damn. we're going on our 4th week since the typhoon. only 37% of the island has power.

most of andersen is pretty much back to normal. we've had our power, water, cable, and phones for the last two weeks. navy has power too ... and south fin and nctms are running on generators ... better than nothing i guess. its hard to think that there's still so many people who dont have the "luxuries" yet, even after so long. its sad when we drive around. i mean, i get sad seeing the all trolleys and streets of Pleasure Island empty. ive never seen so many windows at the hotels boarded up with plywood or K-Mart's parking lot so deserted. how are you supposed to react when all the Galleria and the rest of the shops down in Tumon close at 6pm coz their generators can only run for so many hours, or seeing JFK look so much worse than you thought it ever could ... ? The FEMA and Red Cross lines are still long ... the DOE shelters have to be closed by the end of the week so teachers could prepare for their classrooms for the next semester. that leaves 1,000+ people homeless. its weird being able to see through the boonies because the trees are bare, and realize there was a house right there ... on hotter days, everyone's at the mall ... its not weird to see the National Guard acting as our street lights anymore ... or GPA trucks blocking lanes on marine drive. these are really tough times ...

Christmas this year was different. had all my christmas shopping done on time (yay) ... that was new ... the houses that everyone looks forward to seeing decorated weren't this year. i wonder how many trees the Academy chicks sold this year. we had a pre-holiday thing down at navy. my family hung out with ryan's for pretty much most of the day. it was weird at first but by the end, it was cool. *its nice to know they like each other!* ... our dads are tonghits buddies now! haha ... we went out to celebrate joy's birthday ... you know everyone's traditional Tony Roma's celebration. they had fried ice cream for the birthday dessert ... something different ... im going to order it everytime now. =) on christmas we went to church then chilled the whole day. my mom cooked a lot on christmas just for us. we had a little dinner with the family then exchanged gifts. very nice, very simple christmas this year. nothing big.

i cant wait till school starts. dont get me wrong. it sucks ass that we have to make up exams right away without a review ... but i miss my friends, and hell, even some teachers. i just want to go back to normal. this break was too long even if it is something most kids would dream of. the announcements have been up for weeks. dodea schools are ready to start on time. im still not sure where we're gonna have classes because our campus was hit really bad. we might have to share with the andersen middle school in morning and afternoon shifts. i dont know how thats gonna work but i hope we go back to our own campus. even if we dont have a gym anymore ... or even if most of the air cons blew away ... i miss school. tv is rotting my brain. most of the good channels dont work so ives found a new interest in HGTV (shuddup, i watch it with my mom), the FoodNetwork (the Iron Chef is so exciting!), and ESPN. me and joy will stay up late into the night just to catch Sports Center's Top 10 even if it replays like 5 times a day. football is cool to watch only if its the highlights or not highlights. CNN's Music Room is cool. I finally found out that Norah Jones sings that song (duh) and Coldplay has the best album of the year. (see, useless facts, rotting my mind). MTV won't stop playing Christina Aguilara's yucky Beautiful video ... i wished the library would open so i could sit there all day reading ... i gotta reverse it somehow ... oh yeah a letter from the Director of Admissions at Seattle University wrote me about the typhoon ... see, he was here the weekend of the typhoon and was supposed to come to GHS for one on one interviews but that was obviously cancelled. he wrote me saying that we felt for the people of Guam because he got witness first hand the results of the storm. he sent me applications and FAFSA forms and waived all application fees and possible tuition fees if i could write an essay explaining my experience with Pongsana. i told my mom about it and she was encouraging me to take the opportunity. thats the school my parents wanted me to go to at first because it was gonna be on the west side, the place where we supposed to move. but they later changed their minds after finding out that we'd be moving to Florida. they want me to go to school near them now ... i could tell there was some sadness(?) in her voice when she was telling me to go for it ... she said it was all the way on the other side and that i'd be so far away ... it was cool when she was telling me to just try ...

