Yesterday we went on a little hike through the jungle to a place called "Old Man by the Sea." It was quite the adventure through the steep terrain and mud. As the group was going down the hill I thought I would take a little short cut, and that I did. I ended up sliding all the way down the muddy hill past everyone. I must say though it was a lot faster than the other way.
When we got down to the beach we knew we had reached our destination because there in all its glory sat the big bolder that looked like an old man… hints the name "Old Man by the Sea."

Alex wanted to be sure our food would not
blow away!















How we left the house!















The worst of the storm that we saw

Typhoon Warnings

Last week was quite the adventure! On Friday we were told that a big typhoon was to be hitting Saipan Early Saturday morning and evening. At the end of the day on Friday we had to take everything in the school and move it up at least 2 feet just in case it flooded. Our school is very close to the beach so it would have been very likely that our school would have been flood if the typhoon was as bad as expected. The storm was set as a category 4 but was slowly moving into a category 5. For those of you who don’t know what that means (believe me I had no idea until I heard we had typhoons here), a category 4 is max wind speeds of 135-155 miles per hr and a category 5 is considered a super typhoon which has max winds or 156 or greater. Just a little info to help you understand the size of the typhoon. Well anyways after we picked up the school we had to go home and pack up anything and everything that was "valuable" to us. When they told us this we just laughed because pretty much everything that we had brought was valuable to us, in that if we didn’t take out most everything we brought then we would have absolutely nothing and people in Saipan would end up seeing 5 naked white girls because our clothes would have gotten blown away.
Our house that we are staying in was not safe enough enough at the time for the winds that were to come so we had to go stay at a different compound. It took us a bit but we quickly packed up our clothes and food and moved out for the weekend.
On Saturday when we woke up there wasn’t really any wind or rain so a few of us got ready and went to church. When we arrived at the church we were informed that the typhoon looked like it was heading north and might actually miss us. As we continued to wait for the storm to pass, we were then informed that the police were going door to door and telling people that there was a tsunami warning and to go up to higher ground just in case. So yet again we had to pack up our things and head to another house that was up on Capital hill. The storm ended up just barely missing us thanks to all the prayers. We are now unpacked and safe in our house again. Very little damage was done.