Shoulda, woulda, coulda...

I should be packing my bags and saying my goodbyes to board a 7am flight tomorrow and head back to Saipan.

But I'm not. I just officially cancelled our return tickets.

One year ago today, Josh and I had piles of clothes and boxes spread around my parents' house. We had a huge spaghetti dinner with close friends and family and then stayed up all night trying to efficiently pack all those piles into our suitcases. My mom came upstairs about 5am and I was still scrambling to get everything to fit. I broke down. It was a "why am I doing this? Do I really want to do this? I don't think I want to do this..." moment. I was panicked I was going to leave something I needed and I would never be able to replace it, because we were going to some tiny little island in the middle of nowhere and they don't even have Walmart!

I remember all the emotions as we left San Antonio for Houston, then Houston for Hawaii and sending countless text messages to people before the plane took off because I had a sinking feeling I wouldn't have any service when landed in Guam.

Today could be a repeat of all those emotions from last year (with a much better idea of what we're getting into), but it's not!

I'm sitting here today working on my resume and job hunting. I'm making plans for this week and next week and next month in the US with friends and family and I'm loving it! I love that we'll get to see my sister cheer her senior year of college and attend her graduation. I love that we'll be able to watch Josh's brother play on his high school football team. Or watch my cousins play in their school band, dance and cheer. We get to experience cold weather again! Eventually.

We have a plan: jobs, house, puppy. According to Josh everything needs to happen in that order. I'm thinking the puppy could come at any point during the process, but apparently that's just me. :)

We are both so glad for our experiences in Saipan, but we are looking forward to so many things this year.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

We wanted to take the opportunity to explain our favorite, and not so favorite, things about Saipan. A wise person has told me a time or two, to always end on a high note, so we're starting with the lows.

Top 5 things we will NOT miss about Saipan:

5.   Prices:    Everything we have on the island is shipped in, and we pay for it. Butter was $5-$6/lb. Canned tomatoes $1.50/can. Frozen bread, the key word here is frozen, was $5 a loaf. Here's the kicker, milk was $10+ a gallon. We drank a lot of boxed milk, it ran about $1.35 a box. But this went beyond food, we were paying almost $250/ month for electricity for our 2 bedroom apartment. You may be thinking, turn off your a/c while your gone, turn off the lights during the day... we did (see #2). We had one small window unit in our bedroom that we only ran at night when we went to bed.

4.   Grocery Selections:    We got what came in on the ships and that's it. It got to a point where we could tell if the ships were slow in coming or if they just didn't bring in a new supply of certain products. There were many times when the veggies would go moldy on the shelf until the new stuff came. Do you know how frustrating it is to try and find fresh bell peppers or tomatoes when they're moldy all across the island? Just before the school year ended that whole island ran out of Dr. Pepper for about 3 weeks... I almost went crazy.

3.   Slow internet:    It was bad. Like worse than dial-up bad. We'd watch TV on hulu, a 20min show would take over an hour to watch. Some evenings we couldn't even stream Pandora and their minimum is 64 kb/s, I know because when I'd look to see why my music stopped it would tell me, "you're streaming 24 kb/s" or 9 kb/s...

2.   Sweating at home:   You're probably thinking, that since we live on a tropical island the weather must be beautiful. In fact, when were still contemplating whether or not to pursue jobs in Saipan we would randomly check the weather to see what we'd be moving to. Throughout the Texas summer, Saipan was looking great at a constant 85-87 degrees. What the weather app on the iphone does not tell you is the humidity factor. When you factor in 80-90% humidity to 87 degree weather you end up with a heat index of 105+ and this was year round. So now, factor in the cost of electricity from #5 above, and the fact that we could not afford to run the a/c all the time, we sweat a lot last year. You'd take a cold shower and before you could dry off  you'd be sweating... it was misery.

The number 1 thing we will NOT miss about Saipan: (insert drum roll...)

1.   Drama:   I know, I know... It's everywhere. But oh, how I wish it had been limited to my high school classroom...

Now, on to the good stuff.

The top 10 things we WILL miss about Saipan:
*** Disclaimer - There are many more aspects to Saipan that could and maybe should have been added to this list but we had to limit ourselves.***

10. Kingfishers:  In case you don't know, a kingfisher is a beautiful bird that eats small insects and fish. They were everywhere in Saipan. We could see and hear them from our apartment and they were so interesting to watch. They quickly became my favorite bird.

9.  Diversity:   There are so many white people here, and they all look the same... No offense...

8.  Cost of Housing:   We lived in a 2 bedroom apartment and paid next to nothing for it compared to Stateside standards. And the view, it was priceless. The picture to the left is the view from our front patio.

7. Warm weather/ Sunshine:   Come January we're gonna be really depressed... The weather in Saipan is pretty tropical. It was about 85-87 all year with 80-90% humidity. The sun was out almost everyday unless we had a storm come through, it was fabulous.

6.  Food varieties: We really miss some of the fresh tropical fruit we could get on the island. Guava, mango, bananas, papaya, and avocados usually topped our list. We also developed a greater love for Thai food. Authentic is hard to match...

5. Hiking: We loved hiking in Saipan and wish we had done more. The best part was that the trails almost always ended at the water.