so thats pretty much whats been up. i got to see a lot more of ryan that we both thought we would this break. if im not at home on the phone, im at work trying to supress that boredom. its ok at times. i get to see people at least. and once in a while, i'll go to the mall ... but thats on rare occassions ... mall rats *shudders* ... i saw the Two Towers, which by the way is so worth sitting through 3 hours. i saw the second one before the first (coz im a dork) and i went out and rented the first one and now im like an addict. i convinced my mom to get CJ the first one as a Christmas gift ... haha ... and now i have it memorized (yes, I AM A DORK) ... i could go on and on about it when someone brings it up ... LEGOLAS, he's cool =) i might even read the last book because i cant wait until the next movie comes out next year ... haha. Other than that there's nothing much to do at home. I dont even want to try out the new PS2 joy got coz anything after N64 became intimidating to me ... plus the dizziness gets to my head and on top of all that, when joy and cj get a little too into the games, they start making weird noises and cj makes up his own words. ive had a lot of time to play piano though. i learned how to play a buncha new songs to add to my repertoir (haha) ... Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do) by Christopher Cross, One Moment In Time by Whitney Houston, It Might Be You by Stephen Bishop, Beautiful Girl by Jose Mari Chan, Imagine by John Lennon, Till There Was You by The Beattles, If We Hold On Together by Diana Ross, Superman by Five For Fighting, All or Nothing by everyone's favorite, Otown, Crazy For You by Madonna, and Ikaw Pa Rin by Ted Ito. I learned most of them from translating guitar tabs ... that way, joy could play it on the guitar as a duet ... she learned way more songs than i did ...

i wonder how everyone is doing ... the new year is in two days ... hope everyone has a blast! miss you all!

HAPPY 15th BiRFDAY (tomorrow) JOY!

GUAM DEVASTATED BY TYPHOON

i gotta make this as quick as i can. im on the internet at my dad's work.

Super Typhoon Pongsana hit guam on December 8/9. its really bad guys. the powers been knocked out since (that would be 10 days today). our school was hit really bad. theres no more gym! haha ... but thats possibly means that theres no more sports for the rest of the year ... anways ... we wont be back in school till the 7th of January ... if we're lucky ... it depends on how fast nimitz gets power. Andersen will be among the first places to get power first. if that happenes, we might double shift at the elementary/middle school ... the elementary and middle school have morning classes and the high school gets the afternoon sessions ... there was a tempoarary halt on gasoline sales to the public coz the typhoon caused the Cabras Fuel farms to cath fire and whatever gas there was left at the gas stastions were used only for emergency vehicles. no one could get to work so they started bus routes that took people to work. they even have bus routes on base now. they just opened the gas stations today but are rationing the gas. the lines are long ... the yigo mobile gas station line has reached Andersen's main gate. phones in the north are out because GTA's generator that powers andersen, dededo, and yigo blew away. All 10,000 or so tourist were immediately evacuated as soon as the airport opened three days after the storm was here because even they had to recover from damages. Almost any building that had glass doors were blown in ... right now we'd all be wishing we were at a hotel but i think they suffered more. Most of the windows at the Outrigger and The Royal Orchid were blown in. this typhoon could not have hit guam at a worse time. to everyone else out there, pray for us ... its gonna be a dark christmas for most of us here in guam.

for more information, please check out the PDN.

Lisa, sorry i havent been able to contact you. our phones our down and yeah ... miss you so much ... we wish we were there! =)

in case i dont get a chance to say it, Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year!

The new layout is finally up.

For more info go here.

