Three months on Guam!

I've just passed the three-month mark on Guam, and I'm still loving it here!  I know it's been a while since I last posted, and that's mainly because A) I am still super busy, and B) I am still super lazy.

What's been going on since early March?  Well, I experienced my first taste of storms in mid-March with Tropical Storm Bavi.  I am happy to report that I'm a bona fide survivalist and my emergency stockpile includes several flashlights, plentiful batteries, lots of canned food, chlorine tablets (for purifying water), siphons for gas, and more.  Everything a girl needs in the event of a disaster!

During TS Bavi my roommate brought home a dog from the shelter.  The local shelter GAIN (Guam Animals In Need) only has outdoor housing for dogs, which wasn't safe during the storm.  We got a dog named Flassie, as in "Fake Lassie" because she bore only the slightest resemblance to the famous dog.  Poor thing.

A photo posted by Ashton Abroad (@ashtonabroad) on Mar 14, 2015 at 3:36am PDT

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Flassie was a nice dog, but she shed like crazy and made some very weird noises.  My roommate took her back after the storm, and we thought that was the end of us having pets...

Until these wee kittens came along!

Cheeto on the left, Pepper on the right.

This little lady is Princess Leia.  She looked like Yoda but I couldn't name her that, so another Star Wars name had to do.

We found them abandoned on the side of the road near the Marine Lab.  I took them home, gave them baths, and mixed up some special kitten food.  A few days later I brought them to the vet to get them checked out.  Cheeto and Pepper were just over a pound, and Princess Leia was barely 0.7 pounds.  Other than worms, they were healthy--just starving!

Sleepy kittens at the vet.

I tried to keep them all in my bathtub, but soon they got too strong and were able to jump out.  I made a pen with large boxes, but eventually Cheeto was able to escape that too.  I found him in all sorts of weird places!

They loved to be close to people, and spent a lot of time sleeping on my feet and lap.

But alas, I couldn't keep the kittens either.  I made sure they were healthy and then took them to GAIN.  I hope they found good homes!


In other exciting news, I have been running one or two races every month.  There are lots and lots of 5K races here, sometimes multiple on the same weekend.  Last weekend I ran the 10K race at the Guam International Marathon, and I ended up placing 3rd in my age group and 14th overall.  I got a very cool medal!

Everybody gets a medal just for finishing.

My friend Diona ran the half-marathon!

This guy ran the 10K in a penguin costume!

I ended up with two medal--the bigger one has a spinny bit in the middle!

Up on stage, awkwardly getting acknowledged for placing.

I don't think I like 10Ks very much!  Too long.  I think I'll stick with 5Ks from now on!

In other active endeavors, I've been doing some hiking and exploring too.  Yesterday I got access to the Anderson Air Force Base up north to participate in a beach cleanup.  It was so beautiful up there!

Daaang!  That's a nice view.

The beach cleanup went well.  We had about 80 volunteers picking up everything from tiny pieces of plastic to mini-fridges and buoys that weighed more than me!

After the cleanup, a few local groups were around to show off their work.  A rescue group came with a live Ko'ko bird, also known as the Guam Rail.  The USDA came with a brown tree snake trap and a live snake!

Ko'ko bird!

I learned that there aren't any wild Guam Rails left on Guam, but a captive breeding program is trying to keep them from going extinct.  About 16 have been released on the tiny island south of Guam, Cocos Island.  Additionally, over 1000 have been released on the nearby island of Rota, of which about 100 are suspected to still be alive and roaming around.

This is an older bird.  He likes to get his neck scratched.

They have a lot of personality and are very trainable and quick learners.  Some of the older islanders say that the Ko'kos were kept as household pets and even slept on their pillows!

This one jumped up and tried to eat Victor's arm.

The USDA was there showing off their brown tree snake traps.  These traps are all over the place, but most often seen around airports, since there is a real concern about the snakes making their way to other islands by hiding out on planes.

Pretty basic!

The traps have a secret: a live mouse!  The mouse is kept in a small central chamber with a seed/nut patty and a potato, which is their water source.  The snakes smell the mice and crawl into the larger main chamber, but they are unable to escape.  Someone comes around to check on the mice and give them fresh potatoes regularly.

Not pictured: a live mouse.

The USDA also brought a live brown tree snake!  My friend Mike (in the striped shirt) has a very cool job as a brown tree snake researcher, and he is really good with handling the snakes.  The USDA folks let him pull out their snake and wrangle it for the rest of us!

