Planting Flame Trees With Kanagawa Truckers Association of Japan

Our friends from Isa CNMI, led by Aya-san Matsumoto and Horiguchi-san, led some members of the Kanagawa Truckers Association of Japan to this afternoon's flame tree planting at American Memorial Park. Beautify CNMI's Cinta Kaipat, Angelo Villagomez, Gus Kaipat, and the Kaipat boys (Marvin, AJ, Jun, and Dusty) along with my other nephew Peter Angui, joined the group. Brad Doerr of MINA was also there and brought the flame trees that were planted.

The flame trees that Herminia Fuscho donated, which had been growing under the Ylang Ylang tree at my Mom's house were loaded into the Beautify CNMI! trailer that Gus and the boys hauled to American Memorial Park. The rest of the flame trees will be planted as soon as the Park staff decide the most appropriate places to plant them. Ranger Nancy is off island, so we got to meet Ranger Rianna (I hope I spelled her name right). I was going to shake her hand when I introduced myself, until I saw how muddy her hand was (you'll see it in the slideshow), so...never mind. :) Anyway, thank you, good folks at American Memorial Park and Park Rangers Nancy and Rianna!

The Kanagawa Group makes a living driving trucks. It is remarkable and commendable that they came to Saipan to plant trees to do their part to help reduce the carbon footprint we humans have left on Earth. Thank you SO much! Arigato gozaimasu!

The Beautify CNMI "Beauty Virus" Is Alive And Well

Thanks to Aya-san and Willy-san of Isa CNMI for keeping the Beautify CNMI "Beauty Virus" alive and well!

Gus and I got our niece and nephews together and headed up to the Last Command Post in Marpi, Saipan, this bright Sunday morning for a cleanup with Isa CNMI and 200 visitors from Japan. They are members of the Nenpoushinkyou group in Japan. They say they have 800,000 members. WOW!

I put together this slide show of the day's events. The first 100 or so pictures were taken of the cleanup.

The last pictures are of the first blooming flame tree of the group we planted on lower Dandan Road (the road leading up to Dandan from the Welcome/Adios Sign). We planted these trees last year, and now one of them is already blooming!

The last pictures are of the road sign on Tun Kiyoshi Road.

Thanks to everyone who pitched in to help. Isa CNMI's Aya-san and Willy-san Matsumoto led the effort with Beautify CNMI and her coalition partners MVA, PDI, Tasi Tours, RC&D, PEW, and community members. In addition to Gus and I and our niece Sheena Saures and nephews Peter Saures, Franklin, Josiah and Jun Lizama, other community members who were there included Juanita Fajardo and her niece Breana and nephew Vince.

Once, again, thanks to everyone for a fine job! Arigato-gozaimasu!

Marpi Cleanup

This morning Isa CNMI and other Beautify CNMI volunteers cleaned up several of the Japanese memorials in Marpi with MVA, some of the Japanese tour companies, and over 200 Japanese tourists. Go us!

Beautifying With Nihon University

Aya-san and Willy-san Matsumoto invited me and other Beautify CNMI! partners to join Isa-CNMI and Nihon University students in a beach cleanup at Aquarius Beach Hotel. I was there with my staff, Dennis Cabrera, Angelo Villagomez of RC&D and MINA, and FMI President Marites Castillo at 7 a.m.
We armed ourselves with gloves and trash bags and fanned out.
Honda-san (far right) of ISA-CNMI leads a group.
And everyone was off and running.
The group made their way towards the Sugar Dock and then looped around.
We ended up right back where we started. We had a short presentation of gifts.
Aya-san, who is a board member of MINA, presents the group with a MINA t-shirt.
Marites and I presented them with a Beautify CNMI t-shirt.
I presented them with a Beautify CNMI! bag.
And then we took the obligatory group shot and shouted -- 1, 2, 3 -- Beautify CNMI!
There was also time for one last photo. Aya-san Matusumoto, Sensei Koshiro, me, and Marites.

Arigato Gozaimasu! Si Yu'us Ma'ase! Olomwaay! Thank You!

I left the beach at 8:10 and rushed home to get ready for my meeting with the SWAT team who is looking at overhauling our entire workfrorce training system. The meeting started at 9 a.m.

I arrived there about 9:10, just in time for the slide presentation of HB 15-38, my labor reform bill. The presentation went well; it was well received.

Then I had to leave at 11:15 to head up to the Hachiman Jinja for a luncheon meeting. The Nihon University students met us there, as seen in the photos below.

Rep. Cinta Kaipat
www.cnmiblog.com

Lighthouse Gets Face Lift

Today was a good day. I got to see a bunch of my Beautify family members, some of whom I haven't seen in weeks. We got together to paint over the graffiti on the old lighthouse on Navy Hill. Click here for Angelo's excellent "before" and "after" shots which show some dramatic improvements.

Also click here for Aya-san's excellent post detailing some of the actions that had gone on today.

Bree and Doug Reynolds were there. . .














