Saipan the past few weeks

In the four years we have lived on Saipan the past few weeks have been the best. I went on my first hash (more on that in a bit), and the kids have finally found what neighbors are. There are 5 kids who live next to us and 2 more across the grass yard. There are supposedly two Taiwanese kids but i have never seen them though I have seen their mom. I also met a girl from Mongolia but she does not speak much English. Anyway I ramble the point is that Andrew and Ashley have found kids their won age who like to play outside. In our old neighbor hood the kids mostly sat inside playing video games. There was really not much of a group that hung out together. Now at the new place the kids are looking for each other hanging out and playing doing things kids should do. i really am loving the new place we live in. I am glad Tita has a job and I am thinking we will be here for at least another two years. god forbid we end up staying here. But that was the subject of my last email On to the Hash...


The Hash House Harriers (the "Hash") is an international group of runners (hashers) whose primary goal is to have "fun". see note at end of e-mail explaining more. My first hash was amazing. I saw parts of the island I had never know existed and they were literally in my backyard. It inspired my to start treaking around the jungle. I went, with Steve Vance, on a trip up an over one of the local ridges. The trip started on my old walk in front of Andrew's school and I figured we would hit the jungle once the road ended instead of coming back like we had done previously. Well we hit the jungle and had a great journey and after about an hour of jungle treaking we came to a road passing through a valley in the jungle and we eventually decided to follow it until it hit a paved road. Well as we started to come into the clearing low and behold we were literally in my backyard. So we stopped off at my apartment and refreshed before we walked back to our cars in front of Andrew's school.

The next day Steve had a conference call until 8:30 am so I went out exploring. It turns out that there is a Japanese / Buddhist temple in my backyard as well. I am guessing that it was built when during the Japanese occupation around WWII. Anyway I climbed up to the temple and it was built inside a cave and much more impressive than I had though. But it was early still so I decided to follow the trail and climb the face of the ridge that made the cave the temple was in. I had no problem climbing it was well overgrown so there were lots of plants with sturdy roots and trunks to use for climbing. At the top of th ridge I did some exploring but all roads seam to lead to the high switch grass. It is about 5 to 8 feet tall and it gets hard to walk through as vies grow in it and they tangle you up. But I was having fun exploring until I found my sell on the ground. It turns out that the grass had covered up a hole. But all of the grass was the same hight so I could not tell the hole was there. I fell in and hit my left knee on the side of the hole with my arms holding me up on either side, while my right leg dangled down not touch the bottom of the hole. Well I got home and Steve showed up, sure my knee was sore but it did not hurt that much, so off we went on the next hike. This hike was OK it was a lot more treaking through the grass so it was just OK. The next day my knee was killing me and I could barley move it so I have been hobbled ever since then. I was upset as I could not do the Cinco de Mayo hash which sounded great- I guess they went by one of the B29's that crashed on island during WWII. I am sad I missed it but I hope to be up and into the mix by next Saturday. I am hoping to be up and moving before so I want be a total dead weight on the next hash.

David