Grabbing just behind the head seems to be key.

They're not bad-looking!

SNAKE SELFIE!

Mike and Diona, snake wrangling extraordinaires!

Little tongue sticking out!

Walking the snake!  I never mastered that yo-yo trick.

This is apparently a very large brown tree snake.  (And if you're wondering, yes, that IS
my Hello Kitty bag in the back.)

After the cleanup, I drove around checking out the views, taking photos, and getting Baskin Robbins from the only franchise on Guam.  Unfortunately I don't have base access so it's going to be a while before I get my BR fix again!

Driving down to the beach.

Just gorgeous!

I didn't take my car down there but I did walk, and I was rewarded with a fantastic beach!

Click to make this bigger!

There are lots of signs warning not to get into the water--the currents are very, very strong up here!

But just looking is nice enough!

And there were so many beautiful spiders!

I don't see orb weavers with red legs very often here!

Haven't seen this species before!  Very shiny.

That thing is about 5 inches long.

Seriously, isn't it shiny?

There's also a piece of an old B-52 Stratofortress on the base!  These planes were often called "Grey Ghosts" because of their weathered grey paint.  The plane was originally decommissioned in 1973 and this piece (the tail) was cut off for use in training exercises on the Anderson Air Force Base.  In 1976 a super typhoon blew it away, and it was rediscovered in 1997.  Now the base's Boy Scouts take care of it

And that's what I've been up to!  Stay tuned for more hikes, beaches, and hopefully my very own hand-caught brown tree snake!  (Don't worry mom--I'm friends with an expert!)

Cheers,
Ashton

Look who's finally settled in!

It's been a month and a half since my last post, and boy have I been busy!  Everything is going great and now that (most of) the initial frustrations of moving are over, I'm really starting to enjoy life here on Guam.

So what have I been up to these past six weeks?


MOVING

I finally moved into my apartment about two weeks ago and it's great!  My roommate and I live on the third (and top) floor of a big apartment complex just a few minutes away from the University of Guam campus.  A lot of the other Marine Lab students live here too.  I've got my own bathroom, a ton of closet space, and an oven.  What more could a girl need?  (A big fridge, that's what.  I'm working on convincing the apartment manager to get me a bigger one because, as I keep telling her, I really like to eat.)

Are there problems with the apartment?  Of course.  My blinds don't go down, our oven has no racks (although I recently stole some rusty old ones from the trash, I'm not proud of that but I really needed to bake stuff!), our stove is missing a drip pan, my showerhead was disgusting and my shower had used soap left in it (why???), and the floor... let's just say that I'm incredibly glad I have a steam mop because the tile floors were caked in a thick layer of what I sincerely hope was concrete dust.  It wouldn't budge until it got hot, and once it cooled and dried it was rock-hard again... I don't want to know what it is.  There is also a slight wasp infestation, but they're pretty docile and a lot better than cockroaches.

So overall, almost everything works and is good.  The place is pretty cheap ($725/month, split two ways) so I'm happy!

A few photos of my room:

My room!  It's pretty big.  There's no good spot for the bed though.

I have a LOT of closet space.  Good thing, too, because I have lots of clothes... that I mostly never wear.

Close up of the decorated bit!  Take a good luck 'cuz this is the cleanest it'll ever be.

My tea shrine.

This clock used to be boring white, but I used washi tape to make it prettier!  I knew I'd use that washi tape someday...

We've mostly got everything we need for the apartment, but we're still missing a few things--namely furniture.  We were lucky to get a kitchen table and chairs from a professor and a few small items from a former student, and we got cheap beds from a local place selling used hotel stuff, but that's all we have.  No couches, TVs, nada.  But who cares about furniture?  We've got beds and a fully-stocked kitchen, and that's all we need.  I was lucky to get to buy a lot of the basics on the Navy base, where everything is waaaaay cheaper.  Our kitchen color theme is orange.  I love it!

As for my room... well, I have a lot of stuff.  (My mom would probably use a less kind word that also starts with an 's' but this is a family-friendly blog, remember?)  I'm trying to keep the clutter down by using organizational tools.  I'm also trying to cut costs by doing some pinterest-style decorating.  I've been getting very crafty these past few days!


