up seeing their costume due to the coat they would be forced to wear! Well, Guam is the PERFECT place for a flapper costume; and so this year, when the girls made this costume request again, the answer was an exuberant, "Yes!" But, how to get the costume . . . . Buying this costume was out of the question based on our budget, and so Karyn bit the bullet and declared she'd simply have to sew the costumes. Karyn and the girls excitedly entered the fabric store but, to their dismay, discovered that buying yards of fringe (as traditionally found on flapper dresses) exceeded the budget as well. Not to be discouraged, Karyn suggested some sequined fabric and the trim would be limited to the bottom of the dress. That decided, they then asked to see the patterns. To Karyn's horror, she was told there were no patterns and patterns were sold no where on the entire island! Yikes! Karyn can sew, but sewing without a pattern is an entirely different story! With the girls' soulful eyes asking what would happen now, Karyn gulped and declared they would just have to create a costume without a pattern. The first feat was trying to calculate how much fabric would be needed. Then, feeling like a pioneer or a missionary "really out in the bush," Karyn proceeded to timorously cut the needed pieces. And then, to her chagrin, she discovered that her sewing machine wouldn't sew the fine, sequined, fabric. And so, feeling like a true bush-missionary, Karyn plunged in, hand-sewing the flapper costumes. Whew! With dresses completed, she realized she would have to figure out how to find feathers for the flapper headbands. This would be an inconsequential concern in the States, with craft stores loaded with stock in nearly every town. But, finding colored-feathers on Guam probably wasn't going to ha
ppen. And so, with her pioneer spirit in gear, Karyn scavenged the toy box. To her delight, she found an Indian feather headband (from a home school unit study on American Indians), 
and a pink boa. She pulled out one long white Indian feather and cut it to the appropriate size and hot-glued it to a headband. She took a pink drinking straw and hot-glued a few plucked pink boa feathers to the straw to make it look like one long, full, feather. Voila! Two feathered flapper headbands, two flapper dresses, and a sigh of relief from Mom!
P.S. A fun and safe night trick-or-treating was spent with friends on Guam's navy base. EACH girl returned with nearly seven pounds of candy! Interestingly, everyone immediately knew the girls' had dressed as flapper girls except the military families in their twenties. Many of them asked, "What are you supposed to be?" And, even when told, they clearly had never heard of flapper girls!!!
We've discovered it's possible to retain pure pasty white skin in the middle of the sunny tropics. Since Karyn's mom and our son left in July, we haven't once been to the beach during daylight. Besides, this is the "really wet" season (Being a rain forest, Guam doesn't have a dry season--just wet and "really wet.") and, as you can see from the inset picture, I'm jamming trying to complete the first full-draft of my dissertation. Neither does it help when one of the cars is broken down and we find ourselves stuck at home more often than not. Indeed, we have discovered that it is possible to have all the color slowly drain from the skin, leaving one in the state of original winter-white. We attempted to supplement our vitamin D depletion on Saturday, but running this way and that with only one car prevented us. Of course, later in the day, we were greeted by typical torrential rains, the kind that soak you to the skin after running five feet to the car. Oh well, as someone once noted, it's funny how the brown-skinned natives around here try to tuck under any available shade to hide their faces from the sun, and the white folk migrate to any available sunny spot. I guess the "sunny side" of the situation is that I've had fewer distractions from dissertation-writing, a project that is due as a first-draft on November 1. More later. Right now the sun is peaking through, so I've gotta go . . . .
For a number of reasons, our girls and I arrived on Guam a couple of months after Eric and Christian. We left California on September 30, 2007. I realize we are fast approaching our one year anniversary. As I considered this, I stumbled upon the following school assignment and I had to chuckle. First let me say that "professionals" had told us, before we left for the mission field, that the younger the child, the quicker the child will adapt to a new culture. In no time, we were told, the child would naturally integrate the new culture as their own. As most of you know, I have home schooled all four of our children at least through the fifth grade. Presently, I am home schooling our two youngest children (8 and 11). It is the younger who is in focus here. The assignment was: "Imagine that all of your relatives have gathered for a family reunion in a park. Some of the moms have set the food out on picnic tables. Name five things you would taste." Noelle's answers were as follows: macaroni, rice, beef, ribs, and licorice. Here's where it gets funny. The same book contained the answers our oldest had put down ten or so years ago while still in California. His answers: hamburgers, hot dogs, beans, apple pie, and bread. Do you notice a difference in the answers? Noelle's answers are an almost complete description of Guam barbecue cuisine! (We don't know where the licorice came from). I can only imagine how appalled my extended family would be if I showed up to a family reunion with rice. I can also only imagine how appalled a family on Guam would be if they showed up and there was no rice! I guess one could conclude that Noelle has truly acculturated!
We just realized that we forgot to mention that if anyone wants to see the 136 underwater pictures or the 59 pictures of people, places, and things in Palau, you can do so via Costco's website. Just send us a request and we'll send you an invitation to view the full album of pictures that we have stored on Costco's photo website. 
We just returned from a Thanksgiving Eve service at our church. By the time I got home, I was so filled with thankfulness that I decided I would try to get a quick blog posted before preparing my turkey for roasting. I feel so blessed to be a part of the beautiful cultures around me. Experiencing these cultures reveals a side of God and of humanity I had not heretofore been blessed with knowing and experiencing.
pletely fake! It even felt like plastic! I marveled at another treasure that someone was kind enough to share. Throughout the night, I laughed thinking of the days I used to be awe-struck when hearing about someone entertaining twenty people for Thanksgiving. Here on Guam, twenty people is a puny, unheard of gathering. There will be at LEAST that many at a family gathering and often closer to or exceeding a hundred. The event is NEVER held IN someone's house because no one's home is big enough to house that many people. There will be HUGE heavy-duty canopies set up and everyone will eat outside in the 86+ degree weather accompanied with high humidity. And there will always be more than enough food. But, the food, even on Thanksgiving, will be more "fiesta" type food than traditional Thanksgiving fare. Afterall, how can you have a Chamorro gathering without red rice and ribs? And, how can you celebrate Thanksgiving with Micronesians without fish? And so, tomorrow at noon, we, the staff at PIBC will bring the fixings and will gather with our students for a Thanksgiving meal. Then, at 5:00 p.m. our immediate family will head to a friend's house to share a Chamorro Thanksgiving dinner. I can hardly wait to see what cultural gems I will encounter tomorrow. And I can only inadequately express the thankfulness I feel to be working here.