Did i mention tryouts were this week? i really didnt have time to make it to the practice sessions ... the one where you learn the tryout cheer, then group cheer, then working on jumps. i pretty much learned the routine 5 minutes before it was my turn in front of the judges. The tryout itself was easy. I don't know why but I wasn't worried at all. I went into the room pretty confident. I started with jumps ... I was scared at first coz you were required to do three consecutive and I really wasn't used to not preping for each jump ... but it came naturally ... i don't even remember which three jumps I did. Then we had to do gymnastics - er, if you could call a cartwheel and roundoff "gymnastics" ... then the splits ... then the cheer. That went by smoothly. I think I did the highest toe touch in my life! haha ... after that jump i was so surprised that i almost forgot the rest of the cheer. after the cheer i thought i was done but all of a sudden they spring a surprise on me and turn the tryout into some pageant where they score you on how well you answer a question. I swear thats how I felt - like a contestant in a beauty pageant. i was about to answer "WORLD PEACE" ... haha ... even though the question was no where near that subject ... so after the individual tryouts were done, we had group tryouts. I jumped in with ashley's group last minute to do the Hey You cheer. easy peazy ... the other girls in my group made me call it coz they were all shy ... next day we saw the list. I totally forgot about it until Danielle reminded me. I made the All-Star Varsity squad (?) which is the competition squad. i think its cool how this year we have three squads ... that way we won't have to be at both the JV and Varsity games ... which means more time ... for ... HOMEWORK ... haha ...

yeah so i guess that was the biggest thing for me this week. nothing much. oh yeah. im sick. and really sore. maybe from all that jumping? i know my face hurts from all that smiling ... and perkiness ... *ouch* ... Next week is our first Spirit Week. About damn time. hope people can just deal with it instead of complaining about how dumb they think the themes are ...

theres supposed to be this big typhoon thats gonna hit today or tomorrow. the skies dont seem that bad actually. i doubt its gonna be bad. yeah. its not. i called my mom yesterday to tell her how things were back home. it was funny how even though she was miles and miles away, she was freaking out and telling me how to get ready for the storm ... batteries, full blast the freezer, make sure you have candles ... blah blah blah ... its even funnier to know that i miss that about her ... the nagging and constant (obvious) reminders. the best thing about her being away though, is that i get to stay on the phone as long as i want! haha ...

its only been two days since my mom left. now im super sick ... i miss her.

its weird just having my dad around. he tries so hard to make up for us not having our mom ... its funny seeing him get dinner planned out in the morning. gotta love him for that. then in the afternoon, he makes us show him our homework if we're just sitting around doing nothing. he hasnt done that (to me) since i was like 8 or something. this morning he woke up at 2 and was panicking to get us up coz he thought we were late. joy was so pissed off for having to open our door when he kept knocking. she was like, dammit, its only 2! then i heard my dad laugh and the door to his room shut ...

i have a really bad cold ... from ... haha ... and last night i went to bed with wet hair. whenever i do that, i get this terrible headache. now i have one and on top of that, i think my neck went stiff somewhere between 2 and 5.

so now im sitting here like 15 minutes early ... im hooked on RED BULL ... haha ... took a sip from the can joy was drinking last night ... i was hyper all afternoon yesterday ... oh well, it helped me out during tryouts ... by the way, we find out which squad we made today. three squads for the school is gonna be awesome ... i found another can of RED BULL ... yay ... contemplating whether or not i should bring it to school ... ok i will.

i have the new layout pretty much done ... finally ... its just a matter of whether or not i'll be motivated enough after school ... ok we'll see what happens ... Blogger is having some issues with its template server so i cant get the new layout up. =( its sad too coz i was ready to get it up ... maybe in another few days. oh well ...

just checking in ... loveyoo all!

Every night of this four day weekend consisted of me getting home at 12 ... then being at work by 10 in the morning ... barely enough time to sleep ...

TURKEY DAY ... probably my most relaxed day ... or so i thought. i still had to get up coz Thanksgiving mass was at 10 ... right after that, we went to the Westin for their Thanksgiving brunch thingie ... ate so much that we had to sit around for an extra hour trying to recover from the bulging stomache thing. it was already late in the afternoon by the time we left for home. Its weird. Usually we have hella family around to celebrate with. In the past year alone, all of our closest relatives moved ... its very different not spending the holidays with the cousins. we just had a little barbeque with the fam and a few friends that night.