GARDENING

Everybody loves to create something, right?  Well I prefer to create things that I can eat.  Despite living on the third floor, I am determined to grow some vegetables.  We have a long balcony/walkway outside our apartment and I have already started planting.  Pots are terribly expensive for what you're getting, so I've started to get creative with my potting options.  I've been spray painting and drilling holes plastic containers, some of which I'm going to mount on the balcony.  

I've already planted zucchini and basil, and I've started seeds for squash, jalapenos, and snow peas.  I'm also planning to try watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumber, and bell peppers.  I'm hoping that if I share with my neighbors, they'll let me expand my apartment garden in front of their place too.  Fortunately my neighbors are all super nice--my good luck never seems to run out--so hopefully I'll be swimming in fresh, fantastic, free veggies very soon!



BUYING A CAR

I bought a car! My new (used) car is a 2003 Toyota Highlander, and I've named her Irma.  (If you don't understand why I named her Irma, then you're probably the type of person who doesn't name their car, am I right?)   It's been about a month since I got her and so far no serious problems, which is good.  I did have a brief problem last week with a window falling out of the track, but fortunately I got some help fixing it at the lab.  (Because while I know how to do some simple car repairs, I lack the brute strength to actually do the job.  Sometimes it actually does suck to be so small!)

Say hi to Irma!

I got a super excellent deal on her, too.  She's got 85,000 miles on her and her Kelley Blue Book value is almost $9000, but I paid just $5000.  Yay!

Why did I get such a crazy good deal?  Well, it's either very good luck or very bad luck, depending on how you want to see it.  I'm going to say good luck.  It's a pretty long story and a few people have already heard it so those people can just skip the next section.  But if this is new, read the whole story.  I promise it's worth it.


ALMOST KILLING A DUDE

To start off, everybody is fine, although I think the car salesman almost had a heart attack.

So here's the story: after some very ineffective attempts to get a car on Craigslist (everything was a scam!) I went to a used car dealership to see if they had any cheap cars.  I was looking for something under $5000 and cars are really expensive here, often going for twice as much as they would on the mainland.  (Jeeps and trucks are SUPER expensive--I've seen ones older than me selling for $6k-8k.)  I honestly didn't expect them to have anything in my price range because most of their cars were nice, new-looking ones $12k and over.

But lucky me, the dealership had two cars in my price range: a 2006 Toyota Camry, and a manual transmission 2005 Hyundai Santa Fe (like a small SUV).  The Camry was in really bad shape--it had broken mirrors, the driver window didn't work, no aircon, smelled funky, was missing some door handles, and had been in an accident--and those were just the problems I could see.

The Santa Fe looked great though!  The interior was very clean, the exterior had no rust, and the dealer told me that it was mechanically sound, but had just one problem: the hood hinges (the part where the hood connects to the car body) had rusted out, so they'd need to be replaced, but it wasn't urgent because the dealership people had been driving it with no problems.  I was with two other girls (other grad students at UoG) who were also looking but since I was the only one who could drive a stick shift, they weren't interested.  I told the dealer I'd come back the next day to test drive it.

By the way, I know car dealers are often really shady dudes.  But actually, all the used car dealership salesmen I spoke to here seemed like nice, honest people who straight-up told me when something was a piece of crap.  People on Guam are really nice, it's a lot like the midwest in that regard.

Anyway, I came back to test drive it and the salesman had pulled down a few more cars for me to test drive that weren't on the lot before.  One was another small SUV, newer but in worse condition.  The other car was a 2003 Toyota Highlander, another small SUV.  I took those two out first.  The newer SUV had some obvious transmission issues, so that was a definite no.  The Highlander had a price sticker of almost $13K, because I think used car dealers (even nice ones) are always trying to rope you into something more expensive, but I test drove it anyway.  It was really nice but out of my price range.

The white Santa Fe I wanted.  Looks pretty nice, right?

Then I took out the white Santa Fe I had come for.  We were doing about 40mph (I wanted to make sure it could go!) and about half a mile down the street when the hood flew off.  It looked like a sheet of paper flying away in the wind!  It didn't shake or lift up at all before that, but then it was just gone!  I looked behind me and saw that all the traffic on one side of the road had stopped but I was driving a stick shift so I had to pay attention.  We stopped and turned around, but the piece was already gone.  I assumed somebody had taken it.

