Chinatguinife yan Guinife
A series of storms are currently surrounding Guam.When I was younger, I would pray for typhoons, since it would mean no school (although no power and cable too). As a professor at the University of Guam, I pray for typhoons since, there would be no classes to teach, no power (internet, video games) to distract me and then I can finally catch up on my grading.
I dreamed all day of coming home and finding that classes at UOG were cancelled tomorrow, but after logging on to the UOG website this evening, I found that there were indeed classes tomorrow.
Lana, I just went back to the website to see if anything had changed in the past hour, but it hadn't. I guess that means I'll need to stay up a few more hours finishing my prep for my four classes tomorrow.
Nina'hasso yu' ni' i mubin Equilibrium. Gi ayu na mubi, un petsona ilek-ña este: Manmahafye i guinife-hu gi sanpappa’ i patås-mu. Adahi månu un pokkat, sa’ hu gagacha i guinife-hu siha.
But just as one silly dream fades away, another impossibly silly one emerges.
On my computer I have the ability to track through the website Statcounter the visitors to my blog, and in some cases the searches on Google or Yahoo that brought them here. Too often, I feel as if no one ever reads this blog and that everything I do here is pointless, and the only people who actually visit my blog regularly are my students at UOG who are cluelessly attempting to plagiarize me in order to write up their papers for my classes.
But one of the searches today that I saw today, which led someone to this blog, was something that I created on this blog, but which I never imagined anyone would actually search for on the internet. In my mind it was so crazy and impossible, that I couldn't help but laugh and be filled with curious pride when I saw it.
Apparently earlier today, someone in Indonesia went on Google and typed in the following phrase "Sakigake Chamorro" and was (of course) directed to this blog. For those of you who don't know what the phrase means, Chamorro is the language of the indigenous people of the Marianas Islands, and Sakigake is a Japanese word meaning to move forward or push ahead. Last year I started a feature on this blog called "Sakigake Chamorro" where I would take a song from an anime and then translate it, or be inspired by it to write a simialr song in Chamorro. I'm pretty sure the only other era in which this phrase would even be possible would in the pre-World War II Northern Marianas Islands, or perhaps as a strange abusive cry uttered by the Japanese during World War II when they occupied Guam.
I have no idea why someone in Indonesia is searching for Sakigake Chamorro on the internet, perhaps they just spelled a word or two wrong and they were in fact looking for Wakigake Vhamorro. Hekkua' dei.
But, after losing my smile at the prospect of teaching tomorrow (ai adai, I should be preparing right now instead of writing on my blog), the knowledge that someone in Indoensia might be actually following something that I enjoy putting time and effort into, has put the smile right back there.
We'll see, if another hour of prepping for a Guam History lecture on 19th century Spanish colonialism, can get rid of it though.
Mames na guinife siha yan buenas noches. Adahi todus hamyo gi este na mamaila na pakyo'.
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