FRiDAY ... i woke up early (again) coz i was supposed to demo for some Ralph Lauren frangrance but later learned it was postponed. so i killed time by cleaning the entire house. i was so proud of myself ... haha ... but in a household of five plus a dog with all the energy in the world, the clean never seems to last. *sigh* ... we were planning on going to the Dance Festival but my dada and cj were having a "boys night out" with my uncle Keiko and his boy jon. me and joy wanted to go to get out of the house but we were bought off with $40 bucks each to stay ... we're suckers ... my mom had the car and she was running late from work. when she came home, she didnt want to go to Tumon without my dad and cj ... so ryan picked me up and i watched his game down at the school. we were gonna go to tumon after but it rained ... plus there was a chance we'd have the house to ourselves ... we ended up hanging out at Tinian. sounds lame but it was lotsa fun ... =) got home at exactly 12 and kocked out ... never gonna forget it

SATURDAY ... went to work at 10 ... got done around 3 but i had to go with my parents to get the car checked ... we went to get joy and cj right after that and then went straight to church ... after that i wanted to go home and sleep or do homework that i have done all weekend ... but they wouldnt let me stay home ... they dragged me to a sweet sixteen ... someone's i didnt even kow but there was hella navy people there ... including ryan's family. ryan had the same idea i had ... to stay home ... but when my mom started putting this guilt trip on me about how i'd leave the house in a second if i was going out with ryan but when it comes to going out with the family, i have to rethink things ... so i went to make her happy. it was cool talking to Eli ... it was weird hearing her and joy talk about us ... haha ... jen was there too ... havent seen here in a while. joanne was supposed to be there ... the party would have been so much cooler if you did you skipper! =) ... chilled with lorianne, lalaine, the twins, and eli ... that was cool ... i felt like a little girl again ... haha ... just when the party was getting cool (they whipped out the cards and we were just about to get a game of BS on) we had to go. said bye to ryan's mom ... dragged my dad away from his tonghits(?) game ... and went home ... got on the phone with ryan ... we stayed on pretty late again till someone tried to connect the line ...

TODAY ... i cant believe its december already. tehy've got the shopping days countdown all over the radio ... man i miss white christmases ... we've pretty much sold all our christmas decorations. we're packing out soon and we got a head start on getting rid of junk last month ... that included all of our lights, our outdoor novena set, the little light up snowman & santa, and *GASP* the tree ... the biggest party of the year that we throw and we're not even gonna celebrate this year ... sad man ... i feel bad too for joy a Christmas Eve baby, because our tranfer times seems to always be around her birthday slash christmas ... i just realized how ironic everything about her is ... her nickname is "joy" yet she's everything but that term ... she was born around one of the most happiest times of the year yet if you ask her what her favorite color is, she'd tell you its black ... like her soul ... in the most sarcastic voice she has of course ... yeah she's weird ... but maybe thats why i get along with her so well ... she's my alter ego ... and i love her! nyah! =)anyways ... had to work all day again. saw hella people shopping ... played with cristianne's little sister ... that girl is so friggin cute! then i came home and sheila was there ... she had been there for two hours already coz she was suspended at work ... haha ... something about taking an hour and half break ... to the mall ... something i hear about jenna too ... haha ... you guys will have to explain! =) so yeah she's taking a nap in cj's room and will be here till 6 or 7 tonight ... that dork ... she doesnt want to go home yet coz her parents still dont know. im supposed to go practice but i have homework ... man ... what a stressful weekend ...

my mom's leaving wednesday for the PI ... she woulda took us but school and blah ... i miss that place. i wanna visit my great gramma ... she can still play basketball ... plus i miss acting up and getting scolded in full out filipino style! haha ... then being offered food food and more food ... geeze ... a whole week of my dad's cooking ... there goes that weight ive been gaining ... ok well i better get started on that stuff i said i needed to do ...

Hi Lisa, Rembow, Jenna, Shaya ... HAPPY BELATED THANKSGiViNG! Tell your mama's i said that too =)

oh yeah ... iVEY iS 17! hehehe =) HAPPY BELATED SWEET 17th iVEY!