Ah… tropical paradise. It’s hard traveling so many places, with so many things to see. Vacation should always include a bit of sitting on the beach and doing nothing. Ahh.

Josh and I arrived in Guam, and checked into our room at the Hilton Guam Resort. It is awesome. For the first time in our whole trip we had a soft bed. It was heavenly.

Guam is an American territory. I was expecting it to be similar to Hawaii, but it is very small. The total population on the island was less than 200,000. The driver who picked us up in the airport shuttle was giving us the down-low. They just got a Home Depot, which is the big thing on the island right now. He was in awe at how enormous it was. The other big thing on Guam is K-Mart. Now, in the States I hate going to K-Mart because they never have what you want and it’s always a mess inside. But Guam’s K-Mart, being the only large everything you need in life store, looks as classy as the best Walmart you have seen.

We were also expecting more of our food chains to make an appearance on the island, but there were not many. We ate at Chili’s and Lone Star Steakhouse and California Pizza Kitchen for the chains. Boy it tasted good after eating very different cuisine for a long time. I liked the Chinese food… but there’s nothing like what you’re used to.

The thing to do in Guam is go snorkeling or diving. Outside of our hotel, we could walk down to the beach and swim in an inlet. The whole area was a coral reef. It was incredible. I have never seen so many fish in my life. It was like swimming through a tropical fish tank. The water was crystal clear. I would do it all day long if my back didn’t become sunburnt or my snorkel keep leaking.

We did go exploring around the island a little bit. We saw some Japanese caves and bunkers that they used in WWII when they took Guam and were defending it against us retaking it.

We also went to a couple of movies… we saw UP, which was a great movie. I love good movies that haven’t been done before. We also went to see Star Trek again, and The Proposal, which I really liked and Josh even liked it!

On Sunday we visited a local church. It was a very nice service, and everyone was so friendly. It’s funny, in Guam when people met us and we told them that we weren’t military, they were so amazed that we came to Guam. I guess Americans never come to Guam for vacation… probably because it is just so far away from us.

In the case that you are visiting Guam on vacation though, I recommend that you not visit the Talofofo Falls. It is very overrated. They charged us $20 each to go in… and the waterfall was lame. We got to ride in their airlift, down to it. After trying to swim in the waterfall pool and getting grossed out, we went around to their Guam History Museum and the location of where the Japanese soldier Yokoi hid for 25 years, thinking that WWII was still going on.

That’s not the best part though. This amusement park had a haunted house too! We went through it, and it was very funny. There were lots of shrieking sounds and dummies that were doing gruesome things… all the regular skeletons and mad scientists and zombies. Good times.

There was also another interesting side area, right beside the children’s rides, called “Love Land”. We went into it and discovered that it was a garden full of erotic statues. Who makes a place like this?!? We left after that and wrote off that park forever.

Our hotel was located inside of a bay, and on the far side of the bay from us was a large cliff. The top of that cliff was called Two Lovers Point. As legend would have it, one of the girls of Guam was going to be forced to marry a Spanish sailor by her family, but she was in love with another buy in the community. They met on the cliff, and when her father and some sailors came to find them, they both jumped off the cliff together. Romeo and Juliet in Guam. There is a very nice lookout point there now, and Josh and I went up and watched the sun set. It was beautiful. There were a lot of absolutely gorgeous sunsets while we were there. Ahh paradise!

We weren’t the only Americans in Guam (other than locals), but most were military and their families. It has been fascinating to me that as we have traveled, we have come across other Americans. And they are all upset about our country’s direction. On our cruise we met some disgruntled people, traveling in Europe on trains I’ve heard some conversations between people, even in the jungle of Brazil, and in our hotel in Guam. It is amazing to me that before this past season very few people cared about politics and government, but now, it’s on everyone’s mind. I’m curious about how serious Americans might become about restoring our country to rights in one way or another. I pray that God will give President Obama great wisdom in leading our country, and that we will continue to be a peaceful country of justice and freedom.

Josh and I spent a lot of time snorkeling in Guam. We found another place, away from our hotel to try as well. It was much deeper, but still had a lot of fish to see. We even saw an octopus. I found him, and showed him to Josh. Josh was trying to get him to come out of his hole, so he dropped some rocks on him. In the end the octopus pulled out a big rock and blocked the doorway to his cave. No visitors allowed.

I loved my time in Guam and I would love to go back. It was so nice. The weather was gorgeous, and swimming was fabulous, and the food was delicious (we ate at some of the local places too… Italian and Indian… yummy). Ahh!

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