Fun Facts about Guam!

Five years ago, I made the difficult decision to leave Guam to move to the States. Even though I've adjusted to life in the mainland, I still miss my home island terribly. It's hard not to be reminded that I'm so far away from home, especially after I tell someone where I'm from. I get a lot of questions like, "You're from Guam? So what are you, Guamese?" and "WHY COME UR ENGLISH SO DANG GOOD?" and of course, the ever pervasive, "What...uh...what is Guam?"
So here it is, a compilation of fun facts about Guam, compiled by a Guamanian.

1. Guam is an American territory, meaning the inhabitants speak ENGLISH, follow federal laws (but not strictly), and use American currency (flagrantly.) We even have their own Congresswoman, who infamously set the island back 50 years in an interview with Stephen Colbert.

2. Guam is hot, small, and far away.
Don't believe me? Check out The Fucking Weather.

The coldest night in Guam won't ever slip below 70°, and in the daytime, it's in the high 80's/low 90's. It's very humid, and yeah, it's fucking hot. Luckily, Guam looks like this:

Beautiful, I know. So where is this sultry, gorgeous paradise located? Let's take a look at a map of Asia Pacific.

I refuse to find a better map.

See that dot? That might be Guam. I really like how this particular cartographer chose to used MS Paint to draw a purple box the size of Korea to locate an island that's...I dunno, somewhere in that line of other dots. 

3. People from Guam are called "Guamanians." The indigenous people are called "Chamorros." Spell check refuses to recognize either term. Seriously, type them out, and you'll see those damn red squiggly lines.

Or you can use the more colloquial term, "Guammie Bears."

4. While the Chamorros make up about a third of the island's population, you'll be hard pressed to find a "pure" Chamorro person. See, in the 1500's, Spain was all like, "Hey, this island looks like a good place to party!" and took over for about 350 years, partied with all the local women, and produced a lot of Spanish-Chamorro babies. That's why a lot of Chamorro last names sound Hispanic (Bautista, Castro, etc.) It's also why the Chamorro language is strikingly similar to Spanish.

SPANISH = RED CHAMORRO = ORANGE

ESPIA/ESPIA = spy

LIBRO/LEPBLO = book

VERDE/BETDE = green

ESPEJO/ESPEHU = mirror

CUENTOS/KUENTOS = talk

CUANTO/KUANTO = how much?

PUERTA/POTTA = door

COBARDE/KOBATDE = coward

QUE HORA ES/KI ORA GENAO = what time is it?

(Source: The Chamorro Language Blogspot)

5. Guam has a fantastic habit of taking the best bits and pieces of everyone else's culture, and then calling it "our own." Example: Only noobs call beach footwear "sandals" or even worse, "flip-flops." In Guam, slippers are called "zori" (plural: "zoris/zories"), the same word in Japanese. And Guam also took Japan's delicious food and wacky cartoons and candies.

It tastes better than it sounds.

To be fair, they did colonize Guam for two years back in the 1940's, so TAKE THAT, JAPAN. Actually, I'd say we're about even.
And these days, Guam gets along great with Japan. In fact, Japanese tourists outnumber tourists from any other country by far. Can you blame them? They can come to this warm tropical paradise go diving in Marianas Trench, and visit the places their ancestors used to slaughter the indigenous people. But hey, there are many other tourist hotspots, like Two Lover's Point, the Sea Walker, and...K-Mart.

Seriously, the K-Mart is a stop on every Guamanian tourist bus line. Why? Guam boasts the largest K-Mart in the world.

Every drunk Guamanian ever has found themselves here at the end of the night.

Because Guam is so close to Southeast Asia, it's understandable that most of the island's population is Southeastern Asian, particularly Filipino. 

This is balut, and it is something the Philippines brought to the island, apparently because they hate us.

6. While we're on the subject of stealing cultures, let's not forget about the motherland - the US of A. Guam consumes more Spam, Tabasco sauce, and Bud Ice per capita than any other place in the world. (I'm not 100% on the Bud Ice statistic, but it sounds correct.)

Not like we're necessarily proud of any of this.

In fact, Spam actually produced "limited edition" Spam cans just for Guam. 

I hope you enjoyed this list, and more importantly, I hope you enjoy fact-checking this list on Guam's Wikipedia page.