2-23-07

Well Steve Vance is on island for the next 6 weeks (well 5 now) and we ahve been hanging out during the day. He has been going out exercising with me in the mornings most days because we wanted to go do a hike on Friday. I had forgotten that Friday was on e of the "C" holidays but figured no big deal . turns out Andrew went along with us. It was a nice hike the 3 of us boys went off to Forbidden island. Well we actually did not go on Forbidden Island I was concerned - being the dad- that we would not have enough stamina after climbing Forbidden Island to hike out of the valley. It turned out to be no problem getting back up. I let Andrew lead the way out and we stopped on a regular basis. Sad news turns out that a bunch of Korean students- some from the college some from a couple local high schools- went swimming there in the late afternoon and 4 of them drowned!

It is nice having Steve back on island we are all having a great time. I am trying to convince Steve and several other people to move here even as I talk about leaving island. Why is that? Well first it is because of where I work, you see the college is not loved on island by the government which pays for most of it. Granted we are doing much better with the government but they had striped us of our budgets in the past. Second if you do not work for the college you are pretty safe on the island. I mean even if you work for the local public school you have got -pretty much- nothing to worry about. Third it is a darn nice place to live few places offer so much beauty and the weather is perfect as well. Fourth the cost of living is a low on the most part, I mean in what place could a teacher afford a membership to the local club? And with both of us working it is no problem. Sure some food items -beer- and gasoline is expensive but at the end of it all it is a cheap place to live. Saipan is a beautiful little paradise if it were not for me wanting to travel more I would stay.


Tita has her ELS methods class coming up in a week so she has been getting prepared for the class non stop this has been a good refresher for me as I have been helping her prepare for the class. She has two classes this summer and then two in the fall and she will be done. We are looking to leave island shortly after she is done. The paper is full of factory closings and we know the economy of the island will go from bad to worse.

We are ready to get off island as I had mentioned most of this is just boredom on my (and Tita's?) part. I am getting tired of living in the same place. I am sure we could weather the storm of the economy (see the next bit) if we wanted to but really it is just an excuse for us to leave island. You have to understand this is the longest I have lived in any one place (the same I changed rooms every year in college) since I was 18. I told myself I would stop moving around so much once Andrew started school and I have stuck to that promise but it is time to move. I figure if we only have a few more years we can jump around before we HAVE to settle down. I mean at some point we ahve to get into a retirement system. Sure we have been very goos about saving what we can but if you stay long enough at some place they actually GIVE you money to retire on, it is a strange thought to me as I have lived my life KNOWING the Social Security will be bankrupt when I reach 65 (62?). Anyway one of these days but not right now. I ahve stopped looking right now as the job offers started coming in and I do not want to tell people I am just looking. I had thought it would take much more time to land a job than this so I started the normal year before I wanted to move but it seems I and Tita are much more marketable than I had thought. I had figured with the 2 school aged children we would never find a job out of the US but that is not the case so i will hold off until we are closer to our moving date (Tita gets her MA in December we can leave after that)

The news of the economy keeps getting worse with more and more government budget cuts looming. The largest factory closed a few weeks ago and the next largest just announced they are closing in June. The college I work at is a public college so the government pays a good 50% of the colleges budget. It is just a matter of how long it will be before the government decides to cut our budget again. The last time they cut it I was the Faculty Senate President and had gone to all of the budget meetings, so I know we have very little fat we can trim from our budget. It is not like the other government agencies who had been protected by the cuts. So I see problems at the college not at the Public Schools.

David Rumptz for the Traveling Rumptz Family - Tita, Andrew & Ashley