Tuesday was an unusually busy day for our house. We began the morning with a super sprint triathlon. My 7 year old did the whole thing: a 200 m swim, a 5 mile bike, and a 1.5 mile run. He is a bundle of energy and was determined to complete it, after trying the event once before and not quite going the whole distance. One of the wives has been organizing these practice triathlons for the past 9 months, and their popularity has grown from a group of about 8 or 10 participants to groups of 30+. It’s a form of fellowship I enjoy a lot more than going out to lunch or shopping, and it’s been a great morale builder for some of the ladies, I think. The lady who organizes these events does nothing more than send a message on Facebook and invite people. She measured the course and occasionally alters it because of construction or traffic on base, but for minimal effort, she has spread a lot of good cheer.
After a quick shower, we loaded up to head to the local university. It was celebrating its 60th anniversary with an open house and fiesta. I was sorry to forget my camera because there were multiple photo opps. The main quad was crowded with kids from area schools enjoying local music and dance performances and shopping at the booths for trinkets and food. Many of the college clubs had set up tents and were earning money with carnival games and crafts. The education department had a tent set up with sensory integration games. The nursing students had their medical dummies out on tables and demonstrated how to detect lung disease, how to insert an IV, and how to cleanse bedsores. Inside the science building, the biology students had a lab open house where they displayed some of their specimen oddities: a conjoined fetal pig, a 1000 lb sea turtle head, a large flash frozen brown tree snake, and various other bones, shells, and bodies in formaldehyde. One student was skinning a dead cat, and a few others were answering questions.
After admiring all of the dead things, we went up to the planetarium to cool down and relax. We were treated to a star show called “Chamorro Sky Legends.” After being antsy for a few minutes and asking questions, the kids finally settled in and enjoyed the slower pace of this program. My favorite line was from a story about an old fisherman who told his grandson that the sky was his television. They would seek falling stars and make up stories about the constellations.
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| From the Guam Division of Aquatic and Wildlife Resources website |
Our next stop was the agriculture department where the kids could admire one of the 40 or so surviving ko’ko birds, then study their predator, the brown tree snakes, and next watch rhinoceros beetle maggots decompose a piece of dead wood. From the botany department, I bought a couple bromeliads for 1/20 of the price at the plant store, and at the entomology department’s display, we identified some sphinx moths we had hatched from cocoons a week or so ago. We had thought their wings were deformed from forming a cocoon in a pickle jar, but it turns out they are naturally narrow-winged. Perhaps I should have known about sphinx moths from the years when my brother used to collect insects for 4-H competitions, but I had forgotten.
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| Sphinx moth hatching |
The kids were ready to go after all this learning, but we listened to the endangered plant guy give us a spiel. I couldn’t tell much difference between some of the species. Nor did I take a free ironwood tree, because I have several sprouting in the eaves. Finally we strolled past the only dairy cow I’ve seen on Guam and a couple carabao, before stopping for kettle corn. The kids discovered they still had energy to jump in bounce houses, but when I found out the book sale at the library had closed – unfortunately, I had saved that stop for last, knowing it could be a time-trap – I corralled them for the drive home.
It was well worth the break from the school books.
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