Old Man by the Sea

Bird Island Hike

4.  Views:  The pictures say it all.

Wing Beach

               

Aqua Resort

Nafton Point - The southern tip of Saipan

Managaha Island

Bird Island Beach

My favorite restaurant: Poon's Chinese

3. Street Market:  Saipan thrives on tourism, so every Thursday the tourism department puts together a fair type atmosphere with local vendors as well as entertainers. Everyone from local produce farmers to smoothie vendors and local shops, bakeries and restaurants bring their goods to entice the tourists. Most restaurants offered 5-6 choices for $5. It made of a cheap easy meal at the end of the week. As a "local" the best part of street market is sitting and "observing" the tourists. Really, it's just very entertaining to make fun of their sunburns and their matching clothes...

A view from behind our favorite smoothie vendor, Champs.
They were always crowded and it wasn't uncommon to wait 10-15 min for your turn.

Local fruits and veggies. The long strings on the table are long beans, similar to a string bean.
The yellow basket holds local green mango.

It became a weekly tradition. Street Market began to symbolize the end of our work week. Friday was almost here. We'd call our friends and coordinate who was going at what time and if we were gonna car pool. And while there were a variety of food options we all kind of stuck to one or two vendors that we preferred. I, personally, got the same thing 98% of the time. Not just the same restaurant, but I got the same food from that restaurant as well. I did branch out a few times, but when I did I always left somewhat disappointed with my meal and wishing I had gotten something else.

My typical meal: fried rice, spicy squid, dumplings, shao mai, and 2 servings of beef and broccoli.
My mouth is watering right now... we haven't had good Chinese food since we've been back.

2. Beaches / Snorkeling: This one is kind of a given... If you haven't seen any of our underwater pictures let me share some with you now.

Dun da da Dun!!! The aspect of Saipan that we will miss most...

1. Our Friends...  From our co-workers to social life, we were surrounded by great people all year. We love them and miss them and are looking forward to the day when our paths will cross again.

Back Over the Reef

We love new things! A few weeks ago, while Josh was in KS with his family, I went to the a beach on the south end with some of our friends. The snorkeling was alright, but the water was really shallow and no one was having much fun. This is Rachel and Kara trying to find a deeper area to snorkel.

 So the guys decided to explore a little. They knew there was an outlet through the reef but we weren't sure exactly where it was. Well, they found it! There is a fissure about 5 feet wide with a rope running through to the other side.

The current can be a little rough, making it difficult to cross over or back but if you use the rope as a guide it makes the whole process much easier. No matter how hard the journey, the destination is more than worth it. The open looks completely different than what we see in the lagoon.

NEMO!!!

Flippers!! Thanks Amanda!!

Those black dots are fish, way down below. It was maybe 30 feet deep here.

On our way back over the reef we found the little cuttlefish that was just hanging out, bobbing back in forth in the waves.

We also found a flounder!! This was the first time we'd seen a flounder out here. I'm not gonna lie, it scared the crap out of me. I first noticed it swimming directly beneath me, it was about a foot away from my face at that point. Come on, admit it, it would freak you out too if the "ground" was suddenly moving closer to you...

 It looked a little like this when I first saw it: very camouflaged!

These cool stripe-y fish are quickly becoming a favorite of mine. They hang out in areas with decently strong current and eat up the little bits of junk that float by them. 

Amazing coral formations just before you cross over the reef. There's no telling what could be hiding out there. We're still waiting to see something big. There are a number of creatures still on the list to be captured by the underwater camera before we leave. We're constantly on the look out for eagle rays, sharks, which we've seen, just not photographed, and sea turtles! I want to ride a sea turtle, it can be done... 

 

Beyond the Reef

We went over the reef!! It's awesome out in the open ocean. You get a totally different view of ocean life compared to what we usually see in the lagoon. More to come later, but here's one picture to show some differences.

Living it Up

Living in Saipan is very different than we expected. Yes, ebb and flow of daily life within this community is different, but beyond that, the way we live out our personal lives has had to change. There are many modern amenities that we no longer have, some by choice others, not so much but we don't regret any of it.

This is our little car. It's a 2000 Toyota Echo. We get great gas mileage which is a necessity because our gas is $4.75 a gallon.

This is our apartment. We live on the top floor, that's our bedroom on the corner. Each of the 2-story buildings in our apartment complex has 4 homes. There are a grand total of maybe 40 units within our complex which makes it a quite little community. We know most of the people who live in the complex and we all watch out for each other. We never met any of our neighbors at our old apartment, everyone was so hushed and hurried.

The view from our front balcony

Looking toward the parking lot... Ah, pretty flame trees.

Most of the houses in Saipan are made of concrete for several different reasons. We live in typhoon country. A typhoon is the Pacific Ocean's version of a hurricane, with high winds and lots of rain. A large typhoon would devastate our little island. If you haven't read before, it is hot and humid here, year round, which means we have bugs, lots of them. In fact, the termites were swarming outside our apartment. It was pretty gross. They would destroy a wood-frame home in a matter of months. So, it looks a lot different than what we'd expect to see with our typical idea of "American" homes.

We have lots of fruit trees growing around our apartments. These are some of the bananas growing just in front of our apartment. Notice how they have more squared off edges? These are what are referred to as "cooking" bananas. They're not sweet and you don't want to eat them raw. The "eating" bananas are round and very short, they're about the size of the palm of your hand.

We also have lemons, oranges, calamansi and papaya growing just outside our windows, it's great. Another aspect of life in Saipan, that has come as a pleasant surprise are the constant flowers. Our climate is so temperate that we have beautiful flowers all year long. This winter, when everything is dead and brown, I am really going to miss these flowers and the wonderful sunshine.

Oh, and we get these almost daily. Wonderful, colorful sunsets.

We have developed a life out here on this little rock. It was quite an adjustment at first, but we've come to love most of it. There is officially less than one month until we come home. It's going to be a bittersweet goodbye.