Mt. Tapochau and Taste

My friend Alison invited me on a Mt Tapochau viewing with her and her kids followed by Taste of the Marianas.  (Last time I went up Tapochau, the road was so bad I said never again.  But our friend had actually gone up the night before in her car, so we figured we could make it the SUV--granted, I was still a bit skeptical.) 

Mt Tapochau is the highest peak in Saipan. When at the top you can see the entire island.  It was also very significant during WWII.  Sadly it had just been raining, so we did get any really great pictures of the view.  But the "air conditioning" was wonderful. It's so windy up there it's like it dropped 20 degrees. (Well, at least 3 degrees anyway.)

Perry got a few selfies in...

And because my view was a little crummy, here's what you can see....

After Tapochau, we headed down to the last night of Taste of the Marianas.  I enjoyed some fish tacos.  In one of the bands performing, Alison pointed out the uke player was the uke teacher at her school. The she said his name.....he was a first grader when I taught there. Yep. I'm old. 

And then maybe a few pictures of some things you don't see every day:
 

Signs advertising Sizzling Squid

A roasting pig over coals

A platypus with a roasting pig over coals

Sunset Beach BBQ

We were at the beach.

We saw the sunset.

But as for BBQ...it was island style BBQ. Hotdogs. 

I went around doing my thing...kidnapping kids and teens and hauling them off to play games, have adventures, eat food, and maybe draw a little closer to Jesus along the way.  Some years back we had done a sunset beach swim and cookout at Pau Pau Beach.  When I was giving the teens some options of what they would like to do, that came up.  Which was great for me--I'm always up to sunset and swimming on the beach!    

Tourist Day!

Generally, I would be having a youth retreat in Saipan.  However,  a group of the teens are off-island while I'm here and arrive the day I leave.  So I decided to kidnap the two girls left behind for some quality adventures. (And to build relationships.) We decided to pose as tourists and do all the touristy sites of Saipan.  

We kicked off with a circle of the CNMI Veterans Cemetery.  This was built after I lived on the islands, and I don't recall visiting it until Tourist Day.  It's a beautiful cemetery. 

After the cemetery, we went to Banzai Cliff.  The girls told me that last time they were at Banzai I had taken them there at night when they were little girls and they were very scared.  (I don't remember this.  But I felt better when they told me Laura [not me] and Josiah were there too, so maybe it wasn't totally my crazy idea???)  The views are spectacular from here.  It has been so windy this week (thank you, Jesus for the breeze!!!) that the waters were very rough. But rough waters also mean no sea turtle sightings. 

From Banzai we headed over to the Grotto.   They have really expanded the grotto lookouts, improved the stairs going down to the bottom, and added picnic tables.  Very nice.  (Going down to the actual Grotto is amazing. The girls didn't want to do the stairs and we were trying to beat the rain and the clock, so we didn't go down.  You will have to check out a previous year's post for those views.)

From the grotto we catch Bird Island.  Today may have been the prettiest I have ever seen Bird Island--it was as if it was glowing.

We had two more stops we had planned to make: Suicide Cliff and Last Command Post.  However, the rain was starting.  We were able to catch a quick photo at the Saipan sign before the skies completely unloaded on us.  

Even thought we didn't make it to the top of Suicide Cliff, we did get some really nice pictures from afar looking up.  

Pacific Island Club (PIC) Saipan

Today Perry and I kidnapped a couple of high school girls from the church to pose as tourists with us.  (There will be a post later about our many, many adventures today. We had a lot of fun. However, I'm too tired to share them all tonight.)  I shall share the end of our adventures first. PIC.

One of my favorite places in the world is PIC Saipan.  There's one in Guam, but Saipan is definitely superior as it has my favorite lazy river in the world. (Guam doesn't even have a lazy river. Boooooo.) I always get so excited at the prospect of a lazy river when I go someplace and am always disappointed as it never lives up to PIC Saipan.   Not only does PIC have an amazing lazy river, it has happy hour  with half price smoothies and appetizers...on the beach...where you can watch the sunset. 

Here we are getting our drinks and some of our food. 

Then bam...it's all gone! 

Perry also enjoyed his...

Pacific Games 2022

It's a super exciting time across the Northern Mariana Islands as they are host to the Pacific Games! (I blogged about these a few years back when the games were held in Guam.) Think summer Olympics with island nations across the Pacific.  Like the Olympics, the event is held every four years.  Twenty countries are participating: Guam, CNMI, FSM, Solomon Islands, Australia, Fiji, Samoa, Palau, Cook Islands, Vanuatu, Tonga, American Samoa, and others. 

Like the Olympics, the games kicked off with the opening ceremonies and events have been taking place across Saipan (with a little also on Tinian and Rota).  I have caught some tennis, track, and baseball driving around island.  Today, we made a trip down to the beach to actually sit down and watch some beach volleyball.

It was super exciting with multiple games going, both men and women's teams.  Unfortunately, we were only there a short time before the skies opened to torrential rain.  But the games must go on!  (I learned this evening that golf kept playing too in all the rain.)  

The kids thought it was THE BEST DAY EVER! We started having flooding under our tent and they were able to build motes and castles without even walking down to the water or getting sunburned.  

Of course all became beautiful again as we were leaving. 

Oh, and in case anyone is wondering...Papua New Guinea is currently ahead in the medal count.  2nd place with the most gold medals is Australia, but second play with the most medals is a tie between New Caledonia and Tahiti. 

Incredible Me!

Saipan is having $2 kids movies on Tues/Wed this summer.  Some people look at that as a cheap chance to see I movie.  I look at it as cheap air con!  

We decided to take the children and teens from the church to see the Tuesday movie, Despicable Me.  As I had a van load of kids, I learned that only two of them had ever been to the theater before.  Statements like those are so humbling.  

After the movie we came back to the church for a lesson called Incredible Me!  (And we learned the definition of "despicable" which I think they found the most interesting. 😂)  

Whenever we have kids, we make sure they are always fed.  And since it was Tuesday....TACO TUESDAY!  

For our craft/dessert, we decorated minion cupcakes.  They could have been cooler, but I couldn't find everything I had desired for decorating. But they were all pleased with their Minion. They got to eat one for dessert and take one home for later.

So any event that involves taking home a cupcake is a win!