Well, that was a day! And that was only Friday! There are two more days in the weekend.

This morning I went up to the house in Santa Rita to sign the lease and take delivery on the new refrigerator. I got there about 8:00 AM. I wandered around the house looking things over while I waited for the realtor. The spider was still in her web and I got a good picture of her underside. The other side would have been photographing into a bright light. I couldn't get a clear shot of her top side.

When the realtor got there we signed the lease and she turned over the key. I set out to explore my new abode.

The place is filthy to start with. Plus it's been closed up for quite a while in a hot humid climate so the wood is sticky and there is a lot of mold. But the air conditioners work and the place cooled down quickly. I pulled the typhoon shutters of the front window and set a canvas chair in the living room so I could wait for the delivery. And I wandered around cataloging the damage and needs of the place. The realtor had arranged to have the vegetation cut and the whole yard was open and clear. The back yard has a small area by the back door, a small retaining wall and then the rest of the yard at a lower level. I couldn't see it before because of the growth back there. But there's enough room to store a pretty good size boat….

The refrigerator arrived about 10:30. The crew unloaded it, unpacked it and set it in place. It just barely fits in the space allotted for it. But it is the first thing in my new place. Pretty exciting.

After that I went into work for a little while but the afternoon was set aside for a farewell fiesta for our Captain at Rizal Beach. There was a long table of food under the concrete canopy with chairs and lots of people. A deejay was spinning tunes and kids were running around. Today was the first day in a long week where the clouds finally cleared off and the sun shone. The trades kept the shade cool and the food was wonderful. There were three kinds of barbeque and lots of other goodies. My usual Chamorro guides weren't right there and I wasn't very hungry so I didn't have much more than the barbeque. Yummy!

Then, after the speeches, we had the entertainment and boy, was it good stuff. They had hired a cultural dance group to dance for us. They were children from what looked like 8 to 10 years old to mid teens. The first dance was a traditional Hawaiian dance. The kids were in white lace dresses. They danced to a drummer who chanted and played a traditional Hawaiian drum, essentially a pair of gourds, hollow on one end. He played it by slapping on the drum and bouncing the drum on a pad on the floor.

The kids followed that up with a modern dance to a recorded song in Chamorro. The song was "I Don't Want To Speak English". They wore a brightly colored flowered skirts and coconut shells for their tops. They danced with the sinuous movements of the island dancers, hips swaying and hands weaving a story in line with the music.

Now, I'd like to remind those who focused on "…coconut shells for their tops…" and remind you that these are just kids. Some of them were built like sticks and others were, uh, blessed with positive buoyancy. They were all certainly good dancers.

The next dance featured the whole troupe. The younger kids wore short white skirts and the older kids wore black ones. Essentially they wore only the skirts and the coconut tops. I realized how the old sailors arriving at the islands seeing the women dressed like this would have been amazed and overcome by their lust. I'm pretty sure the coconut tops were modern concessions to the uptight Europeans.

The kids ended up the performance with a long Tahitian dance. The drummers played on modern and traditional drums keeping up a driving rhythm that the kids matched with the movements of their hips, feet and hands. They formed intricate patterns by their movements, kneeling and crouching rising and shifting into circles and lines. Then they went into the watching crowd and returned with various young officers who they tried to teach to dance. They also picked on the guest of honor, the captain were saying farewell to. As with most of us Europeans the young men were pretty stiff in their dancing. We hooted and hollered as the men tried to imitate the movements the kids were going through. Finally we chose the captain as the "winner" of the "competition".

After the dancing I went back to talk with the leader of the group, Brian Terlaje. He explained how exciting it is to get the kids dancing the old dances. He showed me his drum and explained it's significance in the old days. The early Hawaiians made it using only one gourd. With modern glues they have added a second gourd to increase the resonant chamber. In drumming competitions the winner is awarded leis that he places in the drum. He talked about a drumming competition where he sat before a semi circle of drumming masters and performed on his drum. He was very nervous but he won a new drum.

After that I wandered out to the point. We were at Rizal Beach but it was high tide so there was little if any actual beach. The pavilion sits up above the beach. I walked out onto the point and watched the waves crashing on a small island as the sun sank into the Pacific. There is a typhoon churning it's way into Okinawa so the waves are pretty big coming ashore on the western side of the island. With the sun sinking and the spray shining white it was a pretty impressive sight. I was looking down the length of the shore with the mountains rising up from the sea. This is a beautiful place.