. . .as were some Student Action for a Viable Environment (SAVE) Club members like Ann, Zoe, Yoshi, et al. This is like a jr. Beautify CNMI! Club. Way to Go Guys!
It was nice to see and joke around with some of the leaders and supervolunteers of Beautify CNMI -- Angelo, Ken Kramer, Tess and the FMI Gang. . .











. . . and, of course, Adam, Juanita and Zack, our favorite supervolunteer family! Adam even brought a friend from San Vicente School!








Aya-san and Willy-san were there as well. . .









. . . and we got to enjoy our oishi bbq lunch with our partner R&C Tour members.

It was also great to see new friends from Aqua Resort join Beautify.

Of course, I had my own crew with me: Gus, AJ, Franklin and Willy Boy.

Thanks for stopping by!

Note: Unfortunately, I didn't see my friend Dr. Dave Khorram and crew earlier or I would've gotten a picture of them and they were too quick for my camera when they stopped by briefly in the afternoon. Sorry, Dave!

Rep. Cinta Kaipat
www.cnmiblog.com

A few more pictures from the Lighthouse

This picture epitomizes the Beautify CNMI! spirit for me. Here is a Chamorro-American, a Caucasian-American, and a Japanese National. One is a student, one is a doctor, and one is a businesswoman. Zach brought his mom, Juanita, and brother, Adam, Allison brought her children, and Aya brought her husband, Willie.

These three families come from different ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, have children of different ages (Allison has babies, Juanita has middle schoolers, and Aya has college students), but they all spent hours ostensibly doing something that should have been somebody else's job...and they enjoyed every minute of it. How often do you see that happen?

Juanita, Zach, Adam, Aya, and Willie have volunteered several dozen times now (Adam and Juanita are approaching a hundred). They are such regulars at our events that they show up with their own tools. Even when Willie can't make it, he'll pack a special tool kit for Aya:

That is what Beautify CNMI! is all about. People from different walks of life, pooling their resources, and coming together on a regular basis to make this island a better place to live.

This was Allison's first time volunteering with Beautify CNMI! I hope to see her again...and maybe if she becomes a regular, Willie will pack her a special tool kit, too.

Here are a few more pictures from yesterday's painting of the Japanese Lighthouse:

The untiring volunteers of Friends of the Mariana Islands were at the cleanup yesterday. Their leader, President Marites Castillo, was fighting the flu yesterday, but she still managed to show up. They brought tools, water, and food to share with the rest of the volunteers.

Bree Reynolds was also there. This picture belongs to the Blackmail Series:

$125
Bree brought her husband Doug, and several students from Hopwood Junior High School.

Jim Highfill, the Khorrams, Roch from Aqua Resort (volunteering for the first time), Ken Kramer, a group of Japanese tour guides from R&C Tours, Cinta Kaipat, Gus Kaipat and some of the boys were also there.

I'm sure I'm missing someone...and I'm sorry if I forgot to list you! Check out Aya's blog and Cinta's blog to see if they got everybody.

Lighthouse Cleanup

We painted the lighthouse from about 7 AM until 4 PM. A huge thanks goes out to Ken Kramer, Marianas RC&D Coordinator. He helped me all week coordinate today's rather large event. He was also the first volunteer to show up and the last volunteer to go home today.

Thank you, Ken.

We managed to apply a layer of primer on most of the Lighthouse and got a layer of paint on about two rooms worth of walls. We're not finished. We have to go back in a week or two.

Here is the lighthouse before we really got started:

...and here is the lighthouse at the end of the day:

We are about half way done. We're going to have to go back and add a little more primer and then paint over the whole thing with a final coat of paint. Here are a few more pictures:

BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:

BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
The money for the paint was donated by the Marianas Visitors Authority. They donated $10,000 to Beautify CNMI! about a year ago, but it wasn't until this week that I was spurred to action.

There were two things that made me finally get off my butt and paint the lighthouse. The first one happened last Saturday when Dr. David Khorram's daughter, Nava, handed me an envelope full of dollar bills and coins totalling $49.02. She told me that she had collected the money at school to pay for paint for the lighthouse. I felt so guilty.

The second thing that made me decide that it was time to paint the lighthouse was one of the music videos from the Fiesta Pop Music Festival. The video was shot at the lighthouse and the whole structure was just covered in graffiti. It was time to do something about it.

So I asked MVA for the money, sent out a few emails, and over 50 people came out to help today.

Thank you, Everybody.

There were too many of you for me to remember. If I tried to list everyone, I would only get it wrong.

So again, thank you, Everybody who volunteered time, money, supplies, and resources today.

Like I've already mentioned, we are still not finished. I think we are going to go back two weeks from today. I'll keep you posted...and I'd love for you to help.

In much more important news, Wild Bill's Men's Soccer Team won the Tapachou Derby Consolation match against the Bangladeshi Sports Club to take 3rd place in the NMIFA Men's Summer League. Here we are after the game:

Spicy Tofu!