Daddy Daughter Day and South Side of the Island

        I went with my dad to a mall today because we were home alone while Benji and my mom were out scuba diving for the whole day. We searched the mall for things to do and they had a cold stone ice cream shop. We bought chocolate ice cream with pecans and marshmallows in it and it was quiet delicious. It was a little too sweet though so I stopped eating it after a while. Next, we went to Gamestop to look for Minecraft on the Xbox  so that Jordan and I and a bunch of our friends could play on it. We figured out that I had to download it from the Xbox to get it. I was kind of disappointed because I was really excited to get it. After that my dad and I went to a book store so that I could get a book to read.I found my book and almost finished it while we were in the store. But I saved the rest of it until I got home. It was a very fun day and I had a great time with my dad. Hopefully we will have another daddy daughter day!
        I went to the south side of the island this weekend to go look around and climb Mt. Lamlam http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/BeataUnke.shtml. They say that Mt. Lamlam is the tallest mountain in the world because some people say you are supposed to measure a mountain starting at the sea floor, and Mt. Lamlam is right next to the Marianas trench which is the deepest trench in the world. You can find out more about it on the website I highlighted in red. While we were going up, I saw a lot of markings for a celebration on Easter where they carry the cross up the mountain  making stops along the way at the 12 stations of the cross. There is a fern grotto along the way that is a shrine to the Virgin Mary, but we didn't stay long because there were a lot of mosquitoes and they were very annoying! The top of the mountain was amazing! There were a whole bunch of crosses and a bigger cross that was about 20-25ft tall! The wind was so strong that it almost blew us off the mountain.We could see the whole island from up there including where our condo is. After we got down from Mt. Lamlam, we went to go look around the south end of the island.

drinking coconut juice at the fort

       We stopped at Fort Soledad, a Spanish fort http://guampedia.com/fort-soledad/. It is the last of four Spanish forts in the village of Umatac. It was built there to protect the incoming trade ships from enemies in Umatac Bay. I got a coconut there with coconut milk in it and the milk tasted very odd. It was good in an odd sort of way, but I did drink a lot of it. If you want to find out more go to the website highlighted in blue. Finally we went to a German bar to get food, and the food there was really good! I got some chicken nuggets just because I wasn't all that hungry but everyone else got a bratwurst. it was kind of like a hot dog, but just with bratwurst instead of the hot dog. It tasted really good! It was definitely a fun day.

Top of Mt. Lamlam

South end of the island... really pretty!

Fort Soledad

                                        

Scuba Diving

Hafa Adai (Hello)

I (Benji) got certified to go scuba diving a few days ago. The certification process was kind of long and tiring but it was definitely worth the diving experience. We started out in a class room learning about all of the different aspects of diving. After 2 days of that we went to an area along a sea wall called “Outhouse Beach” (even though there was no beach, it was just a parking lot, but there were several outhouses) and spent a day learning how to put on our gear and do basic skills in the water. We were there from about 10am to 5pm so it was a tiring day. The next day we went back to the beach to finish our first skills, and then went to a small marina for our final diving skills. We all got on a boat and went to the edge of the harbor to where there was a sunken tanker. After spending some time briefing, we put on our gear and jumped in. From the surface you couldn’t see the bottom so we had to follow a rope down to a massive concrete boat called the “American Tanker”.  At the bottom there weren’t many fish but the wreck itself was really cool. After about 45 minutes we got back in the boat and went to our final destination called “Western Shoals”. At the shoals we mostly just swam around and looked at things. There were a ton of fish and we even got to touch the bottom of a sea anemone. The bottom of it doesn’t have the stingers so we didn’t get stung. I am very excited to go diving at some of the world famous diving spots on Guam such as the Fish Eye and Gun Beach. http://theguamguide.com/blog/12-best-dives-on-guam