The Suite Life

As a huge welcome, we are currently under TCOR 2 on Guam......tropical storm Bavi is heading our way and may or may not become a Typhoon. So we could be experiencing our first Typhoon!! Or at least the readiness for a Typhoon. TCOR stands for Typhoon Condition of Readiness with four levels. Level four means that there is no current threat but sustained winds up to 58 mph may occur within the next 72 hours.. Level three means you should stock up on water, non-perishable food items, batteries, gas, etc while you can still go out in town (off the base) and destructive winds may be coming in the next 48 hours. You are supposed to secure any outside items and prepare your household for power outage. TCOR 2 means that sustained winds may occur in the next 24 hours, fill bathtubs with water for flushing the toilet and other household usage. Turn the refrigerator temperature down to keep foods cold and sandbag the doors. They also have Typhoon shutters here on the island to protect windows. TCOR 1 means the storm has come!! Stay away from glass doors and windows, keep a battery operated radio nearby along with flashlights. DO NOT go outside!

 In spite of this oncoming storm, we went out yesterday to look at homes for rent in town. We may still be able to get into a house on base but we wanted to see what was available out in town. We met up with a realtor who took us around to see about six different houses in our price range. You definitely get more for your money out in town but the problem is that many of these houses were quite a ways from the base, so not super convenient for Carlton. Also, shopping on the base is much cheaper than in town, so it wouldn't be convenient for me either.

Just to give you an idea of what houses on Guam look like...here are a few that we saw.

Typhoon shutters

So we were in a small hotel room that was booked until March 17th and when we discovered that we wouldn't be getting into housing for awhile, we asked about extending our stay. When we asked on Thursday, the hotel was booked completely and they had no openings anywhere. So we were a little panicked about where we were going to be staying. However, the typhoon changed that. Yesterday when we asked again, they had a suite become available!! So now we are staying in a two room suite and we have it until April 4th! It is amazing how excited you can get about having a full sized refrigerator and a mini kitchen!! Our old room only had a microwave and a mini refrigerator, so to be able to actually cook something is fabulous!! :-)

The Gateway Inn also has a couple small houses available to rent that allow pets and we have been asking about that since we got here but they are still booked. So it is great that we are in the two room suite now, it is definitely a LOT more comfortable for us and nice to be able to cook rather than eat out every day. Unfortunately that means that Ms. Bubbles will be extending her stay at the boarding facility since the hotel does not accept pets. Maybe we will find housing before our stay in the hotel is up.....we hope anyway.

Right now our focus (after the Typhoon passes) is to find a vehicle! We are still using a rental vehicle which is supposed to be returned on Tuesday. It would definitely be better to have our own vehicle rather than continuing to pay for a rental but for some reason most vehicles here are priced about $1-2k above Kelly blue book! For instance we saw a 2003 Pontiac Vibe with 44,500 miles on it for $6995. Yes, it has low miles but it's still over ten years old! Seemed a tad high for us. So the search continues.