Vince Riley's Home Page
"For God and family, clan and country, into the future !!!"
Member of RileyNet: The Legion
Hafa Adai*, I'm Vince Riley. I signed up on 02/14/98, at 02:53:31, and my place is always under construction.(*"Hafa Adai" is a greeting in Chamorro language)
Since I'm only nine years old in the GeoCities-Yahoo neighborhood, let me tell you a little about myself. I lived with my family for 17 years on the island of Saipan, in the US Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), in the western Pacific. We were 140 miles north of Guam, and about 1500 miles from Tokyo (Japan), Taipei (Taiwan) and Manila (The Philippines). The people indigenous to this Micronesian island are of Chamorro and Carolinian ancestry, and are U.S. ciizens. In 2006, we finally left Saipan, and moved to Chester County, Pennsylvania, where I had spent my youth.
My wife, Li-Rong (Li), was born in Guangdong Province in China, and is a naturalized US citizen. I am an American of mostly Irish descent, but my family tree also reaches back to the American War of Revolution, to the Mayflower, to Canadians, English, French, and Germans, and even to Charlemagne himself, if we accept the research of some genealogists.
We have three daughters, and a fourth daughter is due in September 2007.
Li was an independent businesswoman. She sold clothing and other items around the island from the back of our station wagon, and later ran her own convenience store, called the "Mom + Pop Store," but right now she is a full-time mother and wife. I have been a high school English teacher on Saipan, a high school department chair, a college English instructor, a college English department chair, a Director of Learning Assistance Programs, an assistant to the Vice President, and then returned to full-time teaching at the Northern Marianas College. I taught developmental English classes as well as College composition classes, including a research paper writing class based on the Titanic. I also taught world religions and Pacific literature classes. In 1999-2000, I co-chaired the NMC Self-study for Reaffirmation of Accreditation by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. I have also served for two years as the NMC Faculty Senate president, and as faculty representative to the BNMC Board of Regents. At the present time, however, I teach on the Arts and Science faculty of Neumann College in Aston, PA, and coordinate Neumann College's Disabilities Services program.
We worked hard to build our own house here on Saipan. In 1998, we leased 2000 square meters of land for 55 years--persons not of Northern Marianas descent cannot own land in the CNMI. I designed house plans using Broderbund's 3D Architect Deluxe program. Some considerations in our design were the tropical climate, the severe typhoons that occasionally hit us, earthquakes, destructive insects (termites and carpenter ants) that live here year-round, the expense, and ecological factors like winds, our underlying coral deposits, the angle of the sun, and landscaping.
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Construction on our home began in July 1998. We moved into the first floor in December 1998. We finally finished the second floor interior, and the house exterior, and fully paid off our construction loans. In 2006, we sold our house prior to moving to Pennsylvania. Despite Saipan's problems, we liked the people of this island, and enjoyed our stay.
If you are interested in looking at some of the news from Saipan, try the Saipan Tribune or the Marianas Variety newspapers online. If you would like to know more about Chester County, Pennsylvania, try the Daily Local News. My interests are God, family, work (education), genealogy, SCUBA, soccer, the Irish, travel, China, other cultures, computers, edutainment, the RMS Titanic, and classical music (esp. baroque). I guess for a while I was also interested in building houses.
©1998, 2007
rileyv@neumann.edu
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