We were both shaken--because a piece of metal that size flying around could easily kill somebody--and drove back to the dealership.  The dealer called a coworker to go find the piece and make sure nobody was hurt by it.  It turned out that it HAD hit a car, and the guy was shaken up because if he hadn't braked it would have gone right through his windshield and probably killed him.  The hood weighed about 70 pounds and flew off at 40mph--that's a pretty scary projectile.

But because this is Guam, the guy was somebody they knew!  Apparently it was their pest control guy.  The police came, but he agreed not to press charges and the dealership is gonna fix his car up nice.

A photo posted by Ashton Abroad (@ashtonabroad) on Feb 3, 2015 at 6:32am PST

Sans hood.

As for me?  I had to wait until after they were done dealing with the police (mainly I spent that time Snapchatting, haha!) but when he came back he said he'd sell me the Highlander (previously $13K) for $5K.  AMAZING.  Just to give you an idea of how great a deal that is, the Kelly Blue Book value on that exact car is $8600--and that price included all the government fees.  I think they lost money on that car, presumably in exchange for me not suing or telling people they were terrible.

Actually, I've been really happy with the dealership and I'd definitely recommend them to anyone looking for a used car.  I got very lucky!



SCHOOL

School is going well!  I'm taking four classes right now: cellular biology, marine botany, a scientific writing/literature course, and a one-credit seminar about statistical analysis.  None of my classes are easy but marine botany is significantly more difficult for me than the others--mostly because I know next to nothing about botany.  The last time I talked about plants was AP Biology in my junior year of high school, which was about nine years ago now.  (Holy crap, that makes me feel old!)

Anyway, marine botany is kicking my butt.  The focus of the class is algae, and my professor is a true algae aficionado.  I wish I knew as much about anything as he knows about algae.  Believe it or not, algae is actually pretty cool!  It's not just pond scum and that slimy stuff at the bottom of lakes.  Some of it is quite pretty, both in the water and under the microscope.

Algal reproductive structures!

Come on, that's pretty neat, right?

Look at that banding!

Neato!

It has spikes and looks like a claw!

I love microscopes.  Everything looks cooler under them.

This little guy was living in our algae!  Cute, ain't he?

But other than marine botany, everything is going smoothly.  I just took my first exam since undergrad and I think it went pretty well, so things are looking good!  Spring break is coming up soon and I plan to spend it exploring Guam, since I haven't been doing nearly enough exploring lately.



WORK

I have a job!  I just started this week and I'm very excited because it sounds like I'll be doing a lot of diving and building things--two of my favorite activities!

My job is being a student assistant on a research project on stony corals.  I went shopping for new dive gear (which sadly, I don't get to keep) a few days ago and I spent some time (okay, like 3 hours) at Home Depot today looking for materials to build sediment traps.  Honestly, Home Depot is one of my favorite places on Guam.  Just being inside makes me feel productive and self-sufficient.



BECOMING A GUAMANIAN

Guess who's got a Guam driver's license?  I do!  It was a pain in the butt to get and looks like a middle school ID card.  The laminate was placed wrong and is already peeling off.  To be honest, I miss carrying around my Michigan license, because it was a very pretty piece of plastic.



WEDDING

A few weeks ago I went home for a wedding!  I was a bridesmaid and the wedding was wonderful.  I also got to see most of my family, which was really nice because I probably won't see them again for quite a while.

Me and the beautiful bride!

I look good, right?  That's because there's approximately two inches of makeup caked onto my face.  Makeup is magic.

The bridal party!  What a bunch of lovely ladies!

RUNNING

Running on Guam requires waking up before the sun.  It's just so dang hot and humid!  Daytime running is a definite no-no, but even after the sun goes down it's still pretty hot.  The only good, enjoyable time to run is in the early morning.  Like, 6am early.  I've been managing to wake up a few times a week to run, and it's great because I feel like I've been super-productive by 8am!

There are a ton of 5k races here on Guam, and they're super cheap.  Most races back in Michigan were around $25, but here they're generally under $10.  I've done two races so far and I've signed up for two more.  One of the races was today!

Sweaty post-race selfie.

Team Marine Lab!  (Not a real team... yet.  I'm working on it.)

And that's pretty much everything I've been up to since the end of January!  Now that I'm less busy putting together my apartment, I should have more time to take nice photos and go to the beach.  (You'll notice that "going to the beach" was absent from my list of activities, because I haven't been to the beach in the past six weeks!  Noooo!)  

Till next time!

-Ashton