This one's for you, Dad

I guess all of the rain stirred up the jungles yesterday, because crossing the street by my condo was a BIG LONG BROWN TREE SNAKE! Someone ran it over, because parts of it were squished, but I got my roommate Laura to come out with me to take pictures of it. I didn't think I'd end up in the picture.

The brown tree snake has been a topic of conversation in my group of friends and family back home for quite some time. Research on it led me to finding PIU last year, and I my Dad asks me if I've seen one every time I get a chance to talk to him. I am super excited about this little guy...I hope I get to see more!

Storm Update

We are waiting to see if the bigger of the two storms will be coming our way by Saturday. Yesterday could have been a huge mess, but by mid afternoon we were enjoying the sunshine. I think so many people prayed for Guam that God calmed our storm down.

Just to give you an idea of what they were expecting, all schools including colleges, government jobs, and even the post office shut down for the day. It was weird to go into a normal day after the craziness of the morning. Please look at Dave Owen's blog for more info in the storm and better pictures than what I have.

Pray for Guam!

We're having, or are about to have, a tropical storm of some kind of magnitude that is not really known to us yet. This is a picture that I took from my car of the entrance to PIU. The brown to the right of the road should be green, but the grounds are flooding. The roads are bad, too. There's a lot of activity over the ocean and surrounding islands that may or may not move this way. At this point, I'm praying for protection and for the storm to pass over quickly. Please pray for our students and faculty, as well as the island and surrounding islands. I'll update you soon.

By the way, if you were connected to my blog through Sandals church or elsewhere, I'd love to know you so I can pray for you and send you updates from Guam. Please email me at Jen.Rydzik@gmail.com

Cave Exploring

My friend Melissa (the Dean of Women here at PIU) and I went to explore this cave with fresh water, Marbo. It happens to be up the street I live off of and down a hill/boulevard with a bunch of palm trees and a coral quarry. I followed Melissa in jumping off a rock in the dark into about twenty feet of water. I can't wait to go back and do it again, plus, I get to explore more caves this weekend.

The students in the Study Skills class I teach are awesome. They filled out and shared some mad libs last week. It was a nice change of pace. This is one of the rooms I get to teach in, too. I love being at PIU.

island adventures

You know you wanna get in there



Cave paintings


This is the painted Jeff, the real one was cool and kinda smelly



I've been having some great adventures lately. Joyce teased me with a bunch of places that we couldn't go into (umm...watery glorious pools, to be exact) today and I am dying to go back and take full advantage of all the things we saw. Today, we went to Jeff's Pirate's Cove, got an amazing mahi mahi sandwich, sat by the beach, took a picture with Jeff (who looks like a pirate), explored a cave, got some shells, AND managed to find 6 GREAT items at a thrift store...all thanks to Joyce Owen. Last weekend, some of the PIU ladies and I went snorkeling. I wish I was doing something outdoors-ish this weekend, but my schedule is pretty booked. I can't wait to really explore and get to know everything Guam has to offer!

I am licensed

Yep....I stood in line, paid my dues, and took a picture...which was all transformed into an actual license that I got to take home with me in minutes. They make the faces too big...but then again maybe I just have a big face...?