The Weekend - Spinner Dolphins and Snorkelling Victory

We've been here a little over three weeks now and loving it.  The days go by very fast, and the internet is slow, so I haven't been posting as often as I thought I would.  Our week, in the middle is pretty normal, almost like home, with homeschool in the morning, and maybe stretching into the afternoon.  We are working on finding some things to try to help Araya's health.  We will see how they work.  The weekends start to get quite exciting, as Rob has time off work, and other people are up for doing things too.

An old stone bridge, put in by the Spanish, hundreds of years ago, for their wagon cart roads.  This road went right by the sea, and was photographed while we were out in the boat.  There is at least one other bridge built by the Spanish on the island, located near the town of Agat.

This Sabbath we attended Agat church again.  I played the piano to help the two piano players in the church who take turns every week.  Araya played her violin for special music, and she played along with song service.  The sermon was good, about the need to value souls, and the efforts we should go for them.  We stayed for potluck.  They have potluck every week, which is a lovely time for people to get together with other Christians.  The locals and new believers need all the Christian fellowship they can get.  I brought some curry to go with the ever present rice, both white and brown were available.  I also used a big can of Dole Tropical Fruit to make a Coconut milk and tapioca fruit salad.  People loved that.  One man asked me how to make it.  He was really excited.  He didn't know what the yellow fruit was in the mix, pineapple.  But I don't know if pineapple grows here, and fruit isn't always easy to come by here.  It isn't like Thailand.  I would have used fresh fruit, but the only thing I have right now is some expensive Fuji apples from Washington.  Bananas for over $1 a pound, and tangerines with seeds.

In the afternoon we went over the the Jensen's and the Powers came too.  That meant there were three girls having a nice time, and three boys having an equally nice time.  And the adults had a nice relaxing afternoon.  We would have gone somewhere else, but Dr. Jensen was on call.  Then Mr. Powers had to be on call at the station about the time Dr. Jensen went off call, so we moved down island to their house for strawberry and mango smoothies.  Very Yummy.  It is always nice when the whole family is friends with another whole family, and in this case two wonderful families.

Sunday morning we got up and got ready to go out to sea!  Uncle Gordon invited us out on his boat to go see Spinner Dolphins.  He got on the radio where other boat drivers were communicating about where the dolphins (billbays) were.  Normally they are north of Agat, but Sunday they were almost down to Cocos island.  Tour boats loaded with Japanese tourists came and went while we were there.  And the dolphins were there and very active.  We started the fun game of trying to photograph them out of the water doing interesting things.  I took dozens of photos of what the water looked like after they got back into the water.  Oh well, I use digital photography now, and can delete like crazy also.  I did actually capture a few splendid out-of-water moves which will be our special memories for years to come.  You can't swim with this pod, because as soon as you get in, we are told that the pod takes off and moves somewhere else.  Likely their good memories remember what some stupid tourists did to them in the past, and they don't want that to happen again.  Auntie Kay said this was the most playful they have ever seen the dolphins, and that they had never gotten a good photo of them before.  As we were leaving a dolphin swam under water in front of our boat for a good ways.  Thank you, Mr. Dolphin and friends, we really enjoyed our visit.

I think this was the best photo of the day, a mother Spinner Dolphin, and her baby, captured by William, at Heavenly Light Photography, and his amazing Pentax camera

After that we went to a snorkeling area, just below the AWR towers.  We would have gone to another place that was better, because the tour boats sometimes feed the fish there, but the wind was coming up.  The AWR beach is more protected from the wind.  The boat was anchored in deep water and we could have swam in closer to the reef, but that didn't happen.  Araya was overcome with fear about the water, and it took some long convincing, and the help of Jesus to get her into the water.  You can read her story here.  She thought the water was cold, but if it was cold, what in the world was her mother doing in the water.  I didn't even gasp when I jumped in off the boat.  She somehow related this tropical water to the frigid water off the Oregon coast.  She forgot that she knew how to swim, and thought it would be too hard.  But once she got in, and once she relaxed, she realized that the water was her favorite color of blue.

The water was easy to float in.  It felt quite warm.  It really was fun.  She wasn't ready to leave the security of the boat, but I know she will next time.  We didn't really see the fish like I would like to see them, as it was quite a ways down to the coral.  But the fish were there.

 My favorite part of the trip was seeing my Red-headed Snorkel-puss out there having fun.

William enjoyed the great adventure, and the whole water experience.  He is always ready to go again.