Rota\u2019s trademark friendliness was celebrated in the last two weeks of August when the island, led by Mayor Efraim Atalig, commemorated Aluf Luta Week or Rota Wave Week.<\/p>\n
It marks the third year that the CNMI\u2019s southernmost island celebrated the event to recognize hand waving and its role in Rota\u2019s culture as a tradition that signifies peace, friendliness, and respect.<\/p>\n
Aluf Luta Week was held from Aug. 21 to Aug. 31. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason why we started Aluf Luta is to make sure that this unique way of greeting people, or welcoming visitors to our island doesn\u2019t [end]. It is a special tradition for the island, which is one of the reasons Rota is known as \u2018The Friendly Island,\u2019\u201d said Atalig.<\/p>\n
Under his leadership, Atalig\u2019s staff and other government agencies coordinated 10 days of competitions, including a signboard and song-writing competitions with the theme \u201cAluf Luta\u201d or the \u201cRota Wave.\u201d The celebration ended with a roadside waving at Teteto Beach last Aug. 31, where Atalig and his staff, government agencies, and students gathered to share the island\u2019s welcoming spirit. <\/p>\n
The signboard competition saw Rota\u2019s National Honor Society\/Division of Youth Services win first place. The Department of Community and Cultural Affairs and Department of Lands and Natural Resources came in second and third, respectively. In the songwriting competition Abriette Manglona took first place. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rota\u2019s trademark friendliness was celebrated in the last two weeks of August when the island,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,4],"tags":[18305,18060,13557,9467],"class_list":["post-260261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biba-marianas","category-local-news","tag-abriette-manglona","tag-aluf-luta-week","tag-mayor-efraim-atalig","tag-natural-resources"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}